Raygun retires from competitive breaking after Olympic backlash

Australian breaker Rachael “Raygun” Gunn, who rose to viral fame for her bewildering performance at the Paris Olympics, plans to retire from competition, she told a Sydney radio station Wednesday.

The 37-year-old became the subject of widespread ridicule after her unorthodox Olympic routine, which included a move in which she mimicked a kangaroo hopping that led to a wave of internet memes and clips. She did not win any of her three round-robin battles at the 2024 Games, where breaking made its Olympic debut.

Gunn said she originally planned to keep competing but changed her mind after what she said was “upsetting” backlash.

“I still break, but I don’t compete,” she said on the 2DayFM’s “The Jimmy & Nath Show.” “I’m not going to compete anymore, no. … I was going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems really difficult for me to do now to approach a battle.”

She added that she still dances and breaks, “but that’s like in my living room with my partner.”

Gunn has previously spoken about her experience and defended how she qualified for the Olympics. Theories over her qualification circulated online in the wake of her performance, including a Change.org petition alleging she manipulated the process. The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) requested the petition’s removal and AOC chief executive Matt Carroll defended Gunn, calling the petition “disgraceful” and saying it spread misinformation.

Gunn won the QMS Oceania Championships in Sydney, an automatic Olympic qualifying competition with 15 breakers. She previously said she knew “the odds were against” her when competing in the Olympics.

“The conspiracy theories were totally wild,” Gunn said. “And it was really upsetting because I felt like I didn’t have any control over how people saw me or who I was, who my partner was, my story. And so it was really upsetting for a number of different reasons.”

Breaking isn’t slated to appear on the Olympic program in the 2028 Games in Los Angeles or the 2032 Games in Brisbane, Australia. In terms of what’s next for Gunn, it appears her Paris routine will be her last official dance. She holds a position as a university lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, and said she’s working on “some projects happening behind the scenes.”

“It’s all kind of of the same sort of vibe of trying to bring more positivity, trying to encourage people to dance, to have fun and to be creative and to be themselves, to be their authentic selves, whatever that might look like,” she said.

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(Photo: Elsa / Getty Images)