Rachael "Raygun" Gunn apologizes to breakdancing community after becoming an Olympic meme
Australia - Australian breaker Rachael "Raygun" Gunn went viral for her (ahem) unusual moves at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Now the 37-year-old has spoken out about the overwhelming attention.
For some she was an inspiration, but for others she was the biggest laughingstock of the mega-event.
In the news program The Project on Australian broadcaster Channel 10, the viral Olympic sensation revealed that she had been forced to take a social media break after her time in France.
The fierce backlash after her preliminary round exit had hit the cultural anthropology graduate completely unexpectedly, although the Australian Olympic Committee had apparently warned her immediately.
"As soon as I finished my round, my media liaison from the AOC said, 'There's a bit of a storm brewing on social media, you might want to go off socials," explained the 37-year-old.
The full extent of the spotlight was not at all clear to Raygun at that moment, but then she read a few comments online.
"I didn't understand the scale of it," she said, explaining that she eventually read the comments and felt a "sick feeling" coming over herself. "I was like, 'Oh, goodness. What has happened?" she said.
She later added that she was "very sorry for the backlash that the [breakdancing] community has experienced" as a result of her performance.
Rachael "Raygun" Gunn refutes "conspiracy theories" about how she made it to the Olympics
On the internet, the scholar was met with praise as well as a lot of hate and ridicule, and she became a meme.
"The conspiracy theories were just awful," she said, noting theories that she had somehow allegedly scammed her way into the Olympics.
"That was upsetting, because it wasn’t just people that didn’t understand breaking and were just angry about my performance," she continued.
"It was people that are now attacking our reputation and our integrity. And none of them were grounded in any kind of facts."
Even talk show host Jimmy Fallon made fun of her in a sketch, bringing the Australian even more attention – and even wider ridicule.
"I am still in the process of being able to describe how I feel about all this stuff," she said.
"It kind of feels like a really weird dream that I’ve been having, that I’m gonna wake up from at any moment."
Cover photo: ODD ANDERSEN / AFP