Sunny Choi

Meet Sunny Choi. Sunny’s story is one of my favorite stories in this year’s Olympics.

Sunny Choi is a Korean American b-girl. She is on the inaugural USA breaking team. She was born in Tennesse and grew up in Kentucky. After watching the 1992 Olympics she fell in love with gymnastics practicing up to 25 hours a week in highschool. She even joined the gymnastic team at UPenn. However knee injuries during her freshman year forced her to quit the team.

As fate would have it she discovered breaking one night walking around on campus. She loved watching the b-girls and b-boys flip, spin and freeze in acrobatic positions. Fast forward to 2020 Breaking was announced as an Olympic sport. Sunny was working in corporate America where she said she felt like a lifeless robot. But she was still breaking and breaking was anything but robotic.

Sunny decided to go for the Olympics and was working with strength and conditioning coach, doing hot yoga and doing lots of breaking, but her biggest breakthrough came through when she started working with a therapist. She learned to take 10 second micro breaks and “Having to learn to be gentle, kind, and compassionate with myself has been one of the most difficult, but also one of the best, lessons that I’ve learned,” she said.

Last year she quit her corporate job and will make her Olympic debut next week at 36 years old. Go Sunny! I love how when one door closed she opened another one, put her mental health first, and pursued what made her happy! @make.us.visible

Size 8 x 10