Eshwar Tiwari, Siddhi Tambe strike gold at inaugural national breaking championships
Finalists from both the men’s and women’s categories will represent India at the World Breaking Championship in Paris in December.
B-Boy Wildchild Eshwar Tiwari and B-Girl Bar-B Siddhi Tambe won gold in the men’s and women’s categories, respectively, at the first-ever national breaking championships, held in Mumbai on Sunday.
Mumbai’s Eshwar Tiwari defeated the experienced B-Boy Flying Machine Arif Chaudhary in the men’s final. The two had earlier faced off in the Red Bull BC One India Cypher final held earlier this year, where Eshwar Tiwari prevailed.
Meanwhile, teenager Siddhi Tambe, also from Mumbai, beat Bengaluru’s B-Girl Jo Johanna Rodrigues for the women’s title.
“I started breaking when I was 12 and this is the first time I have won the top prize so I’m very, very happy,” the 17-year-old Siddhi Tambe told Olympics.com.
B-Boy Tornado Ramesh Yadav and B-Girl Glib Simran Ranga were the bronze medallists in their respective categories.
All four finalists will represent India at the 2021 World Breaking Championships in Paris on December 4.
Organised by the newly-formed Breakdance Federation of India (BFI), the national championships were held in three stages – online qualifiers, offline preliminaries and finals.
From close to 200 online entries from across India, the 57 best breakers - 37 B-Boys and 20 B-Girls – were selected for the offline rounds held at the Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai.
The list was narrowed down to the top 16 from both categories, who then went face to face in a “1 vs 1” battle, judged virtually by five established dancers - Gee One (Thailand), Bobby Tan (Malaysia), Lil Dragon (Taiwan) and Ukraine’s Lussy Sky and Anzhelika Kumar.
It was the first edition of the national championships in India since breaking -- commonly referred to as breakdancing -- was confirmed as a medal event at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“I am happy that I could win the first national qualifier from India but what makes me happier is that breaking is finally a part of the Olympics. Now people will know what breakdancing actually means,” Eshwar Tiwari said.
The next national championships will be held in Delhi in January 2022, according to the Breakdance Federation of India.