Time to debunk the drama surrounding Australian breaker Rachael Gunn, a.k.a. B-Girl Raygun, whose performance at the 2024 Olympics was received as original by some and an embarrassment by others.
At this point, does anyone remember who actually won the gold medal in women’s breaking at the 2024 Olympics?
For the record, that was Ami Yuasa, a.k.a. B-Girl Ami, of Japan.
But the Internet has been far more obsessed with Australia’s Rachael Gunn, or B-Girl Raygun, who went infectiously viral toward the end of the Paris Games for the opposite reason of why an athlete would want to take social media by storm.
“me forcing my mom to watch the dance i made up in the pool,” read one Aug. 9 post on X reacting to Gunn’s performance during the event-opening round robin. Noted another, “I kinda feel bad for RayGun, the Aussie #BreakingForGold—but that routine was hilariously ridiculous.”
Even de facto ambassador of joy Snoop Dogg seemingly endorsed the pile-on, posting a montage of a bunch of other Olympic breakers on Instagram Aug. 12 with the caption, “This was the real stuff!!! Respect.”
Needless to say, Gunn’s moves were judged as not only not-ready-for-primetime, but not-ready-for-any-time on a world stage such as the Olympics.
And not only by the hoi polloi watching from home, because the expert judges tasked with grading the 16 women and 16 men in competition gave her exactly zero points over the course of three battles, meaning her respective opponents all won 18-0.
Which got people wondering: How did Gunn—a 36-year-old academic whose day job is lecturer in media and creative industries at Sydney’s Macquarie University—qualify for the Olympics in the first place?
And people have their theories, the most conspiratorial of which is that the fix was in thanks to Gunn having a husband in high places, and the most generous being that what she did in Paris was more performance art than an authentic stab at Olympic glory.
“Raygun will go down as the most successful troll in Olympics history,” read an Aug. 12 X post. “How she pulled off this nonsense to be an Olympian representing her country in something she has zero talent or skill in needs a documentary. I wanna hear her story.”
In the meantime, we’re untangling the stories people have been telling about Raygun:
Ryan Pierse/Getty ImagesAre B-Girl Raygun and her husband in charge of the organization that selected Australia’s breaking team for the 2024 Olympics?
Simply, no. They are not.
But a lot of people thought they were after a detailed conspiracy theory that appears to have originated on Reddit made the rounds on social media.
“Shocking story. Also happens not to be true,” journalist Charles Arthur wrote on X Aug. 12. “Neither Gunn nor her husband Samuel Free is a founder of AusBreak, nor are they on its board. Not sure quite how people find these claims that don’t stand up to a quick search.”
The purpose of AUSBreak, according to its website, is “to help nourish and support the growth of the Australian Breaking and Hip Hop community.” Neither Free nor Gun are listed among its executives or committee members.
The synopsis that had people thinking the worst claimed that, since there’s no world governing body for breaking, the International Olympic Committee relied on the World DanceSport Federation affiliate DanceSport Australia to get a team together.
The WDSF being a group historically for ballroom dancers (advocates of which have been trying to get ballroom into the Olympics for years) until 2022, DanceSport Australia contacted known breaking expert Gunn—who wrote her PhD thesis on the intersection of gender in Sydney’s breaking scene—for guidance, according to the debunked theory.
Gunn, in turn, supposedly put AUSBreaking on the case—the organization she and her husband were alleged to have founded—and she lo and behold won the qualifier and Free ended up coach of Australia’s two-person Olympic breaking team.
CAROLINE BLUMBERG/EPA-EFEBut that is not the case, according to Arthur and others who may have been intrigued by Gunn’s showing at the Olympics but not enough to propagate a tall tale. (X’s Community Notes also started popping up to counter the misinformation as the original post attributed to Reddit kept being reposted.)
“Debunked apparently,” wrote one X user in response to their own previous post that the conspiracy theory made perfect sense. “I’d like to know what the real story is because there has to be some sort of explanation as to why Aus sent an academic who clearly can’t break.”
What does Raygun’s husband Samuel Free have to do with her breaking career?
Gunn has said that she didn’t get into breaking until she was in her 20s, after she met her dancer husband (mainly ballroom, jazz and tap) at university in 2008. They married in 2018.
When Free tore his ACL and effectively retired from dance, he funneled his energies into Gunn’s breaking aspirations and does serve as her coach. He was by her side in Paris, where she and Jeff “J-Attack” Dunne, a 16-year-old high school student, represented Australia in breaking’s debut at the Olympic Games.
Mark Kolbe/Getty ImagesA consummate teammate, Dunne defended Gunn after her battles proved baffling to the outside world.
“All I know is she represented hard,” the teen—who was also swept out of the round-robin stage—told the Herald Sun in an interview published Aug. 12. “She has been the leading breaker in Australia for the women and I acknowledge her and respect her 100 percent.”
Mark Kolbe/Getty ImagesHow did Raygun qualify for the Paris Olympics?
“I won the Oceania qualifier, and by winning that competition, I got the direct spot to Paris,” Gunn—who represented Australia at the World Breaking Championships in 2021, 2022 and 2023—told the Sydney Morning Herald ahead of the Olympics. “That was a really intense, really stressful but really amazing competition.”
Simple as that, right?
Not so much for viewers at home, who immediately went searching for the B-girl whom Gunn beat in the World DanceSport Federation Oceania Championship last October to punch her ticket to Paris.
Let’s just say, runner-up Molly Chapman—B-Girl Molly—has all sorts of new fans. (And critics, because armchair experts.)
“Raygun was more qualified,” a user posted to X. “I mean she has a Ph.D. what are Molly’s credentials besides being a better breakdancer?”
Added another, commenting on a video of Chapman’s performance at a 2023 Red Bull BC One event, “Not great but still 10000x better than ‘Raygun.'”
The person who posted the video replied, “I agree. Not going to win on an Olympic level, but not going to embarrass herself and her country.”
Molly Chapman (Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)Chapman, however, is among the Australians who’ve had Gunn’s back, sharing this statement from AUSbreaking to her Instagram Story: “The selection process for Australia’s Breaking team heading to Paris was conducted over two days, and open to all interested participants in the Oceanic region. Adhering to World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) regulations, which align with International Olympic Committee (IOC) standards, the process aimed to ensure a fair and transparent outcome.”
Chapman wrote atop the post, per News.com.au,”Truth/facts.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke up for Gunn as well, telling reporters, “Good on her and a big shout-out to her. That is in the Australian tradition of people having a go. She’s had a go representing our country and that’s a good thing. The Olympics is about people participating in sport. That’s a good thing and Raygun had a crack. Whether [athletes have] won gold medals or just done their best, that is all we ask for. It’s the participating that is really important.”
What does a score of zero in breaking really mean?
Nothing triumphant, that’s for sure, but Olympic head judge Martin Gilian—B-Boy MGbility—broke it down further.
Paul Kitagaki, Jr/ZUMA Press Wire“Breaking is all about originality and bringing something new to the table and representing your country or region,” he explained to reporters ahead of the Closing Ceremony Aug. 11. “This is exactly what Raygun was doing. She got inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was a kangaroo.”
While Gunn’s level was “maybe not as high” as her fellow competitors, Gilian continued, “that doesn’t mean that she did really bad. She did her best. She won the Oceania qualifier…Unfortunately for her, the other B-girls were better.”
As Gunn herself said after she became an instant sensation, she set out to make her mark on the Games “in a different way.”
Nicolas Gouhier/ABACA“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves,” she told reporters Aug. 10, per the Associated Press. “So I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative, because how many chances do you get…in a lifetime to do that on an international stage?”
Moreover, added the breaker whose kangaroo hop launched a thousand memes, “All of my moves are original. Creativity is really important to me. I go out there, and I show my artistry. Sometimes it speaks to the judges, and sometimes it doesn’t. I do my thing, and it represents art. That is what it is about.”
