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Australian breaker “Raygun” announced on Wednesday November 6 that she was leaving the competition. Speaking to the national radio station 2DayFM, she explained that she was too upset by the wave of hatred that followed her performance during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. This Australian, who received the title of best breaker in the world on the 11 September, had performed a performance which ended with a score of 0, on August 9 on the ground of the Place de la Concorde.
Real name Rachael Gunn, this 37-year-old Australian lecturer at the University of Sydney had not won any of her three face-to-face matches. It was the battle against Frenchwoman Sya Dembélé, aka B-Girl Syssy, 16 years old, bronze medalist at the world championships, which earned her mockery. Raygun’s moves, including his imitation of a kangaroo, and his Australian-colored tracksuit have been parodied around the world, including by American television host Jimmy Fallon. His performance, which went viral, led to extremely virulent criticism and mockery online.
“Devastating”
Faced with the harassment of which she was the target, Rachael Gunn published a video on the Internet on August 16 in which she asked the media to “stop harassing” his family, his friends and the station wagon community. “Everyone has suffered a lot because of this case, so I ask you to respect their privacy,” she added. The breaker had not imagined that her passage would cause “so much hatred, which was honestly quite devastating”. “I worked really hard to prepare for the Olympics and I gave it everything I had, really.”she had defended.
“I was really preparing to continue competing but now it seems to be a really difficult thing for me,” did she decided on Wednesday, fearing that with each of his appearances, spectators broadcast his performances online again. “It just wouldn’t be the same experience.” The support provided by Australian athletes and the Prime Minister of his country will therefore not have been enough. Nor even her recent and very brief coronation of best breaker in the world awarded on September 11, by the World Dancesport Federation (WDSF), which results more from a combination of circumstances.
Raygun is not the only one who will have made a quick visit to the Olympic Games: breakdancing, which took its first steps this summer in the history of the Olympic Games, will not appear on the Los Angeles program in 2028.
