If you encountered one clip of the inaugural Olympic breaking competition, otherwise known as breakdancing, it was footage of Australian breaker Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, flopping around like a dying fish and instantly becoming a viral laughingstock. I’m sure you saw, but in case you didn’t:
A lot of people had a good time poking fun at Raygun’s performance, but the aftermath of her Olympics debut has been anything but fun for Raygun herself. A widely circulated petition asserting that Raygun “manipulated” the selections for Australia’s breaking team, premised on falsehoods about the qualification process, was condemned by the Australian Olympic Committee. Today, six days since her infamous display in Paris, Raygun has broken her silence about the ordeal.
In a video message posted to her Instagram account, she says she trained hard for the Olympics and took it seriously. She pushes back against the misinformation about the qualification process and notes that there are no points awarded in breaking, countering the pervasive notion that she scored a 0.0 for her efforts. And she asks the press to leave her friends, family, and teammates alone. She seems pretty devastated by it all. Here’s the full text of her video:
Hi everyone, Raygun here. I just want to start by thanking all the people who have supported me. I really appreciate the positivity and I’m glad I was able to bring some joy into your lives. That’s what I hoped. I didn’t realize that that would also open the door to so much hate, which has frankly been pretty devastating. While I went out there and I had fun, I did take it very seriously. I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics, and I gave my all, truly. I’m honored to have been a part of the Australian Olympic team and to have been part of breaking’s Olympic debut. What the other athletes have achieved has just been phenomenal.
In regards to the allegations and misinformation floating around, I’d like to ask everyone to please refer to the recent statement made by the AOC as well as the posts on the AUSBreaking Instagram page as well as the WDSF Breaking For Gold page. Um, bit of a fun fact for you: There are actually no points in breaking. If you want to see how the judges thought I compared to my opponents, you can actually see the comparison percentages across the five criteria on olympics.com. All the results are there. I’m going to be in Europe for a few weeks for some pre-planned downtime. But I’d really like to ask the press to please stop harassing my family, my friends, the Australian breaking community, and the broader street dance community. Everyone has been through a lot as a result of this, so I ask you to please respect their privacy. I’ll be happy to answer more questions on my return to Australia. Thanks, everyone.
The video is below.
For what it’s worth, Fatboy Slim liked it. Truly, Spike Jonze walked so that Raygun could run.
