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The competitive breakdancing career of viral Olympian Rachael Gunn, known as Raygun, is over.
The 37-year-old said on an Australian radio show that she will continue to dance, but ever since the Games, she hasn’t wanted to enter a competition. “I’m not going to compete anymore,” she said Tuesday on The Jimmy & Nath Show. “I was going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems a really difficult thing for me to do now, to approach a battle.
“I think the level of scrutiny that’s going to be there, and people will be filming it and it’ll go online, and it’s just not going to mean the same thing,” Gunn said.
Gunn received a slew of online backlash and conspiracy theories following her zero-point performance in the Olympics, easily becoming the main storyline for the sport’s first and potentially only trip to the Games. Her teal-and-yellow Olympic uniform even became a popular Halloween costume. Breakdancing will not return to the 2028 Olympics, a decision that was made two years before Gunn’s viral routine.
On Thursday, Gunn went on an Australian TV show to clarify her comments. “Raygun’s not retiring,” she said on The Project, adding that she’ll still dance and enter “community jams,” but avoid official competitions.
Gunn, a university lecturer with a Ph.D. in cultural studies and a thesis about Sydney’s breaking scene, was accused of manipulating her way onto the Olympic team and performing poorly on purpose. (She had won local competitions in Australia.) Gunn has said that she knew she was going to be “the underdog” in Paris, and she wanted to “do something new and different and creative.” Paying homage to her home country, she incorporated a kangaroo hop and pose into her routine.
“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently,” Gunn said following the Games. “How many chances do you get in a lifetime to do that on an international stage?”
