Boats down the Seine, B-boys at the Place de la Concorde and the lure of cold, hard cash promise to make the Paris 2024 Olympics, which get underway in 100 days’ time in the French capital, a Games like none before.

If traditionalists were already blanching at audacious plans to rip up over a century of opening ceremony traditions, let alone welcoming the sport of breaking into the Olympic fray, they will have been white-eyed with fury at the announcement that track and field stars will each pocket a USD50,000 bonus.

After the relative sterility of a delayed and Covid-stricken Tokyo 2020, the French capital, as well as the individual sports on an ever-growing and potentially tenuous programme, is preparing to pull out all the stops.

The Games will start on July 26 with the first opening ceremony to be staged outside a stadium, each national delegation instead sent bobbling 6km down the city’s major artery before disembarking in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Two weeks later, windmills, freezers and top rocks will become an official part of the Olympic lexicon for the first time as breaking makes its debut, B-boys and B-girls going head-to-head in DJ-driven battles.

If its inclusion is not quite as contentious as the appearance of live pigeon shooting on the programme for the first Paris Olympics in 1900, it has raised some questions about the IOC’s almost obsessional commitment towards attracting the attention of global youth.

Breaking joins other recently established sports like skateboarding, surfing and BMXing in the so-called ‘urban’ section of a constantly evolving Olympic programme, and one for which it would appear a city like Paris is ideally suited.

For Team GB, now led by the likes of 15-year-old Sky Brown, keen to build on her history-making skateboarding bronze in Tokyo, there is a sense of similar upheaval, as a generation of new stars emerge and begin to eclipse the established order.

There will be no Laura Kenny to light up the Velodrome, while in contrast to their dominant pre-Tokyo preparations, question-marks hang over the ability of the likes of Adam Peaty and Max Whitlock to retain their respective titles.

Nevertheless, Tom Dean, Keely Hodgkinson, Tom Daley, Beth Shriever and Emily Campbell will expect to return to the podium at the head of a squad that looks more than capable of resuming its top three status in the final medals table.

Dean and his closest revival Duncan Scott continued a stunning surge to prominence by the British swimming team – kick-started by Peaty’s heroics in Rio – while Daley and Matty Lee underscored a wave of promise for Team GB in the water.

Hodgkinson’s ongoing battle to avoid another silver lining against rivals Athing Mu and Mary Moraa will generate top billing on the track, where double world champion Josh Kerr resumes his mouthwatering rivalry with Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen.

The international narrative will inevitably be headed by Simone Biles, hoping to add to her current haul of seven Olympic medals after recovering from a psychological phenomenon known as the ‘twisties’ which restricted her success in Tokyo to a solitary – if heroic – bronze on the beam.

Meanwhile French hopes do not come any bigger – literally – than judo heavyweight Teddy Riner, who boasts three Olympic golds and 11 world titles, and bids to cap his extraordinary career with another victory on home soil.

All of which will be played out in front of the welcome sight of sold-out grandstands, a world away from the bare bleachers in Tokyo, and a symbol, or so the IOC would like to see it, of the Games having weathered one of the most serious storms in its history.

It is perhaps that new-found consciousness of the need to adapt that has pushed the IOC into making more aggressive changes, be it in future bidding processes or in urging the b-boys and b-girls off the streets and into the Olympic auditorium for the first time.

The Olympic movement has evolved unthinkably since that first Paris Games 124 years ago, when resolutely amateur pursuits like angling, ballooning and croquet were also on the programme, the latter reportedly staged in front of a single paying spectator.

Some might say the latest changes are a step too far. But after the turmoil of Tokyo, most of those fortunate enough to be present in Paris will just be grateful that the Olympics are back, and braced to bop to any kind of beat at all.

Sky Brown’s Olympic surfing dream was wiped out after she failed to qualify for Paris 2024 at the ISA World Surfing Games in Puerto Rico.

The 15-year-old was hoping to represent Team GB in both surfing and skateboarding at this summer’s Games in the French capital.

But her quest for qualification in the former was extinguished by a third-placed finish in the sixth repechage on Friday, behind 14-year-old Chinese surfer Yang Siqi and Janire Gonzalez-Etxabarri of Spain.

She registered scores of 4.53 and 4.33 from her two best attempts for a combined total of 8.86 in the waters off Arecibo.

Fellow teenager Yang won the heat with 11.83 points, while Gonzalez-Etxabarri posted 11.43 to secure her place in Paris.

Brown is the reigning world champion in park skateboarding, but is greener on the elite surfing circuit.

The Japan-born athlete, who aged 13 won park skateboard bronze in the sport’s debut at Tokyo 2020, recently said it “would mean the world” to be an Olympian in both sports.

Luke Littler became the youngest player ever to reach the final of the World Darts Championship when he defeated Rob Cross on Tuesday.

The 16-year-old now has a shot at claiming an historic place in the sport as he takes aim at the title at Alexandra Palace.

Here, the PA news agency looks at some of sport’s other teenage prodigies in recent years.

Wayne Rooney – 16 years old

Though his breakthrough moment undoubtedly came when he scored past David Seaman from 30 yards in October 2002 to end champions Arsenal’s 30-game unbeaten Premier League run, Rooney had actually made his senior Everton debut two months earlier against Tottenham, setting up a goal for Mark Pembridge in a 2-2 draw.

England’s Euro 2004 opener against France in Portugal shot him to international stardom before he signed for Manchester United later that summer, going on to become all-time top scorer for both United (253) and for England (53), though his international tally has since been surpassed by Harry Kane.

Ronnie O’Sullivan – 17

O’Sullivan became the youngest-ever winner of a ranking event when, aged 17, he beat Stephen Hendry to claim the 1993 UK Snooker Championship. Two years later, he was victorious in the 1995 Masters to add another record to his CV by the age of 19, both accolades that he still holds.

Victory in the 2022 Snooker World Championship was his eighth, drawing him level with Hendry for most wins, as he has lived up to the excitement that accompanied his arrival onto the scene more than 30 years ago to become one of the sport’s all-time greats.

Sky Brown – 13

The skateboarder became the UK’s youngest-ever Olympian when she competed at the Tokyo games aged just 13 and followed it up by becoming the country’s youngest medal winner when she took bronze in the women’s park skateboarding event.

She has continued to set records in the years since, most recently by becoming the first British winner at the skateboarding World Championships in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in February 2023.

Cesc Fabregas – 16

Fabregas became Arsenal’s youngest-ever player when he made his first-team debut in a League Cup tie against Rotherham at Highbury in September 2003 and clocked another club record when he scored his first goal in the next round in a 5-1 win over Wolves.

It was the following season though that his true breakthrough arrived, taking up a regular place in the team’s midfield aged 17 at the start of the 2003/04 season as they sought to defend the title won the previous campaign. He went on to win two league titles with Chelsea as well as the 2010 World Cup and two European Championships with Spain.

Gianluigi Donnarumma – 16

AC Milan were in the midst of their decade-long barren spell when Donnarumma was thrust into the first team at the age of 16 in 2015, preferred to the veteran club legend Christian Abbiati and former number one Diego Lopez.

Standing at a height of 6ft 5in, he took up the mantel of first-choice goalkeeper with a stature that defied his young years, and the following year became Italy’s second-youngest ever goalkeeper when he made his international debut in a friendly against France. He has since helped the team to win Euro 2020 where he saved two penalties in the final shootout against England.