Nearly a month after her disastrous performance at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Australia’s Rachael Gunn (aka Raygun) defends her unorthodox breakdance routine.
During her first sit-down interview since the Olympic Games, Raygun opened up to The Project about her breakdance skill and now-infamous routine.
“As soon as I qualified, I was like, oh my gosh, what have I done?” she recalled. “Because I knew that I was going to get beaten, and I knew that people were not going to understand my style and what I was going to do.”
However, following her Olympic Games performance, Raygun admitted she knew a social media firestorm was coming. She was even warned by an Australian Olympic Commission rep that it was trending online. The dancer decided to stay offline.
“Fortunately, I got some mental health support pretty quickly,” she continued. “And I also went off social media, I went off the Internet. It’s just still pretty hard to process.”
Although she said that she hadn’t watched a clip of Jimmy Fallon sketch about her, Raygun said, “I think the moment where I thought, ‘Okay, this is wild, this is now out of control,’ was when I saw [there was a ] sketch on Jimmy Fallon.”
She also admitted she didn’t know whether to hug the late-night talk show host or yell at him. “Because what a platform he ended up giving me, honestly. I haven’t actually seen the sketch because I don’t think I’m in a place yet to watch it, but I will watch it at some point.”
Raygun Still Avoids the Internet Following Olympic Breakdance Routine Performance
Even a month after the Olympic Games breakdance routine performance, Raygun still avoids the internet.
“It was really sad, how much hate that it did evoke,” she added about the routine. “And a lot of the responses, though, is just people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches in breaking.”
Raygun further admitted it was sad for her to hear the criticism. She was also “very sorry” for the backlash the breakdance community experienced.
“But I can’t control how people react,” she explained, justifying the performance. “Unfortunately, we just need some more resources in Australia for us to have a chance to beat world champions.”
Raygun addressed the conspiracy theories that she “manipulated” the Olympic Games breakdance selection process. “That was, that was really, that was upsetting,” she stated. “Because it wasn’t just people that, you know, didn’t understand breaking and were just angry about my performance.”
She then added, “It was people that are now attacking our, you know, our reputation and our integrity.”