Rachael Gunn, the Australian breaker known as “Raygun,” has retired from elite competition, citing increased scrutiny after her Paris Olympic performance.
“I still break, but I don’t compete. I’m not going to compete anymore. No, no,” Gunn, a 37-year-old university lecturer, said in an interview on The Jimmy & Nath Show that she reposted on social media. “(Going into the Olympics) I was going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems a really difficult thing for me to do now to approach a (breaking competition) battle. I still dance, and I still break. But that’s like in my living room with my partner.
“I think the level of scrutiny that’s going to be there, and people will be filming it, and it will go online. It’s just not going to mean the same thing. It’s not going to be the same experience because of everything that’s at stake.”
After news reports quoting her, Gunn clarified her future in dance sport on Thursday. She will probably still enter events like “community jams” but not elite competitions.
Gunn remains involved. She announced the Raygun Dance Challenge, where people can submit performances for prize money.
“We do have some projects happening behind the scenes,” she said. “It’s all kind of the same sort of vibe of trying to bring more positivity, trying to encourage people to dance, to have fun and to be creative and to be themselves.”
On Aug. 9, Gunn placed 16th out of 16 women in breaking’s Olympic debut (a 17th, Manizha Talash of the Refugee Olympic Team, was disqualified). Her performance, which included mimicking a kangaroo, caused widespread reaction.
“As soon as I finished my rounds, my media liaison from the AOC (Australian Olympic Committee), said, ‘Oh, there’s a bit of a storm brewing on social media. You might want to go off socials,’” Gunn said in September. “And I was like, oh, OK. I didn’t understand the scale of it. And then I did preview some comments, and I was like, oh no. This kind of sick feeling started coming out. I was like, oh goodness. What has happened?”
Gunn said she was chased while out in public, which put her in a state of panic. She received mental health support.
“I’ll survive. I’m all right,” she said in September. “The positives are just amazing. I would rather much focus on the positives out of this and the positive responses and the joy that I’ve brought people.”
Breaking will not be on the Olympic program at the next Games in 2028 in Los Angeles.
“Not really wanting to be in the spotlight, breaking, competing,” she said in September. “It’s been a bit of a process to try and start dancing again. Like, that’s actually been tough. It was my medicine, and then it turned into my source of stress. So I’m really happy that it gets to go back to being my medicine. I can kind of finally feel free again.”
