How Raygun made it to the Olympics and divided breaking world

In a Sydney warehouse-turned-community centre, breakers warm up with ab exercises that would make a Pilates teacher cry, before taking to the floor with acrobatic moves so intricate you can barely make them out.

It is one of the most important events of the year – a qualifier for the Red Bull BC One World Finals – and the past week weighs heavy.

A few people nervously glance at the handful of cameras lining the dance circle, their minds no doubt flashing to images of Gunn which have set the internet alight.

“I feel like it's just pushed our scene in Australia into the Dark Ages,” Australian hip-hop pioneer Spice told the BBC.

Gunn, a 36-year-old university lecturer, lost all three of her Olympic battles in viral fashion, her green tracksuit and unorthodox routine – which included the sprinkler and kangaroo-inspired hopping – generating waves of memes and abuse.

The fallout has divided and disappointed the Australian breaking community.

“It made a mockery of the Australian scene and I think that's why a lot of us are hurting,” Spice says.

Many have rushed to defend Raygun against the onslaught.

Others are ready to admit there are questions to be answered over her qualification and performance, but say the global bullying has undermined any attempt to fairly analyse what went down in Paris.

Gunn's unlikely beginnings

Gunn was always a dancer - albeit in jazz, tap and ballroom first - but it was her husband and coach Samuel Free that introduced her to the world of breaking when she was 20.

She says it took years to find her place in the male-dominated scene.

“There were times that I would go into the bathroom crying because I was so embarrassed at how terrible I was at this,” she told The Guardian Australia ahead of the Olympics.

Eventually though, Gunn became the face of breaking in Australia – a top-ranked B-girl and an academic with a PhD in the cultural politics of the sport.

And at an Olympics qualifying event in Sydney last October, where 15 women from across Oceania competed, Raygun emerged triumphant and booked her ticket to Paris.

Like Gunn, breaking was perhaps a surprising candidate for the Olympics. Born in the cultural melting pot of the Bronx in the 1970s, the street dance quickly became a global phenomenon.

And in recent years it caught the eye of Olympics chiefs desperate to attract new and younger audiences.

Some argued it didn’t deserve Olympic attention, while others insisted a competition like that could not capture breaking’s essence and would only further divorce the artform from the street culture it came from.

All eyes were on the event in Paris to see if the Olympic Committee’s gamble would pay off.

Hottest topic on the planet

From the moment the final B-girl battle at the Olympics wrapped up, it was clear that breaking had indeed captured global attention – or, more specifically, Raygun had.

Rumours and criticism of her performance spread like wildfire, particularly online.

Gunn received a torrent of violent messages, and an anonymous petition demanding she apologise was signed by 50,000 people.

She was accused - without evidence - of manipulating her way onto the world’s biggest stage at the expense of other talent in the Australian hip-hop scene.

Some people shared a conspiracy that she had created the governing body which ran the Oceania qualifiers, and a lie that her husband - who is also a prominent breaker and a qualified judge - was on the panel that selected her.

Australian factchecking organisations and AUSBreaking, the national organisation for breaking, quickly tried to correct the record, but that didn’t stop the flood.

Then there were those arguing that she had mocked and appropriated hip-hop culture.

"It just looked like somebody who was toying with the culture and didn't know how culturally significant it was,” Malik Dixon told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

In a series of statements, AUSBreaking stressed that judges were “trained to uphold the highest standards of impartiality” and that not a single person on the nine-person panel for the Oceania qualifiers was Australian.

And while AUSBreaking has had many “interactions” with Raygun since its conception in 2019, at no point has she ever held a leadership position or been involved in “any decision making over events, funding, strategy, judge selection or athlete selection”.

Taking to Instagram to rubbish all the “crackpot theories”, Te Hiiritanga Wepiha - a Kiwi judge on the Oceania qualifying panel - said Raygun won fair and square.

“All us judges talked about how she was going to get smashed, absolutely smashed [at the Olympics]… She knew it was going to be rough, so it's actually courageous of her," Wepiha – also known as Rush – said in a livestream

Some of the country’s most decorated athletes and highest Olympic officials also loudly defended Gunn.

"The petition has stirred up public hatred without any factual basis. It's appalling," the Australian Olympic Committee’s Matt Carroll said.

Gunn herself had previously said she was “never” going to be able to beat her powerful competitors, so had “wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative”.

In a video posted to social media in the eye of the public storm, Gunn added that she had taken the competition “very seriously”.

“I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics and I gave my all. Truly.”

She had only been trying to “bring some joy”, she said. "I didn't realize that that would also open the door to so much hate, which has frankly been pretty devastating.”

Community split

Some within the Australian hip-hop community admit the response to Raygun’s routine initially elicited “a chuckle” - but it quickly got out of hand.

Everyone was unequivocal in condemning the sheer volume of abuse, ridicule and misinformation that has targeted Raygun and the broader Australian B-girl community.

But beyond that, feeling is somewhat split.

Many B-girls say Raygun’s performance does not reflect the standard in Australia.

“When I first saw it, I was so embarrassed,” Spice – who retired from breaking years ago – says.

On any other stage, Raygun would have been encouraged and supported for “having a go”, Spice says, but people representing the country need to be at a certain level. “It’s the Olympics for God's sake!

“In hip-hop we have this thing, you step up or you step off… You need to know your place.”

She stresses, though, that the “bullying is just disgusting” - and many like herself have been reluctant to speak up out of fear of adding to Gunn's anguish.

But the impact of the controversy on local Australian B-girls has also been "devastating", Tinylocks told the BBC.

Like some others the BBC spoke to, she did not want her full name published because the scale of abuse circulating.

B-girl’s videos are being trolled, their DMs inundated with insults and violent threats. Young dancers are being harassed at school, and many now feel unsafe practising in public.

"Telling us to be positive and supportive while we are being harmed is unacceptable... [we’re] allowed to be angry,” she said in a statement.

Tinylocks – who herself has battled Raygun – thinks Gunn simply had a terrible day, but says there are questions about her preparation and routine that need answering.

“We know you're capable of more… Were you set up for success?”

According to Wepiha, Gunn's victory in qualifying reflects the size of the “tiny” breaking scene in Australia, and the even tinier public and government support for it.

"I mean, we had to actually get people out of retirement to make up the numbers," he said.

"That's how small the scene is."

Others says there were rules which may have made a small talent pool even shallower – like the requirement that potential qualifiers be a member of AUSBreaking and that they have a valid passport, in line with rules put forward by the World Dance Sport Federation.

AUSBreaking did not respond to the BBC’s queries about Raygun’s selection, the financial support it receives or how it seeks out the country’s best breaking talent.

But Steve Gow, the group’s secretary and long-time b-boy Stevie G, tells the BBC the size and isolation of Australia inhibits the growth and development of the scene.

Being so distant from other, bigger hip-hop communities abroad can make it hard – both in terms of time and money – to learn from them.

“It can be very insular,” he says.

As if proving the point, he regularly pauses to greet almost everyone who walks into the Red Bull competition, which he is judging.

He insists there is still a high quality of breaking in Australia.

Ultimately, the community is bitterly hurt by the world’s response.

They feel breaking isn’t truly understood, and that people have piled on without knowledge or context.

“It’s a big disappointment because they’re not talking about the winners… they’re all talking about Raygun’s memes, and they’re not even seeing her full set,” Samson Smith – a member of hip-hop group Justice Crew – told Network 10.

But many hope a silver lining may yet emerge.

"She might actually bring enough attention to get resources,” Wepiha said.

“At the end of the day, Australia has the most famous Olympian of 2024 and she might actually save the scene here."

-BBC