Street dance added as Olympic sport

Breakdancing became an official Olympic sport on Monday.

The International Olympic Committee’s pursuit of urban events to lure a younger audience saw street dance battles officially added to the medal events program at the

2024 Paris Games.

Also confirmed for Paris by the IOC executive board were skateboarding, sport climbing and surfing.

Those three sports will make their Olympic debuts at the Tokyo Games which were postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic by one year to open on July 23, 2021.

Alongside the additions, the IOC made subtractions: The slate of 329 medal events in Paris is 10 fewer than in Tokyo, including four lost from weightlifting, and the athlete quota in 2024 of 10,500 is around 600 less than next year.

Two sports with troubled governing bodies – boxing and weightlifting – saw the biggest cuts to the number of athletes they can have in Paris.

Weightlifting should have 120 athletes in Paris, which is less than half of its total at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. The sport could be dropped entirely due to its historic doping problems and IOC concerns over the pace and depth of reform at the International Weightlifting Federation.

The IOC stressed its future priorities for Paris, and beyond to the 2028

Los Angeles Games, by claiming it will hit a longterm target of equal participation by men and women athletes, and more urbanized events.

ETC.

Jai-Alai: Magic City

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Jai-Alai served as the host venue at the inaugural U.S. National Jai-Alai Championship. Fifty singles players and 25 doubles teams from across the country came together on Saturday and Sunday. Spectators watched from a safe distance via YouTube’s JaiAlai Channel.

In the singles category, Dania Jai-Alai’s Jairo won first place. Magic City Jai-Alai’s Carballo was runner-up. Dania’s Goitia and Arrieta won the title in the doubles category. Dania’s Goixerri and

Minte finished second. Each first-place winner earned $7,500. Runners-up received $2,500.

Soccer: Nikola Mi

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lenkovic scored with the last kick of the game as Fiorentina salvaged a 1-1 draw with Genoa in a battle between two relegationthreatened Serie A teams. … Valencia and Eibar failed to increase their distance to the bottom of the Spanish league standings after drawing 0-0. … Florian Grillitsch scored twice as Hoffenheim ended a seven-game winless run in the Bundesliga by beating Augsburg 3-1.

Obituary: Dick Allen, who was among baseball’s leading sluggers of the 1960s and early ’70s, playing mostly with the Phillies and Chicago White Sox, but who found himself a target of Philadelphia fans in his early years with the club, an outgrowth of racial animosity, died Monday in Wampum, Pennsylvania. He was 78. Allen, who hit 351 home runs in his 15 major-league seasons, was a seven-time All-Star. The Phillies retired his uniform number, 15, in September.