‘The odds were against me’: Australian breakdancer Raygun apologizes to breaking community

Australian Olympic breakdancer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn is speaking out again on the “wild ride” she has been on since her viral performance in Paris — which she has yet to watch.
In a Wednesday interview with Australian talk show “The Project,” Gunn defended her Olympic qualification and her performance in Paris, and apologized for the backlash the Australian breaking community has faced in wake of the Olympics.
“I haven’t watched (my Olympic performance) back,” Gunn revealed during her appearance on “The Project.” “That’s not unusual for me, though. I’m not great at watching back my battles … it’s still going to take me some time, I think. I’ve seen little bits and pieces but I’ll watch it eventually.”
Gunn hasn’t watched “The Tonight Show” Raygun sketch, either. She has “mixed emotions” about Jimmy Fallon featuring a skit inspired by her breaking.
“I don’t know whether to hug him or yell at him, because what a platform he ended up giving me,” Gunn said. “I haven’t actually seen the sketch because I don’t think I’m in a place yet to watch it but I will watch it at some point.”
She continued, “I am still in the process of being able to describe how I feel about all this stuff because it kind of feels like a really weird dream that I’ve been having that I’m going to wake up from at any moment.”
There are nearly 100,000 posts with #raygun on TikTok. Some of them praise the dancer, but most of them make her the butt of the joke.
Gunn has found positives and negatives to being the center of this viral attention.
When she discovered the “storm brewing” online focused on her Olympic performance, Gunn got off social media and the internet and “got some mental health support pretty quickly.”
After being hounded on the streets, Gunn said that being in public was “nerve racking.”
“It was really sad how much hate that it did evoke,” she said. “And a lot of the responses were just due to people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches in breaking.”
Gunn previously responded to her critics in an Instagram post last month. She called the hate she received online “devastating” and assured audiences that she took her performance “very seriously.”
While speaking on “The Project,” Gunn recognized the bright side to her viral attention — while still acknowledging how challenging it has been.
“It’s been a pretty wild ride, I’m not going to lie. I definitely have my ups and downs, my good and bad days, but it has been honestly so amazing to see the positive response to my performance,” Gunn said. “I never thought that I would be able to connect with so many people in such a positive way, so that has been just so amazing. But it definitely has been tough at times.”
Going into the Olympics, Raygun admitted she knew her “chances were slim.”
“As soon as I qualified I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what have I done?’ Because I knew that I was going to get beaten and I knew that people were not going to understand my style and what I was going to do,” Gunn said.
Gunn noted that she has a “different approach in breaking” than a lot of her competitors.
“I had to go with what I was good at. I had to go with my strengths,” she added. “The odds were against me.”
Gunn apologized for any role she has played in the backlash the Australian and worldwide breaking community has faced following breakdancing’s Olympic debut.
“I am very sorry for the backlash that the (breakdancing) community has experienced, but I can’t control how people react.”
She continued, “Unfortunately we just need some more resources in Australia for us to have a chance to beat world champions. Historically, unfortunately, we haven’t had the best track record of winning world championships. So I don’t think that’s just on me.”
When asked if Gunn considers herself the best female breaker in Australia, she responded: “I think my record speaks to that. I was the top ranked Australian Bgirl in 2020 and 2022 and 2023 … so the record is there.”
“In the last year I have trained my hardest. I have trained so hard. Learning power moves in your mid-30s is not easy … I have really put my body through it, put my mind through it. But if that’s not good enough for someone, what can I say?”