American breaker Sunny Choi quit her job as a marketing executive to become a key player on the first U.S. Olympic breaking team, but she left Paris empty-handed after her chances of a quarterfinal spot were wiped out before her third match.
Choi ended her Olympic campaign with a win, beating Portugal’s Vanessa 2-0 in the round-robin, but it wasn’t enough to qualify for the knockout stage. Choi finished third in her group but needed to finish in the top two.
Now she will return home without any certainty that she will be able to compete in the Olympics again, a consequence Choi accepted when she leaves her job in January 2023 as global creative operations director for skincare at Estee Lauder, the world’s second-largest cosmetics company.
“I’ve literally worked my whole life to have financial security, and I was really, really scared to give that up for a dream that may or may not come true,” Choi told reporters at the USOPC media summit on April 16. “At first, I just thought, ‘I don’t want to give up the lifestyle I have.’ I was comfortable. I could buy anything I wanted. I shopped at Whole Foods.”
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Breaking athlete Sunny Choi poses for a portrait at the 2024 Team USA Media Summit at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on April 16, 2024 in New York City. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
And for Choi, the sacrifices were much greater than financial.
“As a breaker, I was just like, ‘I can’t imagine this is even possible,’ and then there were other factors too. I want to have kids one day but I’m 35 now, so it was like, ‘Am I prepared to wait a few more years?'” Choi said. “There were so many things I just wanted to get done and the Olympics just kind of messed up my plans.”
Choi said he had to think about it for a full year before deciding to leave his job in early 2023.
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Choi gave his employer several months’ notice that he was leaving, and his boss had no choice but to accept his unexpected ambition.
“But it eventually came down to this: I just have to do it, I have to try, I have to stop stopping myself,” Choi said. “My boss was like, ‘We really want you to stay, but given your reasons for leaving, we have no right to ask you to stay.'”
Day 14 of the Paris Olympics, B-Girls Round Robin – American B-Girl Sunny reacts in Group A. (Elsa/Getty Images)
Her departure from her job wasn’t just a change of direction to focus on Paris, but also a change of direction to a new career focused on dance.
Choi said in April that she planned to open her own dance studio in Queens, New York, after the Paris Olympics are over, and has no plans to return to marketing — unless she’s forced to.
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“If that happens, it would mean something has gone wrong in my career as a dancer,” Choi said when asked about the possibility of returning to a company. “I plan to continue dancing, but I would like to shift gears and give feedback and pass on what I have learned along the way to the next generation.”
Winning a medal in Paris could have gone a long way to helping her achieve that goal and continue her lucrative dance career. Choi acknowledges that, unlike a corporate salary, making money in sports relies heavily on the recognition of one’s personal brand — something she found out the hard way while training for Paris.
To maintain her Olympic dream and a stable life, Choi said she was saving money while working a marketing job, and would have enough money by the time she quits her job in 2023. Since she had to pay for all her own airfare to competitions, she was able to save money by training at a public community center.
But she says she ran out of money and had to make sacrifices in her life. Luckily, around that time she secured sponsorship deals from Nike and Samsung that helped her fund her dream.
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While she won’t leave Paris with the attention of winning a medal and standing on the podium, she can bring the business skills and experience she gained from her corporate career to her future endeavors.
“I have a corporate background and I have knowledge of marketing, project management and operations which will help me in the long run,” Choi said.
Day 14 of the Paris Olympics, B-Girls Round Robin – American B-Girl Sunny reacts in Group A. (Elsa/Getty Images)
It may be a while before Choi has another chance at an Olympic medal: breaking won’t be a sport at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, but Choi is hopeful that the sport will return at the 2032 Brisbane Summer Olympics, when he’ll be 43.
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