It started with a kangaroo hop. Then came the "sprinkler." Before the sun had even set on the Place de la Concorde during the 2024 Paris Olympics, the australian break dancer video featuring Rachael Gunn—better known as Raygun—had already effectively broken the internet. It was one of those rare, lightning-strike moments where the entire world seems to stop and stare at the same thing. Some laughed. Others were deeply offended. Most were just confused.
But behind the memes and the Jimmy Fallon parodies, there’s a much weirder, more complex story about how a 36-year-old university lecturer ended up on the world’s biggest stage scoring zero points. Honestly, if you only watched the 15-second clips on TikTok, you’ve missed the actual drama.
How Raygun Actually Qualified (No, It Wasn't a Conspiracy)
One of the biggest rumors floating around the australian break dancer video was that Rachael Gunn somehow "gamed" the system. People claimed her husband was the judge, or that she ran the organization that picked the athletes.
That’s just not true.
The facts are actually pretty boring compared to the conspiracy theories. Gunn qualified by winning the 2023 Oceania Breaking Championships. She beat out every other B-girl in the region. The event was sanctioned by the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), which is the governing body the Olympics used to manage breaking.
There were nine independent international judges. None of them were her husband, Samuel Free.
The reality is that the breaking scene in Australia and the Oceania region is much smaller than in the US, Japan, or France. Gunn was consistently ranked as one of the top B-girls in Australia for years. She didn't "steal" a spot; she won the designated qualifying tournament. The gap in skill between the top of the Australian scene and the global elite in Paris was just much wider than anyone anticipated.
The Academic vs. The Athlete
Raygun isn't your typical Olympian. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Macquarie University. Her thesis? Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney’s Breakdancing Scene.
This is where things get "kinda" meta.
Gunn knew she couldn't out-spin a 17-year-old from Japan who has been doing head-slides since they were in diapers. She’s 37. Breaking is a young person's game. In interviews after the australian break dancer video went viral, she explained her logic: she wanted to be "artistic and creative" because she knew she couldn't win on power moves.
"I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best—the dynamic and the power moves—so I wanted to move differently," Gunn told the Australian Olympic Committee.
She leaned into her academic background, treating the Olympic stage more like a performance art piece than a traditional athletic competition. To the judges, who use a specific "Trivium" scoring system (technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality), her lack of technical foundation meant she couldn't pick up points, even if she was being "original."
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Why the World DanceSport Federation Ranked Her No. 1
In a twist that felt like a glitch in the matrix, the WDSF actually ranked Raygun as the No. 1 B-girl in the world in September 2024, just weeks after the Olympics.
The internet lost its mind. Again.
However, the ranking was basically a quirk of math. The WDSF rankings are based on an athlete's top four performances over the last 12 months. Because no major ranking events were held between December 2023 and the Olympics (to let athletes train), and because the Olympics themselves didn't count toward the ranking points, Raygun’s 1,000 points from winning the Oceania Championships kept her at the top of the pile while other athletes' points from older competitions expired.
It was a "paper championship" that didn't reflect the actual talent on the floor, but it added fuel to the fire of the australian break dancer video controversy.
The Cultural Fallout and the "Burn"
While the memes were funny to some, the actual breaking community was pretty devastated. Breaking was making its Olympic debut, and many veterans felt Raygun's performance made the culture look like a joke.
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There's a history here. Breaking was born in the Bronx in the 1970s, rooted in Black and Latino communities. Seeing a white academic perform a "kangaroo hop" on the Olympic stage felt like a mockery to those who have spent decades fighting for the dance to be taken seriously as a legitimate art form and sport.
As New York legend Kwikstep put it, the performance felt like it was "burning the scene." The worry was that the australian break dancer video would be the only thing people remembered about Olympic breaking, overshadowing the incredible gold-medal performances by B-Girl Ami and B-Boy Phil Wizard.
What Happened to Raygun?
By November 2024, the pressure and the "torrent of online abuse" became too much. Rachael Gunn officially announced she was retiring from competitive breaking.
She told a Sydney radio station that she still dances, but "in her living room." The scrutiny of the australian break dancer video had made the idea of entering a public battle too stressful. People would be waiting with cameras, hoping for another meme moment.
It’s a weird legacy. She became the most famous breakdancer in the world for about three weeks, but for all the wrong reasons.
Key Takeaways from the Raygun Saga
If you're still thinking about that australian break dancer video, here are the actionable insights to keep in mind regarding how the sports world—and the internet—actually works:
- Rankings aren't always reality: Official sports rankings often rely on point-accumulation systems that can be skewed by regional wins or timing, as seen with the WDSF No. 1 spot.
- The Qualification Gap: In emerging Olympic sports, regional qualifying spots can lead to massive skill disparities on the final stage. This is common in "new" sports where one region dominates (like the US in basketball or Japan in breaking).
- Art vs. Sport: Breaking's struggle in the Olympics highlighted the tension between subjective "artistic expression" and objective "athletic scoring."
- The Power of the 15-Second Clip: Context is the first casualty of virality. While Gunn's performance was technically lacking, the narrative of her "faking" her way in was largely a social media invention.
The Olympics won't have breaking in Los Angeles 2028. That decision was actually made before Paris even started, but many will forever associate the sport's short Olympic life with the woman in the green tracksuit doing the kangaroo.
For Rachael Gunn, the goal was to make a mark. She definitely did that. Whether it helped or hurt the sport is something the breaking community will be arguing about in cyphers for years to come.
To understand the full scope of the event, you can still find the official Olympic replays on platforms like 9Now in Australia or NBC's Peacock, which provide the full context of the round-robin battles rather than just the snippets. Monitoring the WDSF website for upcoming "Breaking for Gold" events is the best way to see how the sport is evolving post-Paris without the circus of the 2024 memes.