How to try the sickest Olympic sports in the city
Take your newfound love of obscure sports into the real world
If you are anything like the 35 million viewers who have been watching the Paris 2024 Olympics, you have been thrilled by exhilarating performances in sports that you barely knew existed before Friday.
The bespectacled pommel horse specialist who nailed his routine, earning the U.S. men’s gymnastics team its first medal in 16 years? That’s our friend Steve! The US women’s rugby player who bodied her haters on TikTok before stiff-arming her team’s way into the semifinals? The Giants should sign her.
Every four years, we revel in the unadulterated joy of athletes who reach the pinnacle of sport after dedicating their lives to mastering it. But you don’t need to practice for 10,000 hours to take up a new hobby and have fun doing it. New York City offers a broad array of sports to those who want to imitate their newfound heroes’ quest for Olympic glory or merely try something that looks cool on TV.
The Paris games is also using its beautiful, urbanized city as a backdrop for a handful of events such triathlon — held in the Seine River — beach volleyball underneath the Eiffel Tower, along with BMX cycling, skateboarding, 3x3 basketball and breaking that are being held in the city’s largest public square, the historic Place de la Concorde, to attract a younger, cooler audience.
You too can follow your Olympic dreams in a beautiful urban environment, because look at where you live. You can be any age to learn a new sport too. The best skateboarders in the world are barely teenagers while several equestrians are well into their 50s and 60s.
Baby let's break. (Photo via scarletizm/Flickr)
Break into breaking
The newest sport in the Olympics, breaking, has come a long way from its South Bronx roots.
Red Bull helped introduce B-boys and B-girls to a global audience when the soft drink company organized a competition in Switzerland in 2004. This year, Olympic-level qualifying events were held in Buenos Aires, Shanghai and Budapest. Now the only cardboard breakers encountered in Paris are inside their Olympic Village beds.
Many of the sport’s groundbreaking dancers are still based in New York and some even teach classes. PMT House of Dance in Flatiron offers beginner-level classes and open sessions to practice the moves you learn with the studio’s community (drop-in class rates start at $19 per class while five classes cost $90). Meanwhile Brickhouse NYC has open classes in Midtown ($25 for one class, $110 for five).
It’s never too early to get your kid battle tested. Check out Dynasty Breaking’s “Little Breaks” classes in Astoria for four to five-year-old tykes or its beginner breaking sessions for children ages 7 to 10 at the 92nd Street Y (it’s now called 92NY after a rebranding).
If you want to see the professionals, there’s the annual Battle for NYC festival near the end of May.
(Photo via Sheila/Flickr)
Ride it, my pommel
Gymnasts Stephen Nedoroscik and Suni Lee might have inspired you to master the pommel horse and uneven bars. Or you just want to touch your toes for the first time since high school.
Head over to Chelsea Piers where there’s no age limit to their lively gymnastics workouts for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. You can even take a combo gymnastics-rock climbing class if you want to try your hands at two Olympic sports in one afternoon (it’s called “Rock and Roll” get it?).
There’s worthwhile gymnastics classes in all corners of the city too including 92NY and NYC Elite Gym in Manhattan, Aviator Sports and Gotham Gymnastics in Brooklyn, Industry Gymnastics and Park City Gymnastics in Queens, and Victory Gymnastics Center and Athletic Edge in Staten Island. Season-long packages run several hundred dollars, but a single 30-minute private class at 92NY, for instance, is $65 while an hour-long lesson is $118.
Stiff arm your way into rugby
Maybe you were inspired by Ilona Maher’s amazing feats on the rugby pitch that won her team a bronze medal. Maybe the ability to tackle complete strangers and get a pint or two afterward is just as appealing.
Brooklyn Rugby welcomes and trains players of all skill levels, even newcomers, and field mens and womens teams in 15s, the traditional form of the game with 15 players and 40-minute halves, and 7s, a faster version with seven players and seven-minute halves.
Before you start getting into scrums and doing whatever this move is, you’ll need a mouthguard and molded soccer or rugby cleats since the team practices on the Red Hook baseball fields’ artificial turf. Rugby teams often travel too. The Brooklyn club hosted its annual beach tournament in Coney Island in June, and hundreds of teams converged at Saranac Lake upstate this past weekend.
Stab a Westchester child in fencing
En guarde! Fencing isn’t just for the children of Fairfield and Westchester County parents scheming their way into the Ivy League.
Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club and the Manhattan Fencing Center offer introductory private lessons complete with masks, sabers and equipment from the jump to get you sparring with the Tybalts and Mercutios in your life in no time. Both clubs offer classes for youngsters as well as clinics and summer camps for children (a 20-minute private lesson costs $60 for non-members at the Brooklyn club while a 20-minute lesson in Manhattan costs $85).
F*ck pickleball, long live ping pong
Everyone can sort of play table tennis, but if you want to zhuzh up your forehand, head to Chinatown’s Seward Park for a lesson with Bao Cai Zheng (thanks to our friends at Hell Gate for alerting us to his brilliance).
Zheng has been holding court at the public ping-pong tables near Essex and Canal streets for about eight years. He’ll show you how to hold a ping pong paddle and refine your shots as long as you buy him a coffee or a snack.
When you’re good enough to keep a rally going, you can challenge some Chinatown seniors or bored teenagers who are equally eager to get out of their apartments. Don’t expect to win.
Aaron Short
Get goodminton at badminton
If you want to smash your shuttlecock outside the privacy of your own home, check out the New York Badminton Center, where you can take badminton lessons and book a court at its four locations in Manhattan and Queens (its largest location is a renovated 30-foot-high warehouse in Ridgewood).
You can reserve a court for $140 an hour if you’re bringing a large group, but it’s only $20 per person in Queens ($28 per person in Manhattan) to join an open play period and rally with other badminton players too. You can even buy a racquet and get it restrung at its shop on site.
Hawkeye, not hawk tuah
Future Katnisses and Legolases can practice their eagle-eyed aim at Gotham Archery, a 7,500-square-foot warehouse with 42 lanes in Gowanus, Brooklyn. You can rent lanes starting at $18 an hour and take an introductory class ($45 for an hour-long session) which includes equipment so you don’t have to haul a longbow on the subway like an Avengers cosplayer.
Climb the podium
Sport climbing has exploded in popularity since the pandemic when it first debuted in the Olympics. Every fitness center seems to offer a climbing component these days, but if a small wall rappels you, check out Bouldering Project Brooklyn.
The 16,000-square-foot Gowanus gym, formerly known as Brooklyn Boulders, reopened in January after an extensive renovation expanded its climbing space. They’re still offering instruction for beginning and intermediate climbers so you can impress your Hinge date with your risk management skills (memberships start at $120 to $150 per month or you can pay $285 for 10 classes).
Bike fast, turn left
Robert Moses gets a lot of flack here for his traffic snarling expressways and pigheaded disregard for the fabric of neighborhoods, but at least he built the Kissena Velodrome.
Located in Flushing, the city’s only track cycling facility hosts racing events for all ages organized by the cycling nonprofit Track Fam (entry fees for an Aug. 7 race are $25). In addition, youth outreach group Star Track Cycling, a youth outreach group, runs eight-week instruction sessions for kids ages eight to 16 in the spring, summer and fall. Make Robert Moses even madder by biking or taking transit to it.
Surf waves, not trains
No the waves off the Rockaways aren’t as majestic as Tahiti’s Teahupo'o but you don’t have to navigate dangerous coral reefs or Colin Jost’s smarmy man-on-the-scene reports when you hang 10 with the New York Surf School.
The city’s longest-running surf program offers private lessons seven days a week from June through September off Beach 69th Street (an hour-long session costs $110 and lessons for two or more people are $75 each). Locals Surf School offers classes for similar prices too.
All you need is a bathing suit, a towel, sunscreen, and the attitude that life is fleeting but for a few precious moments in the ocean you can achieve a serenity you never thought possible.
Do a kick flip
If you’d rather wipe out on asphalt instead of the water, there’s always skateboarding. Since 2013, SKATEYOGI has offered skateboarding classes for all ages, teaching kids as young as one years old and helping grandparents shred like teenagers ($208 for four adult indoor classes over the course of a month).
Their adult open skate at an indoor park in Williamsburg remains one of the neighborhood’s best deals ($20 for non-members) and soon you’ll be showing off your ollies at the Coleman Skatepark under the Manhattan Bridge.
Comments ()