Australian Breakdancer Raygun Calls Out 'Alarming' Backlash over Her Olympic Performance: 'It Was Really Sad'

Rachel "Raygun" Gunn sat down for her first news interview about her viral performance at the 2024 Summer Games

For the first time since her viral Olympic performance, Australian breakdancer Rachel “Raygun” Gunn sat down for an interview to talk about the backlash she received online during the 2024 Summer Games.

“It is really sad to hear those criticisms and I am very sorry for the backlash that the community has experienced,” Gunn, 37, tells Australia 10 News in a new interview, which aired Wednesday. “But I can’t control how people react.”

Gunn, 37, has yet to return to Australia since the viral performance, according to the news channel.

In Paris, Gunn lost all three of her competitions by a combined score of 54-0 and became the butt of jokes online, poking fun at the sport and her performance – which included several nods to her home country, including at one point when Gunn began to hop like a kangaroo.

"It was really sad how much hate that it did evoke," Gunn says in the interview. "And a lot of the responses is also just due to people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches in breaking. The energy and vitriol that people had was pretty alarming."

Related: Who Is Raygun? Meet the Olympic Aussie Breakdancer Who Went Viral for Her Dance Moves

Gunn, a breakdancing professor at Macquarie University, located in Sydney, also studies "the cultural politics of breaking” in her profession.

In the interview with Australia 10 News, Gunn also defended her inclusion on Australia’s Olympic roster, when asked whether she is the best breakdancer her country could have sent to the Summer Games.

“I think my record speaks to that,” Gunn says, pointing to her being the “top-ranked” breaker in Australia in 2020 and 2022, and 2023. “The record is there, but anything can happen in a battle."

Related: Australian Breaking Organization Says Raygun's Selection for Paris Olympics Was Fair, Dispels Cheating Rumors

Last month, an online petition gathered more than 50,000 signatures amid unfounded accusations that Gunn had cheated her way into the Olympics by manipulating the selection process.

In her interview Wednesday, Gunn dismissed the accusations as "conspiracy theories,” calling them “just awful.”

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"That was really upsetting, because it wasn't just people that didn't understand breaking and were just angry about my performance,” she says. "It was people that are now attacking our reputation and our integrity. And none of them were grounded in any kind of facts. People still don't believe the truth, but ... I think that's just going to be part of our reality, unfortunately."

In an Instagram post last month, Gunn said despite the “devastating” criticism she received over her performance, it was still “an honor and a privilege to be one of sixteen women from around the world competing in breaking’s debut at the Olympics."

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