AOC president Anna Meares has defended Rachael Gunn’s Olympic Breakdancing 2024 performance. (Getty)
Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) president Anna Meares has defended breakdancer Rachael Gunn’s performance at the Olympic Breakdancing 2024 event, dubbing it “courageous”.
The country’s first Olympic breakdancer, known as “Raygun”, went viral online after debuting her unconventional dance moves at the inaugural Olympic Breakdancing 2024 competition on 9 August.
The event saw two live DJs, with competitors undergoing three judged battles, involving two 60-second routines each, before eliminations and medals were awarded.
Athletes were judged on creativity, personality, technique, variety, musicality and vocabulary, which means the variation and quantity of moves. Sadly, Gunn didn’t earn any points in any of her three dance battles.
In response to the brutal online criticism and ruthless memes Gunn has been subjected to, the AOC president has stood firm on the dancer’s right to have represented the country in the sport.
“If you don’t know Rachael’s story, in 2008, she was locked in a room crying being involved in a male-dominated sport as the only woman, and it took great courage for her to continue on and fight for her opportunity to participate in a sport that she loved,” Meares said.
“That got her to winning the Olympic qualifying event to be here in Paris. She is the best breakdancer, female, that we have in Australia … She has represented the Olympic team, [and] the Olympic spirit with great enthusiasm and I absolutely love her courage. I love her character, and I feel very disappointed for her that she has come under the attack that she has.”
The star returned to give fans a final performance in Paris, taking to the streets with some new dance moves alongside fellow Olympians. Footage captured by Olympic Australian diver Domonic Bedggood on Instagram showed the 36-year-old breaker appearing to dance to Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk”.
Gunn — who was named the top-ranked B-girl by the Australian Breaking Association in 2020 and 2021 — showcased some of her now-infamous shapes in the clip. Captioning the video, Bedggood wrote: “Put it in the Louvre.”
During the competition, Japan’s Ami Yuasa took home the gold medal for the B-girls competition in Paris, while Banevič earned silver and China’s Liu Qingyi took home bronze for their respective performances.