Riding the Olympic Wave, a new exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, shines the spotlight emerging Olympic sport.

Co-hosted by the Musée Olympique in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the NMA, the exhibition highlights the probability that the coming Paris Olympic Games will be very different from their predecessors.

In a first for the Olympic Games, Paris 2024 will feature “breaking”, with sport climbing, surfing, 3×3 basketball, BMX freestyle and skateboarding, which had debuted in the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Sometimes described as urban sports or even extreme sports, these youth-focused disciplines spontaneously broke away from traditional sports practices and spread internationally in the 1960s and 1970s. Their inclusion gives the Olympic motto “Faster Higher Stronger Together” a contemporary twist.

Highlights will include the team blazer worn by Olympic champion Edgar “Dunc” from  Gray, Australia, when he was flag bearer at the opening ceremony for the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936, the torch used during the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, and a signed shirt worn by BMX freestyle Olympic champion Australia’s Logan Martin during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

National Museum director Katherine McMahon said: “This dynamic exhibition explores how youth sports culture has transformed the Olympics for a new generation,” while her counterpart, Olympic Museum director Angelita Teo, said that the exhibition, which had been tailored for an Australian audience, would create opportunities for conversation ahead of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 while building excitement and anticipation for Brisbane 2032.

Australian Olympic Committee president Ian Chesterman said the exhibition reflected the evolution of the Games from the first modern Olympics in Athens 1896, to the Olympics in the 21st century.

The exhibition was inspired by the most successful temporary exhibition in the Olympic Museum to date, also called Riding the Olympic Wave, which later was adapted to become SPOT24 – The Olympic Exhibition on Sport and Urban Cultures, showing in Paris.

National Museum curator Jono Lineen praised the innovative and contemporary elements of the show, predicting: “This is the first but definitely not the last exhibition that the National Museum will develop that taps into the essence of youth culture. “

Riding the Olympic Wave, Gandel Atrium, National Museum of Australia, until September 30.

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