There were plenty of memorable moments at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Simone Biles making her triumphant Olympics return. Noah Lyles barely winning the 100m. The Turkish shooter who had the coolest shooting position of all time.
Then there’s Raygun’s “Kangaroo Dance.”
The representative for Australia in Olympic Breakdancing, Raygun (aka Rachael Gunn), went viral for her unorthodox dance that many people online claimed they could recreate.
While this mostly garnered laughs, others felt this was an offense to the sport and to the Olympics in general. In fact, one critic, who named themselves “Someone Who hates corruption,” created a petition asking that Gunn and Australian Olympic Committee President Anna Meares be held responsible.
The Change.org petition alleges that Raygun manipulated the selection process and prevented other competitors from entering because she “set up her own governing body for breakdancing.” Further, the petition claims that she won her own qualifier, which was influenced by her husband, who served as the Olympic team’s coach.
The petition calls for a public apology from Gunn and Meares as well as a full investigation into the selection process, “an audit of Dr. Gunn’s business dealings,” and a global apology to the breaking community. As of this article, the petition has more than 40,000 signatures.
There’s just one problem. None of this seems to be true.
Not only did the petition constantly spell Gunn and Meares’ names wrong, a recent deep dive from Vox’s Aja Romano proved that none of the claims in the petition are true. Gunn did not found AUSBreaking, the “governing body” for Australian breakdancing.
On top of that, she and her husband, Samuel Free, didn’t have any say in who joined the team. In fact, the entire list of judges for the Oceania Breaking Championships, which served as a qualifier, is available online.
One of the judges for the qualifier, Te Hiiritanga Wepiha, explained that she legitimately won the competition. He even provided a 90-minute commentary on Instagram explaining her victory.
Additionally, multiple other breakers came out in support of Gunn, including veteran New Zealand breaker Dujon Cullingford.
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“This is what happens when people outside of our dance want to control the narrative but have absolutely no expertise of technical knowledge on our dance, particularly in an Oceania context,” Cullingford said.
Another person who stands by Gunn is the head judge at the Olympics, Martin Gilian, who goes by MGbility.
“Breaking is all about originality and bringing something new to the table and representing your country or region,” MGbility said in a press conference. “This is exactly what Raygun was doing. She got inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was a kangaroo.”
“We have five criteria in the competitive judging system (Technique, Vocabulary, Execution, Musicality, Originality) and just her level was maybe not as high as the other competitors. But again, that doesn’t mean that she did really bad. She did her best. She won the Oceania qualifier. … Unfortunately for her, the other b-girls were better.”
If you look at the scores, Raygun didn’t completely fail. When she faced off against Logistx from the United States, some judges scored her better in the Vocabulary and Originality categories.
Were her moves silly? Yes. Was that being true to herself? Also yes. Did she manipulate her way into the Olympics? Absolutely not.
More Olympics: Fact Check: Did Raygun Get Breaking Dropped From 2028 Olympics in LA?
