Philip Kim, 27, is a Canadian breaker, also known as Phil Wizard, and a Team Canada Olympic athlete for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Phil Wizard qualified for the Paris Olympics 2024
Philip “Phil Wizard” Kim won a historic gold medal in breaking (breakdancing) at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile. This was the first time breaking was included as an event at the Pan Am Games.
Kim’s gold medal victory also secured his spot to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics, where breaking will make its Olympic debut. This Olympic qualification meant even more to the 26-year-old breaker from Vancouver than winning the Pan Am Games gold.
In the final battle, Kim defeated American breaker Jeff “Jeffro” Louis 3-0. Dressed in white with a red hat, Kim impressed the judges, scoring 8-1 in the first round and 6-3 in the next two rounds against Louis.
While Kim won the 2022 World Breaking Championship, he came second this year, losing the world title and initial Olympic qualification to Victor Montalvo from the United States in the final battle.
Phil Wizard’s Early Life Years with His Korean Parents
Phil Wizard was born on January 25th, 1997 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He now lives on the West Coast in Vancouver, British Columbia.
When he attended Magee Secondary School in Vancouver, he would often excuse himself from classes to go to the bathroom and practice new breakdancing moves in the hallway. After high school, he briefly went to university to study psychology but left to focus completely on breakdancing.
Though his family is originally from Korea, Philip became interested in breakdancing in 2009 at age 12 after seeing the N.O.N. crew perform street shows in downtown Vancouver. He was inspired by watching breakers like Hong 10, Wing, Victor, and Issei.
Phil Wizard Starting Off His Breakdancing Career
Amazed by what he saw, Philip went home and searched for breakdancing videos on YouTube. He was blown away and quickly fell in love with this dance style.
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His initial introduction to breakdancing came from watching movies like Beat Street and Flashdance, which showed the growing hip-hop culture in New York City at the time. That culture reached all the way to Philip in Vancouver.
As a young boy around 10 years old, Philip started learning breakdancing from dancers and mentors in Vancouver, including Jheric Hizon, who was the first breaker to teach him the basics of the craft.
In 2017, Phil Wizard won a major breakdancing competition called the Red Bull BC One Cypher in Los Angeles.
The following year in 2018, he won the same Red Bull BC One Cypher competition, but this time in Canada. That same year, he also won the Undisputed World B-Boy Series contest in Morocco. Additionally, he came out victorious for two straight years at the IBE solo breakdancing competition held in the Netherlands.
In his early career years of 2017 and 2018, Philip was racking up wins at breakdancing battles and proving himself as one of the top breakers in the world at that time.
Phil in his Prime with the world championships and Olympics
In 2021, Phil Wizard won the silver medal after losing to Victor in the gold medal match at a major breakdancing competition in Paris.
The next year in 2022, Kim won the gold medal and became the world champion at the WDSF World Breaking Championships held in Seoul, South Korea. He beat over 250 other top breakers to claim this world title.
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In the final battle, Kim defeated Shigekix from Japan with scores of 8-1, 3-6, 9-0. Victor from the United States took the bronze medal by beating Kuzya from Ukraine 9-0, 8-1, 9-0. This was the second year in a row that Kim finished on the podium at the World Breaking Championships.
In 2023, Kim continued his success by winning gold at the WDSF Pan American Breaking Championship in Santiago, Chile. He followed that up with a silver medal at the 2023 WDSF World Breaking Championship later that year. In August 2023, he was selected to represent Canada at the 2023 Pan American Games.
