Being a face of a newly minted Olympic sport would stress out anybody, not to mention somebody who’s barely out of her teenagers. However Logan Edra, a 21-year-old California native who now lives in Florida, is dealing with the strain with extra chill than athletes twice her age. “If I fail, then I fail,” she tells SELF. So for now she’s going “step-by-step, taking it sooner or later at a time” as she prepares to tackle the 2024 Paris Video games.
That’s the place Edra will make her Olympic debut in breaking, a “dance sport” extra generally referred to as “breakdancing” amongst laypeople. You won’t be accustomed to all of the specifics, however you most likely get the gist: busting out a spread of complicated strikes—together with flips, twists, head spins, and extra—to the rhythmic strains of hip-hop music. And that soundtrack wasn’t chosen at random: Breaking, which originated within the Black and Hispanic communities of the Nineteen Seventies Bronx, is one among 4 core components of hip-hop tradition, based on Pink Bull, the sponsor of worldwide breaking competitors Pink Bull BC One.
Urged on by her dad, a former breaker himself, Edra received her begin when she was seven years outdated and immediately fell in love. Utilizing the stage identify “Logistx” (her dad’s coinage), she has since risen to the very best echelons of the self-discipline, nabbing first place on the 2018 Silverback Open Championships and the 2020 Junior Breaking 7ToSmoke Radikal Forze Jam. However her largest victory (up to now) got here in 2021: That November, she beat Russian opponent Vavi to win the world championship on the Pink Bull BC One World Closing in Poland.
In gentle of breaking’s runaway success on the 2018 Summer time Youth Olympic Video games in Buenos Aires (viewership topped 1 million, based on NBC), Olympics officers determined that it could lastly make its method to the most important stage of all of them. On August 9 and 10, greater than 30 B-boys and B-girls (as breakers are identified) will face off in Paris in one-on-one “battles” soundtracked by a DJ and narrated by an MC. And Edra might be proper there watching all of it occur.
“It’s thrilling that breaking is on this degree proper now,” says Edra, who not too long ago partnered with snack pouch firm GoGo squeeZ. “I’d say our attain is rising, our visibility. And I believe all of us simply hope that it doesn’t diminish the tradition [of breaking], however extra so enable it to have extra shops to be shared with the world.”
Given the athleticism and technical talent required of B-boys and B-girls—have you ever seen Edra’s one-handed handstand spin?!—it shouldn’t come as a shock that they should hit the health club together with practising breaking. Whereas coaching (which she usually does solo), Edra likes to modify up what she’s listening to: By her personal admission, the “shuffle” characteristic is her greatest good friend. “I at all times cowl a brand new tune each week, and that turns into my tune for a couple of days, after which I uncover a brand new tune and I’ll be listening to that,” she says. When SELF caught up together with her earlier than the Video games, she shared a couple of of her favorites in the meanwhile.
1. “Trendsetter” by Connor Worth and Haviah Mighty
This tune is fairly dope. I like rap that’s clear and never as specific. I believe it’s cool to have that as a result of I can play it round youngsters and never fear about their mother and father getting mad.