Latest news with #RachaelGunn
RNZ News
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Raygun's Olympic breaking broke the internet and continues to polarise
By Greg Hassall and Rebecca Armstrong Rachael Gunn known as "Raygun" of Australia during the B-Girls Round Robin Breaking Battle between Australia and the United States at La Concorde 1 as part of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in Paris, France, 9 August, 2024. Photo: AAP via Photosport Analysis - Australia achieved its greatest-ever medal haul at the Paris Olympics, but 12 months on, the enduring memory is of a white, middle-class, 30-something B-girl in a cheap green-and-gold tracksuit crashing out of the breaking competition in the first round. Going by the name Raygun, Rachael Gunn seared herself into the collective imagination with a series of moves that failed to impress the judges but launched a torrent of memes, vitriol, and hot takes. Was she punking the Olympics? Was the routine, with its imitations of kangaroos and sprinklers, ironic - a playfully knowing appropriation of Australian iconography? Or was she simply having an off day? Whatever the case, Gunn's routine, the reaction to it, and how she subsequently carried herself, combined to create a confounding cultural moment. "To be honest, I get mental whiplash thinking about this topic," marketing strategist Christina Aventi tells Australian Story. "It's just a confusing mess. And it's hard to make sense of." Raygun competes against France's Sya Dembele, known as Syssy, at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Photo: AFP / Odd Andersen Raygun competes against France's Sya Dembele, known as Syssy, at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. There are so many strands to the Raygun phenomenon that it's hard to neatly untangle any of them. Even the initial responses to her routine were wildly varied and often contradictory. Back in Australia, some simply saw it as funny - something in the spirit of Roy and HG's The Dream - and didn't care if it was serious or a piss-take. But for others, the Olympics represent a rare opportunity for Australians to punch above their weight on the global stage, and thanks to Raygun, people all around the world were laughing at us. "It's clear that it really touched a nerve around our cultural, athletic identity," Aventi says. "It was our best performing Olympics yet, that was somewhat overshadowed by this routine that looked more eisteddfod than Olympics." There is, of course, a rich tradition of heroic Olympic failures - think Eddie the Eagle, Eric the Eel, the Jamaican bobsled team, even Australia's own Steven Bradbury, who speed-skated to victory, only because all his competitors crashed out. But as Aventi points out, Gunn does not fit neatly into that pantheon of losers. "They have backstories that people respond to really positively because they're hard-luck stories; they're against-all-the-odds stories," she says. "And in this case, we've got a uni professor who doesn't look like a breaker, who's wearing a green-and-gold tracksuit that looks like it's straight out of Lowes. "It just doesn't quite stack up to some of those other stories we love." Raygun competes in the women's breaking dance at the Paris Olympics. Photo: Odd Andersen/AFP Criticism of Raygun's routine did not just come from Australians with a bruised sense of national pride. For some in the international breaking community, her performance was insultingly amateurish. "The anger that came from Raygun's performance at the Olympics comes from a lot of different places," explains New York artist and breaking pioneer Michael Holman. "A slice of that pie came from people who knew what breaking was, saying, 'Wow, you know, that's not great breaking.'" But a bigger issue for Holman - and one that Gunn, an academic interested in the cultural politics of breaking, seemed oddly unprepared for - was that of cultural appropriation and insensitivity. "Part of the magic of hip hop culture is the fact that it was created by marginalised teenagers, poor and working-class black and Puerto Rican kids who came from nothing," Holman says. "So her being white and Australian and jumping around like a kangaroo, that's going to be a loaded gun. "Whether she intended it or not, the end result was mockery." She was ridiculed by US tonight show hosts, eviscerated by countless bloggers, and falsely accused of everything from gaming the system to being responsible for breaking not being part of the 2028 Olympics. There were concerns for her mental health in the days after the event. Australia's Olympic chef de mission Anna Meares defended Gunn publicly, calling out "trolls and keyboard warriors" for their misogyny and abuse. Even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came to her defence, although "Raygun had a crack" was perhaps not the most ringing of prime ministerial endorsements. Initially, Gunn seemed to handle the situation well. Although the criticism clearly stung, she appeared willing to make fun of herself, breaking into an impromptu routine and throwing kangaroo poses as the Australian Olympic team prepared for the Closing Ceremony. "I think there was a sense that it was a cultural moment," says journalist Jordan Baker, who covered the Paris Olympics for The Sydney Morning Herald . "She gave an unusual performance. It was fun. We'll rally behind her." It was a musical, of all things, that changed all that. Comedian Stephanie Broadbridge didn't even watch Gunn's Olympic routine but became fascinated by how she handled herself in the aftermath. Broadbridge had been through her own social media pile-on in 2023 when a video of her trying not to laugh as a male comedian told a joke was viewed more than 150 million times, provoking a torrent of cruel and misogynistic comments. She was traumatised by the experience and found something admirable in Gunn's refusal to apologise for herself. "Raygun never backed down, and I was like, I love this. This is such an interesting thing from a woman," Broadbridge says. "Women don't usually behave like that publicly, and I was so excited that there was one around my age doing that." Broadbridge looked at the heightened emotion around the Raygun phenomenon and decided it had all the elements of a musical. "She's the hero that Australia needed; the female Shane Warne. The one that's flawed but we love her anyway," she says. "I wanted to tell that story. I wanted an Australian larrikin story that was a woman." And that's when things got weird. Days before the opening performance of Raygun: The Musical, Broadbridge received a cease-and-desist letter from Gunn's lawyers demanding that the show not go ahead because it violated her intellectual property and could damage her brand. "The dance moves were copyrighted, the silhouette was trademarked. Basically, every element," Broadbridge explains. Baker says this was "the point where a lot of people lost sympathy for Rachael". "People who had backed her the whole way felt like this was a betrayal of their support for her," she says. "When the heavy-handed legal threats started coming, it seemed mean-spirited; it seemed like she was no longer even remotely trying to lean into the joke." When Gunn addressed the outcry in an Instagram video, it only made things worse. It seems that in Australia, a far greater sin than athletic underachievement is taking yourself too seriously. "When she's trying to halt a musical, when she's trying to trademark something like a kangaroo hop, that's about her," Aventi says. "I think if she stood for something a little bit bigger - maybe resilience, strength, owning your own truth - that would have given a different centre of gravity to the story. "I know she's been through a lot, but a little bit more vulnerability might have helped people warm to her a bit more. "I feel really uncomfortable saying that. It's like Lindy Chamberlain all over again - why should we expect someone to be vulnerable? But vulnerability is something that connects and opens people up." Now the dust has settled on Raygun's cultural moment, what have we learned? That Australians don't like people who take themselves too seriously? That we like our athletes to win? That we're suspicious of academics? That the internet expects women to behave in a certain way and reacts violently when they don't? Or was it just, as Shakespeare once wrote, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?" In the end, Broadbridge got to keep her musical, albeit with the lead's name changed to Spraygun and the title changed to Breaking: The Musical . And Gunn has her trademarked moves and a great story to tell someday. And after their crash course in public relations, she and her team might get the marketing right when she does. Rachael Gunn declined to be interviewed for this story. - ABC
ABC News
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Raygun's Olympic breaking broke the internet and continues to polarise
Australia achieved its greatest-ever medal haul at the Paris Olympics, but 12 months on, the enduring memory is of a white, middle-class, 30-something B-girl in a cheap green-and-gold tracksuit crashing out of the breaking competition in the first round. Going by the name Raygun, Rachael Gunn seared herself into the collective imagination with a series of moves that failed to impress the judges but launched a torrent of memes, vitriol, and hot takes. Was she punking the Olympics? Was the routine, with its imitations of kangaroos and sprinklers, ironic – a playfully knowing appropriation of Australian iconography? Or was she simply having an off day? Whatever the case, Gunn's routine, the reaction to it, and how she subsequently carried herself, combined to create a confounding cultural moment. "To be honest, I get mental whiplash thinking about this topic," marketing strategist Christina Aventi tells Australian Story. "It's just a confusing mess. And it's hard to make sense of." There are so many strands to the Raygun phenomenon that it's hard to neatly untangle any of them. Even the initial responses to her routine were wildly varied and often contradictory. Back in Australia, some simply saw it as funny – something in the spirit of Roy and HG's The Dream – and didn't care if it was serious or a piss-take. But for others, the Olympics represent a rare opportunity for Australians to punch above their weight on the global stage, and thanks to Raygun, people all around the world were laughing at us. "It's clear that it really touched a nerve around our cultural, athletic identity," Aventi says. "It was our best performing Olympics yet, that was somewhat overshadowed by this routine that looked more eisteddfod than Olympics." There is, of course, a rich tradition of heroic Olympic failures — think Eddie the Eagle, Eric the Eel, the Jamaican bobsled team, even Australia's own Steven Bradbury, who speed-skated to victory, only because all his competitors crashed out. But as Aventi points out, Gunn does not fit neatly into that pantheon of losers. "They have backstories that people respond to really positively because they're hard-luck stories; they're against-all-the-odds stories," she says. "And in this case, we've got a uni professor who doesn't look like a breaker, who's wearing a green-and-gold tracksuit that looks like it's straight out of Lowes. "It just doesn't quite stack up to some of those other stories we love." Criticism of Raygun's routine did not just come from Australians with a bruised sense of national pride. For some in the international breaking community, her performance was insultingly amateurish. "The anger that came from Raygun's performance at the Olympics comes from a lot of different places," explains New York artist and breaking pioneer Michael Holman. "A slice of that pie came from people who knew what breaking was, saying, 'Wow, you know, that's not great breaking.'" But a bigger issue for Holman — and one that Gunn, an academic interested in the cultural politics of breaking, seemed oddly unprepared for — was that of cultural appropriation and insensitivity. "Part of the magic of hip hop culture is the fact that it was created by marginalised teenagers, poor and working-class black and Puerto Rican kids who came from nothing," Holman says. "So her being white and Australian and jumping around like a kangaroo, that's going to be a loaded gun. "Whether she intended it or not, the end result was mockery." She was ridiculed by US tonight show hosts, eviscerated by countless bloggers, and falsely accused of everything from gaming the system to being responsible for breaking not being part of the 2028 Olympics. There were concerns for her mental health in the days after the event. Australia's Olympic chef de mission Anna Meares defended Gunn publicly, calling out "trolls and keyboard warriors" for their misogyny and abuse. Even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came to her defence, although "Raygun had a crack" was perhaps not the most ringing of prime ministerial endorsements. Initially, Gunn seemed to handle the situation well. Although the criticism clearly stung, she appeared willing to make fun of herself, breaking into an impromptu routine and throwing kangaroo poses as the Australian Olympic team prepared for the Closing Ceremony. "I think there was a sense that it was a cultural moment," says journalist Jordan Baker, who covered the Paris Olympics for The Sydney Morning Herald. "She gave an unusual performance. It was fun. We'll rally behind her." It was a musical, of all things, that changed all that. Comedian Stephanie Broadbridge didn't even watch Gunn's Olympic routine but became fascinated by how she handled herself in the aftermath. Broadbridge had been through her own social media pile-on in 2023 when a video of her trying not to laugh as a male comedian told a joke was viewed more than 150 million times, provoking a torrent of cruel and misogynistic comments. She was traumatised by the experience and found something admirable in Gunn's refusal to apologise for herself. "Raygun never backed down, and I was like, I love this. This is such an interesting thing from a woman," Broadbridge says. "Women don't usually behave like that publicly, and I was so excited that there was one around my age doing that." Broadbridge looked at the heightened emotion around the Raygun phenomenon and decided it had all the elements of a musical. "She's the hero that Australia needed; the female Shane Warne. The one that's flawed but we love her anyway," she says. "I wanted to tell that story. I wanted an Australian larrikin story that was a woman." And that's when things got weird. Days before the opening performance of Raygun: The Musical, Broadbridge received a cease-and-desist letter from Gunn's lawyers demanding that the show not go ahead because it violated her intellectual property and could damage her brand. "The dance moves were copyrighted, the silhouette was trademarked. Basically, every element," Broadbridge explains. Baker says this was "the point where a lot of people lost sympathy for Rachael". "People who had backed her the whole way felt like this was a betrayal of their support for her," she says. "When the heavy-handed legal threats started coming, it seemed mean-spirited; it seemed like she was no longer even remotely trying to lean into the joke." When Gunn addressed the outcry in an Instagram video, it only made things worse. It seems that in Australia, a far greater sin than athletic underachievement is taking yourself too seriously. "When she's trying to halt a musical, when she's trying to trademark something like a kangaroo hop, that's about her," Aventi says. "I think if she stood for something a little bit bigger – maybe resilience, strength, owning your own truth – that would have given a different centre of gravity to the story. "I know she's been through a lot, but a little bit more vulnerability might have helped people warm to her a bit more. "I feel really uncomfortable saying that. It's like Lindy Chamberlain all over again – why should we expect someone to be vulnerable? But vulnerability is something that connects and opens people up." Now the dust has settled on Raygun's cultural moment, what have we learned? That Australians don't like people who take themselves too seriously? That we like our athletes to win? That we're suspicious of academics? That the internet expects women to behave in a certain way and reacts violently when they don't? Or was it just, as Shakespeare once wrote, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?" In the end, Broadbridge got to keep her musical, albeit with the lead's name changed to Spraygun and the title changed to Breaking: The Musical. And Gunn has her trademarked moves and a great story to tell someday. And after their crash course in public relations, she and her team might get the marketing right when she does. Rachael Gunn declined to be interviewed for this story. Watch Australian Story's Break It Down, 8:00pm, on ABCTV and ABC iview.
ABC News
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
The Raygun phenomenon
Introduced by Australian Story presenter Leigh Sales. When Australian B-girl Raygun took to the stage in the breaking at the Paris Olympics in 2024 she inadvertently became a viral sensation and cultural flashpoint. Her unique moves spawned thousands of memes, sparked heated debate and unleashed wild conspiracy theories. It was a devastating response for one person to shoulder and garnered sympathy and support for Raygun aka Rachael Gunn. The intense global reaction also caught the attention of comedian Steph Broadbridge, who was inspired to write an unauthorised musical parody or 'empathetic piss-take'. It may have seemed a very Australian response to a confounding cultural moment, but like everything with this story, it was complicated. This episode of Australian Story aims to break it down and shed some light on the fallout from breaking's debut at the Olympics. (Rachael Gunn declined an invitation to be involved.) Watch 'Break It Down' at 8pm Monday June 23 on ABC TV or iview
News.com.au
29-05-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
Rachael ‘Raygun' Gunn on how she handled Olympic breakdancing anxiety
Break-dancer Rachael 'Raygun' Gunn has revealed she was already struggling with anxiety before the Olympics but her mental health became so bad following worldwide vitriol over her viral performance she felt 'paralysed' and 'panicky' if her husband left her side. Opening up about her mental health struggles to encourage conversations as part of News Corp's Can We Talk campaign, in partnership with Medibank, the 37-year-old said getting off social media, support from loved ones and regular appointments with her psychologist helped. Gunn revealed she had started taking anti-anxiety medication about six months before Paris due to the immense pressure she felt ahead of being the first ever Australian female breaker to qualify for the Olympics. 'The Olympics is such a huge event and there's so much pressure on you, regardless of your chances,' she said. 'My journey with anxiety started before the big day when everything changed, but because I'd already had that experience with it and a bit of a support structure in place it meant I was able to get through that whirlwind of an adventure and the wild ride a bit easier.' Australia is in the grips of a mental health crisis, and people are struggling to know who to turn to, especially our younger generations. Can We Talk? is a News Corp awareness campaign, in partnership with Medibank, equipping Aussies with the skills needs to have the most important conversation of their life. But the months after were tough and she described feeling 'paralysed' and 'frozen' at times. 'I was just kind of stuck and paralysed until either Sammy (husband Samuel Free) came back or we found some friends or something,' she said. 'For a long time I generally felt out of my body, if that makes sense, like the whole world was different. 'I would have a good cry probably every couple of weeks because I felt so numb the rest of the time, like I couldn't be angry, I couldn't be upset, I was just trying to process everything that was happening. 'Then I would have a good cry and I would feel a bit better for a while. 'It's still hard, to be honest, I still have bad days.' But she has slowly been building back her confidence to do break dancing again. 'I used to practise on the street four nights a week, I still haven't got the confidence to do that but I am able to break at home with Sammy and a friend and build from there,' she said. 'Now I'm actually starting to enjoy it again and it's nice to be able to dance with no pressure and work on some moves.' Gunn said she was still at Macquarie University marking essays and helping out with teaching. 'I'm working on some stuff behind the scenes … you certainly haven't seen the last of me,' she said. The Olympian also shared how she'd taken up the hobby of knitting. 'This is my mental health scarf,' she said, holding it up. 'It's the most ridiculous thing, it's so long, but it was because I was so restless watching TV or whatever, it helped me do something with my hands and keep them busy because I feel like I get a lot of anxiety. 'It's just for me, so who cares, it will be ready in winter 2027 … it's nice to do something that has no pressure and you can just keep working on it and feel a sense of accomplishment. 'This is the stuff you have to explore when you're struggling with your mental health.' When she first returned to Australia and still wasn't in a good enough place to leave home, Gunn also got into 1980s Aerobics Oz Style videos on YouTube for exercise. 'When I came back to Sydney, I could barely leave the house, so I wasn't about to go to a gym or join a class so I looked on YouTube a lot for some workout videos,' she said. 'I did pilates and I've been doing yoga for years and I actually got into the old 80s Oz-Style Aerobics which were on YouTube. 'They're fun, they're good, they're easy.'
ABC News
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
How a legal stoush with Rachael Gunn elevated a comedy musical to a whole new level
Breaking: The Musical is certainly not about Olympic breaker Rachael 'Raygun' Gunn, assures the show's creator. It's about dreams, self-confidence, public condemnation, taking the piss, Olympic breakdancing and fighting an image problem with legal threats … but again, it is emphatically not about Raygun. It's actually about a 36-year-old Olympic breaker called 'Spraygun', the stage name of university lecturer, Sprachel Gunn. As the opening graphic disclaims, any resemblance to any other public figure is merely a coincidence. Comedian Steph Broadbridge, who also stars as Spraygun, had initially written a similar show, Raygun: The Musical, which was slated to debut in a small Sydney venue in December last year. The controversy catapulted the show into the spotlight, with the comedian working the legal stoush into her craft, opening to sold-out shows across the Sydney Comedy Festival, Melbourne Comedy Festival and Adelaide Fringe. After wrapping in Sydney on the weekend, it will begin a regional tour and Broadbridge has flagged a possible run at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show opens on Hornsby Shire in Sydney's suburban north, where Rachael Gunn grew up. It also happens to be where upper-middle class Sprachel longs for a life beyond her white picket fence. She meets a breakdancer at the local Police Citizens Youth Club and he convinces her that breaking is not just for the urban minorities who developed the style, but it is indeed her calling. As her love for the genre grows, so does their romance. "I might be a B-girl, but I'll always be an A-girl to him," Sprachel sings. An unfortunate pulled muscle rules her boyfriend out of the running for the Olympics, and he pours his efforts into her success. A vampiric lawyer lurks off stage, emerging from the shadows whenever a character attempts the infamous kangaroo move, asserted to be the intellectual property of Gunn. The script and songs are dense with clever comedy, not just about she-who-will-not-be-named, but about Australian society in general. The levity is pierced with a ballad when Spraygun faces international backlash after her Olympic flop, showing Broadbridge isn't purely making jabs at her alleged subject, but also the public's level of animosity. The cast is unserious and unpolished, and the Microsoft Paint-style graphics remind you that the production isn't trying to be anything it's not. But that's not to be confused with amateurism — the show itself rises beyond cheap gags on a well-known public saga and has a surprising level of depth and wit. At the end of the show, the audience is goaded into getting up to join in the Spraygun dance. Looking around the venue, it's clear that while we all laughed at Gunn's Olympic attempt, none of us are exactly gold medal contenders. Gunn became the stand-out figure of Paris 2024 when public indignation ironically fuelled her stardom. Now she's gifted that same ironic logic to Broadbridge's show, with her own criticism of the musical elevating the project to a whole new level, proving once again that giving air to a PR crisis can turn an ember into a bonfire.
