• by Tanya Gazdik , August 11, 2024

Sunny Choi, former global creative operations director for skin care at Estée Lauder, may not have won a medal, but she still made history as part of the United States' first-ever Olympic breaking team.

“Choi said in April that once the Paris Games were over, her plan was to open her own dance studio in Queens, New York,” according to Fox News. 

The 35-year-old has no plans to return to marketing, unless she has to, although her LinkedIn account still lists one of her current jobs as global creative creative operations consultant at Estée Lauder. 

“If I do, it means something went wrong with the dancing career," Choi told Fox News when asked if she would ever return to a corporate job. "I do still plan to dance, but I really want to shift gears and give feedback and teach the next generation the things that I've learned along the journey."

Choi defeated Portugal's Vanessa, 2-0, in the round-robin. But it wasn't enough to earn her a spot in the knockout stage. She ranked third in her respective group but needed a top-two finish. 

Even though the sport was new to the Olympics, Choi came in with endorsements and support, including from Women’s Health Magazine, Samsung,  Incredible Egg,  Harper’s BAZAAR, SNIPES, NBC, Nike and Supreme Massage NYC , according to MediaPost’s Mediapssst.

"I myself am just lucky that I did work in corporate, and I do have background knowledge in marketing, project management and operations, so that will help me in the long run," Choi told Fox News.

Despite not having won an Olympic medal, Choi is not without accolades. 

She won a gold medal for breaking in 2023 at the Pan American Games which made her the first American woman to qualify for the Olympics, NBC Olympics reports. She also won silver medals at the World Urban Games in 2019, IWGA World Games in 2022 and the Pan American Championships in 2023.

It’s not clear if breaking, or break dancing, will return in a future Olympics. 

“The International Olympic Committee added breaking, more commonly known as breakdancing, to the sports program in Paris because president Thomas Bach and his colleagues thought it would attract the younger, social-media savvy viewers that they were seeking,” according to USA Today. “It also fit in with local organizers' broader goal of a more ‘urban’ Olympic Games.”

A sport is usually not considered a "core" part of the Olympic program until it is part of at least three consecutive Games.

"Organizers for the next Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028 had the ability to propose new sports they wanted to include in their Games and opted for flag football, cricket, lacrosse and squash over breaking − despite the dance's deep history in the United States, specifically the Bronx,” according to USA Today.

Even if breaking doesn’t return to the Olympics, U.S. dancers hoped the exposure from just one weekend on the Olympic stage will help the sport.

“They envision a future with more funding for nonprofits and schools,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “Choi … hoped a mother in Montana could see breaking in the Olympics and consider letting her child start.”