A team of three Taiwanese dancers, as well as two teammates from their defeated quarter-final and semi-final opponents, has won the breakdancing team event at FISE Montpellier in southern France — one of the biggest international competitions in the world of extreme sports.
The top-placing Taiwanese dancers were Lilma Liu, Lo Kuo-chuan and Quake Chan, better known by their respective stage names Bboy Lilma, Bboy What21 and Bboy Quake.
The trio participated in the FISE Breaking Battle Challenge Crew event on Saturday.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Representative Office in Aix-en-Provence
The event followed the so-called “lucky loser” format whereby the team that wins its quarter-final matchup selects a dancer from the losing team to join them in the next round, turning the competition from a three-on-three to a four-on-four event in the semi-finals, said Liu Chih-chiang, one of their coaches who is better known as Bboy Choco.
In the semi-finals, the winning team again selects a member from the opposing team to take part in the final, which is a five-on-five event, Bboy Choco said.
Together with their two new teammates, the Taiwanese trio defeated France, Germany and Uganda to be crowned champions.
They performed exceptionally, with What21 improvising his set by grabbing a strawberry from the stage which he ate while dancing, Bboy Choco said, adding that due to how fun and entertaining the Taiwanese dancers were, audience members were asking each other where the team was from.
After winning over the audience, the master of ceremonies announced that the team was from Taiwan, instead of Chinese Taipei, Bboy Choco said.
Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Yang Jia-li made it into the top 16 in the women’s singles competition, the coach added.
Encompassing extreme sports such as BMX, skateboarding, rollerblading, parkour, wakeboarding, slopestyle mountain biking and breakdancing, FISE Montpellier is the biggest extreme sports event in Europe and attracted participants from more than 50 countries this year.
As breakdancing is scheduled to be an event at the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Breaking Battle Challenge Crew event was co-organized by FISE, as well as the World DanceSport Federation and the French Dance Federation.
Bboy Choco said Taiwan’s team used the competition to assess its skills and gain more experience as part of preparations for Olympic selection events which start next month, adding that they departed for Spain on Tuesday to participate in the Madrid Urban Sports event.
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