Raygun makes 'alarming' revelation in TV interview after spilling beans on Olympic Games furore

Rachael Gunn, AKA Raygun has made a heartbreaking revelation about the backlash around her Olympic Games participation and the mental toll it took after appearing in a world-first TV interview on Wednesday night. Raygun's breaking routines went viral and saw the Aussie B-Girl panned across social media, with celebrities such as Adele and Jimmy Fallon even adding to the pile-on against the 36-year-old university lecturer.

Raygun failed to score a point in any of her three battles, with moves such as the kangaroo hop and sprinkler earning the Sydney academic global ridicule. Some critics described Raygun's performance as an embarrassment to the country and questioned how she qualified for the Olympics in the first place. But Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among those to applaud her for giving it a go and doing her best.

In an exclusive interview with The Project that aired on Wednesday night, Raygun was able to tell her side of the story in a first TV appearance since the Olympics. She admitted the saga left her struggling mentally and forced her to go off social media due to the global backlash. "Fortunately, I got some mental health support pretty quickly and I also went off social media, I went off the internet," she told the program. "But it's pretty up-and-down... it's just still pretty hard to process.

Raygun says hate on social media took a heavy toll

"It was really sad how much hate that it did evoke... also just due to people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches in breaking, and it was so fantastic that the next day the judging chair, MG, came out and explained that in the breaking community what I did actually wasn't very shocking.

"But of course, there's been a portion of very angry and.. awful responses, not only attacking me but attacking my husband, attacking my crew, attacking the breaking and street dance community in Australia, my family. The energy and vitriol that people had was pretty alarming."

Raygun also faced ugly and untruthful claims that she set up her own governing body for breakdancing to qualify for the Paris Games and that her husband and coach was the reason she was selected in the first place. Those allegations sparked an online petition that earned 50,000 signatures before it was forced to be taken down due to its false and "defamatory" nature.

Raygun shoots down ugly claims around Olympics selection

"Yeah, the conspiracy theories were just awful," she added. "That was upsetting because it wasn't just people that didn't understand breaking and were just angry... it was people that are now attacking our reputation and our integrity. And, look... none of them were grounded in any kind of facts.

The Project host Waleed Aly at one point asked if Raygun "genuinely" believed she was the best female breaker in Australia, to which the 36-year-old responded: “I think my record speaks to that. I was the top-ranked Australian b-girl in 2020 and 2022 and 2023. I have been invited to represent at how many World Championships, Paris, Korea.. So, the record is there...

"I won the Oceania Championships... I was a direct qualifier.. There were no judges, all from overseas... I don't think any of them had judged in anything I had been in before. I was super nervous about it, to be honest because even though I had won all these competitions in Australia, I was nervous about winning this one because it was all new judges."

Raygun 'very sorry' for the backlash around her routines

But the Macquarie University academic - who researches the cultural politics of breaking - said she was disappointed at the uproar from critics who've suggested her displays made a mockery of the sport and damaged the reputation of the breaking community.

“It is really sad to hear those criticisms,” she said. “And I am very sorry for the backlash that the community has experienced, but I can’t control how people react.” Raygun said she also had no idea that her performances at the Olympics would cause such a global stir and revealed she was left in a "state of panic" after being chased by camera crews through the streets of Paris.

“That was really wild,” she recalled about the stark reality of her newfound fame. “If people are chasing me, what do I do? But that really did put me in a state of panic.. It kind of feels like a really weird dream that I've been having that I'm gonna wake up from at any moment. Like, what is life right now?!"

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The interview comes after Raygun shared an emotional video message on social media after the Olympic Games, in which she thanked supporters and addressed her haters and the wave of negativity that surrounded her performances. The B-Girl described the vitriol against her as "pretty devastating" and insisted that she took the competition incredibly seriously, trained hard and gave her all.

Raygun says she has no future plans to compete in breaking but is determined to take the positives from the whirlwind experience. "I'll survive. I'm alright," she said. "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."