B-Girl Raygun of Team Australia competes during the B-Girls Round Robin – Group B on day fourteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Place de la Concorde on August 09, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
OAN Staff Brooke Mallory 3:37 PM – Wednesday, September 4, 2024
2024 Olympic breakdancer Rachael Gunn, who represented her native country of Australia, has apologized to the “breaking community” for the negative feedback and controversy she caused with her dance performance at the Paris Games last month.
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Gunn, whose stage name is Raygun, expressed her regret for the negative reaction the community has received due to her performance in an interview with the Australian current affairs program “The Project,” which aired on Wednesday.
She also pointed fingers at those she deemed hateful and cruel with their reactions to her dancing “approaches.”
”It was really sad how much hate that it did evoke, and a lot of the responses, though, was also due to people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches in breaking,” she added.
In August, the 36-year-old dancer and university lecturer lost 18-0 in all three rounds of her Olympic matches against breakers from the United States, France, and Lithuania, failing to score a single point.
She performed a number of body contortions while lying or crawling on the floor, including a “kangaroo hop” and a “backward roll.” Gunn described her breaking technique as “just a different approach” to the sport in the interview with “The Project.”
Global attention was drawn to Gunn’s moves during the Olympics. While actress Rachel Dratch impersonated and made fun of Raygun on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Adele, an English singer-songwriter, even paused her concert in Munich, Germany, to inquire as to if Raygun’s Olympics breakdancing performance was a purposeful “joke.”
“Unfortunately, we just need some more resources in Australia for us to have a chance to be world champions. Historically, we haven’t had the best track record of winning world championships, so I don’t think that’s just on me,” Gunn said.
Though the Australian breaker claimed to have not watched the Fallon sketch, she stated in the interview on Wednesday that she wasn’t sure “whether to hug (Fallon) or yell at him, because what a platform he ended up giving me.”
“It kind of feels like a really weird dream that I’ve been having that I’m going to wake up from at any moment,” she added.
Gunn claimed that her previous “victory in the Oceania championships” earned her a spot in the Paris Olympics, and she also admitted that she was “extremely nervous” about competing in the 2024 Games. Her statement follows online rumors related to how Gunn was allegedly romantically involved with one of the judges in the previous qualifying competitions. However, she has adamantly denied these accusations.
“Theories over how Gunn qualified for the Olympics began circulating online, and a Change.org petition alleging she manipulated the qualification process garnered over 45,000 signatures before the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) requested its removal,” The New York Times reported.
Later in the interview, Aly asked Gunn if she truly believes that she is Australia’s best female breakdancer.
“Well, I think my record speaks to that,” Gunn responded. “I was the top-ranked Australian B-girl in 2020 and 2022, and 2023. I’ve been invited to represent at how many world championships — Paris, Korea. You know, so the record is there, but anything can happen in a battle.”
🇦🇺 Who did we send?
Raygun, a 36-year-old full-time lecturer at Sydney’s Macquarie University, completed a PhD in breaking culture and is a lecturer in media, creative arts, literature and language.
Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn became the talk of the world following her breakdancing performance at the Olympic Games in Paris last month.
Now, for the first time, ‘Raygun’ speaks out about how she qualified for the games and reveals whether she will ever breakdance again. pic.twitter.com/78oUEvHBgl
