Sunny Choi: 5 facts about the Team USA Olympic breaker ahead of the sport's Games debut in Paris

For the Paris Olympics this summer, For The Win is helping you get to know some of the star Olympians competing on the world’s biggest stage. We’re highlighting 15 Team USA athletes in the 15 days leading up to the Opening Ceremony. Up next is Sunny Choi.

Breakdancing, more commonly called breaking, is making its Olympic debut at the 2024 Paris Games, and Sunny Choi will be one of the first Team USA athletes to compete at the Games. The 35-year-old breaker from Queens, New York is a first-time Olympian and favored to medal in Paris.

So ahead of the 2024 Olympics, here are five things to know about Choi.

1. Sunny Choi qualified for the Paris Olympics with a different gold medal

While Choi won a world championship silver medal for breaking in 2019, she officially punched her ticket to Paris by winning the first Pan American breaking gold medal in November 2023.

“I thought people were messing with me,” Choi said about learning breaking would be in the Olympics. “I genuinely thought somebody was joking, and it’s not that I don’t think breaking is a challenging sport and deserves to be on a platform like the Olympics. Breaking, to me, was just so street, and in my eyes, the Olympics has got this refinement and this elegance around so many of the sports. …

“So for breaking to be included, I was like, ‘Come on.’ Like, ‘You’re kidding, right?'”

2. She’s a gymnast turned professional breaker

Choi said she was drawn to breaking because of its physicality and how it resembled gymnastics, which she did for 15 years. She always dreamed of going to the Olympics, but when she first started breaking, she had no idea where the sport would go.

She was a freshman at Penn when she started breaking and quickly fell in love with the sport, especially because it embraces imperfections, unlike gymnastics.

“Initially, it was just being upside down again that was super exciting for me,” Choi said. “What ended up keeping me, though, was one, the community, and then two, the artistic piece of breaking. I had realized that I had never really explored the creative side of me, or really asked the hard questions. And breaking has really brought out so much more of me than any other thing in my life.”

3. She used to work at Estée Lauder before quitting to focus on the Olympics

Prior to being a full-time professional breaker, Choi worked for Estée Lauder as the director of global creative operations for some of the company’s skincare lines.

“It was extremely corporate,” she said. “I was working really long hours, so I just couldn’t make the two work together, so I had to pick one.”

So after about six months of deliberating, Choi gambled on herself, quit her job and began training full time for the Olympics.

4. How she’s been preparing for it to be extra hot in Paris

Without knowing the exact weather conditions for the Olympics, Choi said she’s training as if it’s going to be sweltering, just in case.

“We don’t know how hot it’s going to be, so I’m actually layering up in some of my sessions,” said Choi, who was also promoting her partnership with Blume, a health supplement company. “So that means I sweat a lot. I also love doing hot vinyasa.”

To help rehydrate, Choi said she relies on the company’s SuperBelly hydration and gut health products during her training. Partnerships like this, she said, help fund her training because when she quit her Estée Lauder job in January 2023, she had enough money saved only to last through the end of the year.

5. Breaking at the Olympics is set for August 9 and 10

The women’s competition is up first on August 9, so here’s a look at the schedule:

Friday, August 9
Round Robin: 10 a.m. ET

Quarterfinal 1: 2 p.m. ET
Quarterfinal 2: 2:07 p.m. ET
Quarterfinal 3: 2:14 p.m. ET
Quarterfinal 4: 2:21 p.m. ET

Semifinal 1: 2:45 p.m. ET
Semifinal 2: 2:52 p.m. ET

Bronze Medal Battle: 3:14 p.m. ET
Gold Medal Battle: 3:23 p.m. ET