Joe McConnell
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Australian athletes won a record number of gold medals at the Paris Olympics, but their success was overshadowed by the exploits of an unsuccessful breakdancer.
Sydney university lecturer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn represented Australia in the breaking competition in Paris with a routine that included imitating a hopping kangaroo and a sprinkler, but failed to get any votes from the judges.
The mockery on social media and the backlash in Australia were so strong that some questioned her choice for the sport, which was the first time it was held at the Olympics.
Megan Davis, a high-profile Australian academic and sports administrator, suggested on social media that the street-dance professor’s poor performance was part of Gunn’s academic study. A petition questioning her selection, which also criticized Australian Paris Olympics director Anna Meares, has garnered more than 50,000 signatures.
The Australian Olympic Committee described the claims as “vexatious, misleading and high-handed”. It said Gunn was selected aVsceker winning an event in Oceania in 2023 that was run under the Olympic qualification system with nine independent international judges presiding over the competition. Breakers from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea competed.
“The petition has incited public hatred without any factual basis. This is appalling. No athlete who has represented their country at the Olympic Games should be treated this way,” said Matt Carroll, CEO of the AOC, who flagged the petition for misinformation about the selection process. It was removed on Friday.
Gunn denied that his routine was a mockery of the sport. “I took it very seriously,” he said in an Instagram video Thursday, adding that the torrent of online abuse had been “pretty devastating.”
The “Raygun” scandal comes as Australia invests heavily in emerging sports.
Australia won 18 gold medals in Paris, a record number that placed them fourth in the world rankings behind the USA, China and Japan. The country’s 53-medal haul was their second-best result, following their performance at the 2000 home Games.
Australian athletes won medals in Paris for swimming and sailing, sports in which the country has traditionally performed well. But it also won gold medals for more recently introduced sports, including BMX cycling and skateboarding.
“In terms of the economics of sport, this has paid off,” said Tim Harcourt, chief economist at the Centre for Sport, Business and Society at the University of Technology Sydney, noting the investment in the country’s sporting facilities and the success of its athletes in Paris.
Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, this week praised Gunn for “giving it a go,” which he said was in the spirit of both Australian culture and Olympic sport.
Meares, a former gold medalist cyclist, described the online attacks on Gunn as misogynistic and an echo of the discrimination female athletes used to face. Meares told reporters that Gunn had taken “a lot of courage” to participate in a sport that had recently been dominated by men.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called Gunn “fantastic” during a speech at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Thursday.
“When you think about the contributions of New Zealand and Australia, you had the iconic [wildlife conservationist] Steve Irwin, we had the great New Zealand suffragette Kate Sheppard and now you have given the world Raygun,” he said during a conversation focused on international relations.
As an overnight sensation, Gunn, a professor of cultural studies at Macquarie University whose PhD is titled “Deterritorialising gender in the Sydney breakdancing scene”, would likely have had a lucrative career, Harcourt said.
“Her classes will be packed. She is now the most well-known cultural studies professor in the world,” he said.
He compared her to Steven Bradbury, who won Australia’s first gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics, when all his competitors in the speed skating final fell in front of him.
“I grew up on Reaganomics, but this is new. This is Raygunomics,” Harcourt said.
