Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn’s Viral Olympic Breaking Point Gets the Netflix Treatment

Australian breakdancer Rachael Gunn, aka Raygun, didn’t earn a single point from the judges for her routines during the Paris Olympics in 2024. But her unconventional performance that went viral and became the subject of global mockery has earned her something her medal-winning competitors didn’t achieve — her own documentary.“Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly,” premieres this week on Netflix, chronicling how Ms. Gunn began breakdancing, how she qualified for the Paris Games, and the emotional and mental toll created by the harsh reaction on social media and the criticism she received from other dancers.“When I went viral, it was surreal,” Ms. Gunn told CNN in a recent interview. “It made me feel kind of sick in the stomach — this sense of dread. I just thought, surely this is not actually happening. Surely, this is a weird, egotistical dream I’m having where I think my face is spread around the world. It was a really strange experience.”Also a strange experience was watching her performance in Paris. Breakdancing was making its Olympic debut at Paris, bringing credibility to a street dance that took root on the urban sidewalks of America and made popular by movies such as “You Got Served.”The top-ranked break dancers in the world, who compete regularly on a professional circuit, were eager to showcase their unique skills on a global platform.Canada’s Phil Wizard and Japan’s Ami Yuasa won the men’s and women’s gold medals. But Ms. Gunn hijacked the headlines with an array of unusual moves, including the “kangaroo” where she imitated the hopping motion of a kangaroo. She also showcased a sprinkler dance and flopped around on the floor like a fish out of water. The judges were not impressed. She lost all three of her round-robin battles without scoring a point.The reaction on social media and other platforms was immediate and often vicious. She was parodied by comedian Rachel Dratch, who dressed up in a knockoff of Raygun’s green and gold Australian uniform and mocked her moves with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” Even singer Adele had something to say, interrupting a concert in Munich to point out her percussionist is “pissing himself laughing just thinking about it. I can’t work out if it was a joke or not.”Questions also arose about how she qualified for the Olympics in the first place with conspiracy theorists falsely suggesting her husband and coach, Samuel Free, cheated to have her qualify. Online, the dance moves she originated became popular memes.For someone who had lectured at Sydney’s Macquarie University and did her PhD thesis on the intersection of gender and Sydney’s breaking culture, the vitriol cut deep. Ms. Gunn had represented Australia at the world championships in 2021 and 2022 and earned her spot in the Olympics by qualifying at the Oceania championships.“All my moves are original,” she said at Paris. “Creativity is really important to me. I go out there and I show my artistry. Sometimes, it speaks to the judges, and sometimes, it doesn’t. I do my thing and it represents art. That’s what it is about.”Ms. Gunn, now age 38, called the experience “a slow-motion car crash,” and described the feeling of “falling into a dark pit.”She said it took her a long time to go back to the gym because she worried about people recognizing her. Time and therapy helped her get to the point where she could do the documentary.“I’ve really focused on my mental health, and I feel like I’m in a good place to share my side of the story,” she said. “There was a lot of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and speculation. There was a lot of noise, and I think there’s something to be said for waiting for that noise to die down.”She said she recently watched her performance in Paris and remembers thinking, “Oh, it’s not as bad” as the world seemed to think it was.“I knew that I moved differently,” she said. “I knew that I had a different approach to everyone else that had qualified. I’d had a very different journey through breaking, starting later in life. There were a lot of things that I was aware that people might not understand or might think was particularly weird if the last time they saw breaking was “Beat Street” or something from the ‘80s. Doing that on a world stage took a different level of guts.”Breaking will not be included in the 2028 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles as “optional” sports are selected by the host city to match its vision for the games, but Ms. Gunn hopes her documentary will set the record straight and energize the sport. “I just really hope that the conversations that this spurs that people bring on some elite breakers, some pioneering breakers, some OGs, and they bring them in to talk about breaking. I don’t need to be the only voice on breaking. I’ve never wanted to be.”

Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn’s Viral Olympic Breaking Point Gets the Netflix Treatment

Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn’s Viral Olympic Breaking Point Gets the Netflix Treatment

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