Those who have seen the Paris olympics will not fail to notice the speed, athleticism, and determination on display at the breaking competition. This is breaking, not breakdancing. Breakdancing happened in the eighties. Breaking is the much cooler, hipper and younger sporting discipline that is only peripherally related to hanging out on street corners twirling around in the rain on a soggy cardboard box.

Olympic breaking is the pinnacle of poise, the acme of acrobatics, the ceiling(?) of cool. This year’s competition pitted together giants of the sport, including a throw-down for the ages as Australia’s B-Girl DJ Jazzy Ray-gun contorted and gurned in front of bucket-hatted judges whilst on the periphery her challenger the USA’s DHL UPS Logistx kangaroo-hopped around an imaginary handbag. The music was loud and classy, and you could tell that the B-boys and B-girls really listened to it (as officionados of the sport are fond of saying). They expressed their musicality through edgy gestures and shapes that really set the event alight. It was like a boxing match, but without the boxing, or the matches. Stirring stuff nonetheless.

Now that the IOC have had the good sense to add breaking to the pre-mixed alco-pop cocktail of BMX-ing, skateboarding and surfing, we have what all of us have been waiting for these forty years — an eighties games. Next time in LA, there are rumours of including other stalwart pastimes of 1984, including Twister, Big Trak, and Dungeons and Dragons.

You can imagine the crowd’s intensity as GB’s level seven cleric attempts to swing a mace against the North Macedonian level eight dwarven bard. She calls upon her dark goddess, the witch-queen Splurge, to intervene for an extra 1D4 of damage, but first she must make a saving throw with a difficulty class of fifteen to avoid being put into the irrevocable thrall of the bard’s Otto’s magic dance spell. It is so thrilling. As the twenty-sided die sails high into the air, you can hear a pin drop, the camera pushes into close focus on a bead of sweat on the cleric’s face. It is a matter of life or death — kind of.

Of course, the USA will turn up with an army of level-twenty orc warriors and flatten everybody. And if you think that’s unlikely — just look what happened in the athletics.