Yahoo Sport 
In Australia, Raygun’s zero points in Olympic breaking is a perfect score
Paris was Australia’s most successful Olympic Games in history, with 18 gold medals. But it was Raygun, an Olympic B-girl who finished far from the podium, who had the most viral moment.
Rachael Gunn, a.k.a. Raygun, lost her three round-robin breaking battles Friday by scores of 18-0, 18-0 and 18-0. Her signature moves, including the “kangaroo paw,” quickly became the subject of countless memes and a parody sketch on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
“You speak through your dance moves,” Fallon quipped, before joining in as the American actress and comedian Rachel Dratch hopped and writhed across the stage in a caricature of Raygun.
Gunn’s day job is as a lecturer with research interests including the cultural politics of breaking and the role of street dance in public spaces. A former jazz and ballroom dancer, the 36-year-old began breaking in her 20s after being introduced to the sport by her husband. She represented Australia at the world championships in Paris in 2021 and in Seoul in 2022.
In a weekend news conference, Gunn acknowledged her underdog status in a competition that had pitched her against a mostly teenage lineup.
“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic power moves,” she said. “So I wanted to move differently. I wanted to do something artistic and creative. Because how many chances can you get in a lifetime to do that on the international stage?”
Amid an internet backlash - with some questioning how she even qualified for the competition - Australia’s Olympic chef de mission, Anna Meares, praised Gunn for representing the team and “the Olympic spirit with great enthusiasm.”
Videos emerged on social media of Gunn putting on an impromptu performance for her teammates on the streets of Paris after her competition, to cheers of approval.
“Raygun had a crack - good on her,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters Sunday. “That is in the Australian tradition of people having a go. She’s had a go representing our country, and that’s a good thing.”
“Raygun stepped up and did her stuff in front of the world, her way,” former Australian soccer player Craig Foster wrote on X. “Not everyone can say that in life.”
Gunn did not immediately respond to an interview request.
The Betoota Advocate, an Australian satirical website, announced a limited run of T-shirts on Instagram celebrating “the B-girl who put the kangaroo paws and the sprinkler on the world stage!” - referring to a celebratory dance that imitates a garden sprinkler, popularized by England’s cricket team during a 2010 series against Australia.
Some social media users unofficially declared her “Napoleon Vegemite,” Australia’s answer to the celebrated dance scene in the indie comedy “Napoleon Dynamite.”
The Betoota Advocate editor Clancy Overell (whose real name is Archer Hamilton) said there were multiple reasons for Australians’ embrace of the “endearing” performance.
One was “reverse tall poppy syndrome,” he said, referring to the Australian compulsion to cut anyone who is too successful down to size. Another was an impulse to rally around an Australian who was being criticized by outsiders - especially by Americans.
“It’s another great Olympic memory for Australia,” he said. “She was having fun; that’s the thing that resonated with everyone.”
Olympic breaking head judge Martin Gilian said at a news conference that “breaking is all about originality and bringing something new to the table and representing your country or region.”
“This is exactly what Raygun was doing,” he said. “She got inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was a kangaroo.”
Her performance was not universally praised, however. Some questioned whether a White woman should have been chosen to represent Australia in a sport that originated on the streets of New York in the 1970s.
“There are incredible dancers in places like Western Sydney (just one example) where black and brown people are honing their skills and their craft in arenas not recognized by establishment institutions,” Neha Madhok, a social justice campaigner, wrote on X. “This is a reflection on the whiteness of Australian sport, and of Australian attitudes.”
Since the 2018 announcement of breaking’s inclusion in the Paris Games, concerns were raised about paying appropriate homage to the genre’s Black roots.
Australia’s entrant in the B-boys division of the competition, 16-year-old Jeff “J Attack” Dunne, who was born in the Philippines and was adopted as a baby by an Australian family, also failed to progress to the knockout stages.
In a recent academic paper, Gunn and her co-author Lucas Marie argued that “breaking’s institutionalization via the Olympics will place breaking more firmly within this sporting nation’s hegemonic settler-colonial structures that rely upon racialized and gendered hierarchies.”
She also expressed frustration that, after the announcement of breaking’s inclusion in the Games, some “well-intentioned interviews were turned into a gag for Australian audiences to laugh at the notion of breaking being an Olympic sport.”
It may be a one-time inclusion. Los Angeles 2028 chose sports such as flag football and squash to make their Olympic debut - along with T20 cricket, a popular sport in Australia that has struggled to captivate Americans before.
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