Aussie Olympic breakdancer Raygun goes viral for all the wrong reasons
'She got inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was you know — kangaroo'
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The Olympics may be over but there are plenty of things that still have viewers scratching their heads — the biggest being breakdancer Raygun.
Breaking debuted at the 2024 Paris Games but it wasn’t gold medal-winning Phil Wizard from Canada or Japan’s b-girl, Ami, who got the most attention from the internet.
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Rather, it was Rachael Gunn, a.k.a. Raygun, from Australia, whose moves resulted in endless memes, impressions and so many questions.
Adele even stopped her concert in Munich over the weekend to have a chat with the audience about the b-girl who had everyone talking.
“Did anyone see the breakdancing lady?” Adele asked her fans, after calling Raygun’s performance “the best thing that has happened at the Olympics.”
The singer went on to question whether Raygun was actually among the best that Australia had to offer for the inaugural year of the sport.
“I can’t work out if it was a joke, but either way, it has made me very, very happy and me and my friends have been s***ing ourselves laughing for nearly 24 hours,” she continued.
Despite getting ruthlessly mocked on the internet, Gunn, a 36-year-old university lecturer, issued one statement amid the barrage of ridicule she has received.
“What I wanted to do was come out here and do something new and different and creative — that’s my strength, my creativity,” she told the Associated Press.
“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get that in a lifetime to do that on an international stage?”
She added: “I was always the underdog and wanted to make my mark in a different way.”
Gunn lost her three round-robin battles with a score of 54-0.
Raygun appeared to hop around like a kangaroo, yawned at one opponent, and even performed the sprinkler.
Olympic judge Martin Gilian, who’s known as MGbility, said: “We have five criteria in the comparative judging system. Just her level was maybe not as high as the other competitors.”
He noted that she won the Oceania qualifier to get into the Olympics.
“Breaking is all about originality and bringing something new to the table from your country or region and this is exactly what Raygun was doing,” he said.
“She got inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was you know — kangaroo. The animal.”
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Gunn has published a doctoral thesis entitled “Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney’s Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl’s Experience of B-boying.”
The thesis questioned why so few female participants were part of the male-dominated scene but spoke of the sport as a “space that embraces difference.”
Breaking has been dropped from the program for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, with no guarantee it will return after that.
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