When he heard from his cousin that a man had risen from the ground unharmed after spinning upside down for nearly five minutes in São Braz square, Belém, Leony Pinheiro, then 12 years old, was impressed. "We went there to see, and I simply fell in love," he tells Folha. "This is what I want to do with my life," recalls the native about what he thought that day. The young man, who at the time worked as a bicycle repairman—"in São Paulo, it would be like a parking attendant, but for bicycles"—had just had his first contact with breaking.
Today, at 28, Leony dreams of bringing breaking mixed with technobrega to the Paris Games, where street dance will debut as an Olympic sport.
Leony is the only Brazilian still with a chance to secure a spot in the Olympic circuit. He will participate in the last two qualifying stages, in Shanghai, China, from May 16 to 19, and then in Budapest, Hungary, from June 20 to 23. Only the top seven in each gender will earn a spot in Paris. The new Olympic discipline will feature 32 athletes, 16 men and 16 women, respecting a maximum quota of two B-Boys and two B-Girls per country. France, the host country, already has two guaranteed spots, one for each gender.