This honestly came off as a surprise to me, a manhwa I'd read years ago when it had around 30 chapters and now it has a whooping three hundred and it took on a whole new layer of complexity. I just have to say it's an amazing sports manhwa.
Wind breaker is a manhwa that keeps shifting between slice of life and sports. The whole sports part is one big tournament through which the heroes are going and aside from maybe unrealistic figures, it sticks to reality and doesn't really go into a weird direction. One of the reasons I say that is because the characters don't really grow stronger. It's just one tournament, it lasts around a year, and they don't have time to improve that much. Their opponents don't either, and from the start they're supposed to be good enough to be among the top players. I'm not someone who has ever been into bikes but the races are genuinely fun to read, it's like an Initial D version of bike honestly.
And then there's the rest. The slice of life, the drama, the romance and the characters. I was really surprised by how lively the characters feel. Every single one of the main characters (there's multiple ones) get their spotlight at some point on another and the story quickly stops focusing solely on Jay Jo very early on. They all have complex enough personalities and they feel really fresh because they are described as troublesome teenagers with dislikeable attitudes, but just like real life teenagers that doesn't mean they're just bad people and can't make friends, so they meet and become friends and they slowly grow and change their attitude. Many of the characters are really interesting: the protagonist acting like a stuck-up nerd who can't express at all, a playboy who runs away from his problems into debauchery, a thug who seems to have become kind but loses it into violence very easily…
Every character seems to have their background story too and they usually have some pretty serious crap going on. The main protagonist has his family forcing him to study, another one has a sick mother and is too poor to get the surgery she needs… These are what drives them to unite and enter a bike race, but ultimately it's friendship that keeps them together and it's that friendship which makes them stronger to face their problems. It's a very touching story with memorable moments.