Rachael “Raygun” Gunn on the new sport that will invigorate the Olympics

Breakers are judged against five evenly weighted criteria: technique, execution, musicality (keeping in mind breakers don’t know what music will play ahead of time), vocabulary (range and repertoire of moves), and originality (new moves, personal style, spontaneity). Rather than each dancer being given an individual score for specific moves, breaking is judged using a comparative system. That is, a competitor is directly compared against their opponent in each round of a battle. The breaker with the most judges’ votes wins that round, and the one with the most rounds at the end wins the battle.