The viral Olympic breakdancer Raygun has stood up for herself in a new interview, saying she “stands by” her performance at the Paris 2024 Games.
The Australian, real name Rachael Gunn, became an ever-present on Twitter and TikTok over the summer after she competed in the inaugural breaking event at the Summer Olympics. She scored zero points in all three of her round robin battles and was eliminated, becoming a viral meme.
The unconventional, seemingly less-than-expert nature of her moves and her green tracksuit led to many ridiculing her routines online, with some feeling that the reaction strayed into cyber bullying.
Raygun (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
The competitor, who is also a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, responded to the backlash against her at the time, saying: “Don’t be afraid to be different, go out there and represent yourself, you never know where that’s gonna take you.”
Now, in a new interview with Stellar Magazine (via Daily Mail), Raygun has discussed her performance at the Olympics and the effect the online reaction had on her life. Under a banner of “What Raygun did next”, Gunn is quoted as saying: “You did not bring me down. You did not succeed. I will stand by what I did.”
Among those who reacted to Raygun’s performances was Adele, who paused one of her shows during her Munich residency to say, “Did anyone see the breakdancing lady? Now I didn’t even know breakdancing was an Olympic sport these days. That is fucking fantastic.”
She added that she “can’t work out if it was a joke,” continuing: “Either way it has made me very very happy and me and my friends have been shitting ourselves laughing for nearly 24 hours.”
Adele went on to crown the moment as her “favourite thing that has happened in the Olympics this whole whole time”.
In an unexpected twist of fate, Gunn rose to the world number one ranked breakdancer in September, due in part to many Olympic competitors’ ranking points expiring at the end of a 52-week qualifying period.
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