Paris 2024Paris Letter

Breakdancer Manizha Talash fled Afghanistan when the Taliban came to power, now she’s an Olympian

You can sneer at breaking if you like and decide that it is not a sport. Or you can sit down and watch and learn something about the power of the Games

Manizha Talash, known as Manizha, competes in the women's breakdancing qualifying round at La Concorde in Paris on Friday. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
Manizha Talash, known as Manizha, competes in the women's breakdancing qualifying round at La Concorde in Paris on Friday. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
Malachy Clerkin's picture
Malachy Clerkin
Sat Aug 10 2024 - 06:00

Down at La Concorde, there’s an hour to go to the start of the breakdance competition and the crowds are six deep around the warm-up stages. Think of the scene like the driving range at a golf tournament, with added filthy bass. In the main arena, the DJ is feeling himself, banging out American rapper Coi Leray. ‘Cos girls is players too.

Out come the MCs for the day, Malik and Max. “I want to give a big shout-out,” says Max. “Big shout out to all the hip-hop soldiers around the world who built this beautiful culture. Big love to you all, big love to NYC where it all started, big love and big shout-out.”

They bring on a troupe of dancers in full rig-out — baggy trousers, baseball caps, pumped up kicks. They spin on their heads, they rock the mic, they scream at each other about b-boys and b-girls and representin’ and all that good stuff. They put on a show for about 10 minutes, getting the crowd into it.

When the troupe is finished, they bow, take their applause and shuffle off to the two rows of seats beside the stage. They wipe their brow with towels and down some drinks and, out of nowhere, they start arranging their laptops in front of them. For this is no ordinary dance troupe. These are the judges of the breakdance competition. Amazing.

READ MORE

And then there’s Snoop. Of course, there is. Every session of every sport at the Games begins with a famous star coming out with a cane and banging it on the ground three times, aping the tradition in French theatre of calling the crowd to order. In this case, it’s Snoop. Who else would they get to open the first session of the first appearance of breaking at the Olympics?

The crowd goes balubas. Snoop milks the moment like an old pro. The whole thing is magnificent fun, a total spectacle.

US rapper Snoop Dogg next to US basketball player Bam Adebayo during the women's breakdancing round robin at La Concorde in Paris. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
US rapper Snoop Dogg next to US basketball player Bam Adebayo during the women's breakdancing round robin at La Concorde in Paris. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images

Now. You can say this isn’t a sport. You can take that view. You can look around all the events at Paris 2024 and decide that there’s no comparing what, say, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone did on the track Thursday night and what these kids are doing here on Friday afternoon. You can be that person. Or you can wise up and watch.

The first dance battle of the Games features an athlete from the Olympic Refugee Team. Manizha Talash grew up in Afghanistan. She lives in Spain now. Sport is part of the reason why.

As a teenager, she came across a video of a breakdancer spinning on his head and immediately went to find a dance club in western Kabul. She told the instructor she wanted to learn how to do that. Around the same time, she heard that breaking was going to be an Olympic sport. She said she wanted to do that too.

Then the Taliban came back to power. She had been breaking for a couple of years by now and had gained a low level of local fame. As soon as the Taliban took over, women were barred from classrooms and gyms and told to wear head-to-toe clothing. Music and dancing were out of the question.

Talash and her friends in the dance group knew they couldn’t hang around. They got out of the country and moved to Spain. “If I’d stayed in Afghanistan, I don’t think I’d exist,” she told the BBC before the Games. “They’d execute me or stone me to death.” In Madrid, she found her way into the breakdancing community and applied to become part of the Olympic Refugee team for Paris.

Talash in action at the La Concorde on the 14th day of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in France. Photograph: John Walton/PA
Talash in action at the La Concorde on the 14th day of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in France. Photograph: John Walton/PA

And so here she is. The stage is cleared and the DJ cranks up the beat and Manizha Talash becomes an Olympian b-girl. She dances three 45-second rounds against India Sardjoe of the Netherlands and though she loses them on all the judges’ cards, she leaves her mark on the Games.

Towards the end of the third round, she whips off her top to reveal a blue cape underneath. Emblazoned across the back in home-made white capitals is the message, FREE AFGHAN WOMEN. The International Olympic Committee tend to take a fairly dim view of political sloganeering at the games but the crowd erupts when they see it and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

Soon enough, Talash’s Olympics are over. She leaves the stage and wanders down to the broadcast compound and out into the mixed zone. But by the time she gets there, the emotional toll of the whole thing seems to have drained her.

She does a couple of stop-start, disjointed interviews through a translator — when she’s asked if she has a message for any Afghan girls who might have seen her performance, she can only make a heart sign with her hands before moving on. By the time she reaches the written press, she’s in tears and can’t bring herself to stop and talk. “I think she said enough with her performance,” says her translator.

Inside the arena, the battles continue, the crowd ever louder, the bass ever filthier. Manizha Talash walks off to find a quiet corner to dry her tears, her head bowed down, her shoulders heaving.

Still want to tell her breakdancing isn’t a sport?

READ NEXT