From breakdancing to trampolining and “the modern pentathlon” these are the obscure sports I’ll be yapping about until 2028.
The Paris Olympics has been in our diaries for a while, and most of us know our favourite Olympics sports we will be watching. Or, for people like me who aren’t passionate about sport, what we’ll be getting dragged along to by partners and friends.
While I don’t follow sports closely throughout the year (discounting unfolding drama on The Dallas Cowboys), I love the Olympics. That’s because I almost always discover a sport I’d never heard of and become utterly obsessed with.
This started in 2000, when, as a supremely bored sports-ambivalent child, I became captivated by pole vaulting and Tatiana Grigorieva’s physics-defying grace. Since then, I’ve gotten into trampolining, table tennis, and breakdancing. There’s something immensely satisfying about catching a competition, spending hours on TikTok researching it, and then talking about it incessantly until the next Olympic games. So sorry in advance to everyone who’ll be hearing about the history of the Modern Pentathlon until 2028.
Of course, the benefit of exploring the more obscure sports as a non-sports person is that it makes you look highly knowledgeable when the conversation inevitably turns to the Olympics. It’s the small talk equivalent of flexing a band nobody has ever heard of, but less insufferable.
So, whether you’re sports averse or can get involved in any competition, this is my cheat sheet for the nichest competitions in the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The Nichest Olympic Sports To Watch In 2024
Breaking
For those of us who were in primary school in the 1990s and early 2000s, breakdancing was one of the coolest moves you could pull at a talent show. Some of us never stopped training, though, and in the Paris Olympics, those brave souls will be taking the stage for the first time ever.
When to watch:
10th-11th of August
Ribbon Twirling or “Rhythmic Gymnastics”
Even the least sports literate amongst us have become gymnastics fans thanks to the prowess of Simone Biles. Essentially rhythmic gymnastics takes all the difficulty of normal gymnastics while adding dance, drama, music, hoolah hoops and plenty of whimsical twirling to the mix.
When to watch:
Individual competitions: 8th of August
Group competitions: 9th of August
Olympic Trampoline
You ight think this is another “where are they now” featuring the kid who brought really aggressive to the trampoline in primary school. But it’s not as weird as it sounds, trampolining was actually invented by American Gymnast George Nissen in 1934. He’d seen trapeze acrobats bouncing off safety nets and tried to recreat the net to train astronauts and athletes. Trampolining became competitive in 1964 and formally joined the International Gymnastics Federation in 1998.
The rules stipulate that competitors must bounce over 8 metres high while performing routines composed of ten elements. They’re scored on the difficulty of the move, the precision of the execution, and their total time in the air.
When to watch:
Women’s: 2nd of August
Men’s: 3rd of August
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