Australian b-girl Rachael “Raygun” Gunn discussed her widely mocked breaking performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics in an interview with The Project. Raygun insisted she rightfully earned her spot in the Olympics by winning the Oceania Championships.
“I think my record speaks to that,” she said. “I was the top-ranked Australian b-girl in 2020 and 2022 and 2023 … The record is there. But anything can happen in a battle.”
Raygun’s performance faced tremendous backlash as many viewers wondered how she was allowed to compete on such a big stage. Raygun defended her breaking credentials but admitted she was outmatched in the Olympics.
“I knew my chances were slim,” she said. “As soon as I qualified, I was like, ‘Oh my god, what have I done?’ Because I knew that I was gonna get beaten and I knew people were not gonna understand my style and what I was gonna do.”
Rumors spread about Raygun and her husband conspiring to get her into the Olympics. Various organizers refuted these claims, but the perception lingered.
“The conspiracy theories were just awful,” she said. “That was really—that was upsetting because it wasn’t just people that didn’t understand breaking and were just angry about my performance. It was people now attacking our reputation and integrity. None of them were grounded in any kind of facts. And obviously they’re still circulating. People still don’t believe the truth, but we do live in a different world now.”
Raygun was shocked by the amount of hate she received for her performance. She believed much of the outrage stemmed from people not understanding “the diversity of approaches in breaking.”
“I’m still in the process of trying to describe how I feel about all this stuff,” she said. “’Cause it kinda feels like a really weird dream that I’ve been having that I’m gonna wake up from at any moment. Like, what is life right now?”
Japan’s Ami Yuasa won the women’s Olympic breaking competition in Paris. The sport won’t be part of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
