Breaking standout Phil Wizard set to rep Team Canada at Paris 2024
Phillip Kim, also known as B-Boy Phil Wizard, will become Team Canada’s first Olympic breaking athlete at Paris 2024.
Hailing from Vancouver, he heads into the inaugural Olympic breaking competition with a standout resume. He won the 2022 WDSF World Breaking Championship title in between world silver medals in 2021 and 2023. This past fall, he qualified for the sport’s Olympic debut with a gold medal win at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games.
“I’m beyond excited to represent Canada in the debut of breaking at Paris 2024. It’s been a long journey, and I’ve learned and grown so much along the way,” Kim said. “I’m excited to continue that growth and do my absolute best to showcase what I love to the world and for the world to fall in love with it as well.”
After clinching his Olympic berth and winning Canada’s first Pan Am Games breaking medal, Kim was given the honour of being Team Canada’s co-closing ceremony flag bearer in Santiago.
Kim has been smashing barriers for Canadians in breaking for years, becoming the first to win the Undisputed World Series in 2019 before his medal haul at the world championships, Pan Am Games, and several WDSF Breaking for Gold World Series events.
Now 27 years old, Kim became interested in the sport after seeing a crew of breakers outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. While he was unsure of the sport at the time, he was hooked and soon became a member of the “Wizards Crew,” a breaking group which inspired his b-boy competition name.
“It was my first time seeing it in person, and it just blew me away,” he said. “They were spinning on their heads, they were sitting on their hands, they were flipping. It was mind-blowing as a kid.”
Despite obsessing over the sport through high school and beginning in competitions, it didn’t appear to be a viable career path for Kim, who enrolled in university before dropping out after a single semester. He said that brief foray into post-secondary studies was “the most miserable period” of his life.
Yet, while studying, he found an event that proved to be a qualifier for the Red Bull BC One World Finals, one of the world’s premier breaking events, and a chance to dive back into the sport. Soon after, he decided to give breaking his full investment.
Born in Toronto but proudly calling Vancouver home, he’ll look for Olympic glory when the breaking competitions hit the floor at La Concorde on August 10
Team Canada Breaking Athlete at Paris 2024:
Philip Kim (Vancouver, B.C.)