Olympics Dictionary: Breaking to Dream Team, golf to rings - ESPN

The 2024 Paris Olympic Summer Games will feature athletes from around the world competing in 17 different cities across metropolitan France and Tahiti. Teahupo'o, on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, will host the two-day surfing competition, a mere 9,765 miles from Paris. What other facts should fans know ahead of this year's event? Check out this A-Z Olympics guide.

A

Athens: The site of the first modern Olympics in 1896.

B

Breaking: A form of dance originated within hip-hop culture in the 1970s that will make its Olympic debut.

C

Curling: a competition typically held during the Winter Olympics where contestants launch a 40-plus-pound granite stone down a sheet of ice at a specific target. The name comes from the unique turning that happens at the end of the stone's path on the ice.

D

Dream Team: Commonly referred to as the best basketball team ever assembled; the 1992 U.S. men's basketball team, led by Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley and others, won gold at the Barcelona Olympics. The team defeated its opponents by an average of more than 40 points en route to beating Croatia in the final.

E

Elaine: Hailing from Jamaica, Elaine Thompson-Herah is the two-time defending gold medalist in the 100 meters and looks to join fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt as the only man or woman to win the event three times.

F

France: The French men's basketball team looks to become only the second host nation to win the gold medal. Team USA did it twice in 1984 (Los Angeles) and 1996 (Atlanta).

G

Golf: While a popular competition worldwide for generations, golf didn't become a fixture in the Olympics until the 2016 Rio Games. Prior to 2016, the event was featured in the Olympics only twice — 1900 and 1904.

H

Handbal