Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, said she would no longer compete as a breaker following her much-ridiculed Paris 2024 Olympic performance.
Gunn said it was “impossible to process” the impact of her performance.
Yeah, I don’t know enough about breakdancing to really weigh in, but the criticism seemed overblown to me. She was maybe not as good as the other competitors, but not quite to the degree of “should be ridiculed into never competing again”. Then again, even if it would have been the worst performance I saw, it wouldn’t warrant that level of ridicule really. That’s just not cool.
I think the issue was not so much that she was worse than other Olympic competitors, it’s that she was clearly not the best from Australia. That was the part that was and should be criticized. She took a spot from people who deserved it much more.
She didn’t deserve the hate for her performance, but thankfully it turns out she’s a complete asshat who got there because of nepotism, and she is actively erasing other styles from being represented because her federation is either racist or too full of itself to show other form of art besides the one her husband invented.
I think it’s moreso the fault of the Olympics trying to create a new sport in such a small amount of time. One thats based on a subjective art that didn’t have a long history of regulated competition.
The reason we didn’t get the absolute best break dancers from every nation is simply because there wasn’t an established organization that was already holding regulated competitions.
There are hundreds of breakdancing competitions every year. Her “moves” appear in none of them.
What she did was not breakdancing in any sense. From a breakdancing perspective it was absolutely horrible. From an art perspective it was also astonishingly bad. From a nepo standpoint she should have had the self awareness to politely decline rather than embarrass herself, the sport and the entire country.
There are no excuses to be made for her that are legitimate.
There are hundreds of breakdancing competitions every year. Her “moves” appear in none of them.
Right, but they aren’t being conducted by a uniform body that has the ability to consistently rank the participants on a graded scale.
It would be like if you tried to get the best basketball players in America without there being an NBA. Of course there would still be thousands of basketball games, but there would be no way to organize and choose the best players from those games.
From a nepo standpoint she should have had the self awareness to politely decline rather than embarrass herself, the sport and the entire country.
I’m not arguing that there wasn’t any nepotism involved. I’m just saying that that’s to be expected when the Olympics just hands over the selection process over to some random dance studio, and then expects them to create a governing body in such a small amount of time.
There are no excuses to be made for her that are legitimate
I don’t think anyone was trying to “excuse” her participation? Explaining how a bad thing happened doesn’t mean you are attempting to validate the bad thing. Structuring an argument that way does nothing but eliminate the ability to have a nuanced opinion.
Sources?
She deserved the scorn.
No, she didn’t. There was ONE video that was specifically edited to make her look bad. If you watch the full performance, it’s not great, but it’s absolutely not worth the backlash it got. It was HUGELY overblown.
I’m specifically talking about her infamouse Olympic performance here. I have no idea about the nepotism/racism stuff. All I’m saying is the performance itself wasn’t bad enough to warrant the ridiculous response it got.
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The fact that a bad dancer is the only thing that anyone seems to remember from the olympics shows what a clown show the Olympics are
I still see people talk about the pole vaulter’s giant package ruining his vault. And the cat-dad pistol guy.
The pole vault thing was hilarious
Also Gojira being amazing
And Biles return, people getting sick swimming in the river, terrible Olympic village beds, and probably others.
Careful, you might be surprised by a turkish man with his hand in his pocket and both eyes open.
If you only remember that, then maybe you are the clown.
Eh I’ve seen worse.
I have to admit, her hilite was the first thing I saw about it, and it was enough to make me not want to take any of it seriously, so I didn’t bother watching at first. I only went back and watched replays later after hearing someone else comment about how impressive most of it actually was…
It was different. Not like break dancing I’ve seen before. If viewed as interpretive dance instead, I think it was good.
Every move was supported by multiple points of contact with the ground. There was little strength or momentum control displayed. The relation to the beat was marginal. It was interpretive yoga.
THANK YOU!
