The Feminist Breakdancer Who Lost the Olympics

R achael Gunn is an expert Olympian. Known as “Raygun,” her stage name, the Australian breakdancer has a Ph.D. in cultural studies from Macquarie University, where she is now a lecturer. Her academic focus is on breaking, hip-hop, “constructions of the dancing body,” “the politics of gender and gender performance,” and the “methodological dynamics between theory and practice.”

Raygun became an overnight spectacle after displaying unique moves in Paris, all of which were “original,” she told ESPN. A self-professed underdog, Gunn knew she would never “beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves.” Her goal was “to move differently, be artistic and creative.” Creativity, she added, is her strength. Raygun’s experience also helps, though only in theory — she received a zero for her performance at this year’s Olympics.

The 36-year-old began breakdancing in her mid twenties after her husband and coach introduced her to the craft. Her discovery of breaking coincided nicely with her educational pursuits, and upon exploring “cultural movement” in a doctoral program at Macquarie University, “what became prominent” for her was that “there were these gender politics that could be explored and analyzed” in breakdancing. When the Olympic committee decided to make breaking an Olympic sport this year, Gunn was, apparently, an obvious choice to represent Australia. She won the Oceania Breaking Championship last year alongside Australia’s other Olympic breakdancer, Jeff “J-Attack” Dunne, a 16-year-old with loads of swagger.

Los Angeles’s Olympic Games in 2028 will not include breakdancing, a decision that b-boys and -girls hoped the committee would have no choice but to overturn if breakers stunned in Paris. And although Raygun’s performance didn’t inspire hope for the Olympic future of breaking, it did, certainly, stun.

The kangaroo hop was Gunn’s most creative and viral move. Instead of flipping through the air or pulling a corkscrew, Gunn paid homage to her homeland when, in her green-and-yellow tracksuit, she bent her elbows, held her hands in front of her chest, and hopped, hopped, hopped. Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, called the performance quintessentially Australian. After all, what’s more Australian, he asked, than “having a go and wearing a trackie while you’re doing it?” Raygun was “inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was a kangaroo,” Martin Gilian, the head judge of the Olympic breaking competition said, adding that while she “did her best,” Gunn’s “level was maybe not as high as the other competitors.”

Gunn’s stated purpose in breakdancing was never to be the best. The educator — whose Ph.D. thesis focused on “how masculinist practices of breakdancing offers [sic] a site for the transgression of gendered norms” — has lamented that breakdancing, a self-expressive sport, is policed so heavily. Nuances in different categories of dance inspired Gunn to see breaking as “the space to displace and deterritorialise gender.” Her thesis also sought to “locate the potentiality for moments of transgression” and view the “breaking body” as an “assemblage open to new rhizomatic connections” — to defy and reorient traditional understandings of breaking.

Being the best may not have been Gunn’s goal, but it is the foundational principal of the Olympic Games, and it still guides the Olympics, even though this year’s games were criticized heavily for their embrace of wokeism. (Drag queens parodied the Last Supper in the opening ceremonies, and two gender-unclear people whose testosterone advantages had gotten them disqualified in previous boxing competitions were allowed to compete in the women’s boxing category, for example.) If the Olympics had fully shifted to woke, a cultural-movement scholar would’ve won the gold medal for breakdancing while hopping around like a kangaroo. But Olympic judges still prioritize skill, not courage or creativity, and although social-justice and DEI efforts may have infiltrated certain aspects of the games, they didn’t overtake the meaning of the games altogether.

Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s mayor, said that her city was “ready to show the world that this great sports festival can combine spectacle, environmental preservation, and social justice.” But try as the Olympic committee might, the moments that defined the Olympics were the ones that showcased excellence and patriotism rather than messages about social justice. Brittney Griner, the basketball star who spent ten months in a Russian prison, cried tears of joy while listening to the U.S. national anthem after the women’s basketball team won the gold. The emotional display indicated her change of heart since 2020, when Griner was one of the athletes who refused to stand for the national anthem.

The U.S. women’s soccer team won the gold for the first time since 2012, thanks in part to the new coach, Emma Hayes, who had been the manager of London’s Chelsea district for twelve years. She made the hop across the pond because, she said, crying, “I love America. It made me, and I always say that.” Acclaimed gymnast Simone Biles said that she was proud to shepherd in a new generation of gold-worthy gymnasts, especially after sex-abuse scandals rocked the U.S. gymnastics world. Swimmer Katie Ledecky became the most decorated Olympian in history and the first woman to win the same individual event at four Olympics in a row; younger swimmers who lost to Ledecky told reporters afterward that it was a joy just to be in the pool with such a champion. Runner Julien Alfred won Saint Lucia’s first-ever Olympic gold medal, and her community watched and celebrated back home as the Olympian triumphantly raised her flag.

The Olympics are a business, one that relies on traditions of strength, competition, and honor, and one that also celebrates and monetizes greatness. Efforts to overshadow excellence with social justice at this year’s Olympics fell short.

A change.org petition is attempting to hold Gunn “accountable for unethical conduct.” “We demand a public apology from Rachel Gunn,” it reads, “for misleading the Australian public and attempting to gaslight the public and undermining the efforts of genuine athletes.” She has been accused by Australian officials and professors of scoring zero points “on purpose,” said Megan Davis, a commissioner on the Australian Rugby League Commission. And despite the media’s knee-jerk defense of the b-girl against online scrutiny, a good number of Australians are upset that Gunn’s research into (as her dissertation put it) “new possibilities for permormativities [sic] beyond the confines of dominant modes of thought and normative gender construction” didn’t translate well on the dance floor. Gunn gave defiance of tradition her best go, as did the Olympic committee. They both lost.