The urban dance style Breaking officially made its debut as a competitive sport at the Olympic Games in Paris on Friday and rapper Snoop Dogg was on hand to open the event.

The legendary rapper came out to his hit song “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and performed the opening ceremony – while fellow rapper Ice T tweeted his support for the event, writing, “This is going to blow the minds of people who haven’t seen breakdancing in a long time… INCREDIBLE. All respect to HIPHOP.”

The competition began with three hits of a wooden stick on the floor of an arena designed to resemble an old vinyl record. Then came the breaking (don’t call it breakdancing). First up of the “B-girls” were 18-year-old India Sardjoe from the Netherlands and 21-year-old Manizha Talash from Kabul, representing the official Olympic refugee team.

Talash missed the deadline to register for the qualifying competitions, but the IOC set up a special pre-qualifying tournament to allow her to compete in Paris.

Each head-to-head battle consisted of three rounds, or throwdowns, with breakers taking turns to compete for one minute. Breakers use four main moves – toprock, downrock, rotational power moves and freezes – and are judged on five criteria: vocabulary, technique, execution, originality and musicality. They are also scored in real time via a digital slider so viewers can see who is ahead.

B-Girl Sardjoe showed off her power moves and won the pre-qualifying match 3-0, but B-Girl Talash managed to get her point across by wrapping herself in a cape that read “FREE AFGHAN WOMEN,” ignoring the IOC’s strict ban on political speech at Olympic venues.

At its best, breaking is exciting, dynamic and even beautiful. When it doesn’t work, it can be a little embarrassing – or as one critic put it on Friday: “turbo-embarrassing.”

However, breaking and its historical precursors – the African juba, the Brazilian martial art capoeira, or the dance competitions of the 1970s in Harlem or the Bronx – have always been competitive. Some might argue that breaking is more competitive than running a horse sideways or making grown men run across icy tracks on a tea tray.

In addition, the IOC long ago perfected the art of using youth culture to attract new generations of fans to the Olympics. Snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing, kitesurfing and bouldering have been included in the Games. Money makes the world go round, and besides, all young people want to win an Olympic medal.

But brakes? Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Paris-born founder of the modern Olympic Games, would be turning in his grave. Perhaps on his head: old Pierre always loved a good power move.