Australian breakdancer Raygun announces retirement from competition breaking

Australian Olympic breakdancer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn will not compete in the Olympics again.
Gunn, who made her Olympic debut at the 2024 Paris Games, faced viral attention following her performance — there are now nearly 100 thousand TikTok posts with the hashtag #Raygun.
But most of the attention was ridicule. Gunn was even the subject of a comedy sketch on “The Tonight Show.”
During a Tuesday appearance on the “Jimmy & Nath Show,” Gunn was asked if she had plans to compete in the Olympics for a second time in 2028, even though breaking is not on the list of games at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“I’d still break, but I’m not going to compete anymore,” she said. “I was going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems really difficult for me to do now, to approach a battle … I mean, I still dance and I still break but, that’s like in my living room with my partner.”
Gunn noted she expects an increased “level of scrutiny” if she were to compete in the Olympics again.
“People will be filming it and it will go online, and it’s just got not going to mean the same thing,” she said. “It’s not going to be the same experience because of everything that’s at stake.”
Following her Olympic debut, Gunn became the center of worldwide backlash and criticism. A petition was raised which called Gunn’s Olympic qualification into question and she faced viral attention, most of which came in the form of memes poking fun at her, as previously reported by the Deseret News.
Gunn said the viral attention has been “surreal and it’s still impossible to process.”
“It was really upsetting because I felt like I just didn’t have any control over how people saw me, or who I was,” she added. “It was really tough but I just try to stay on the positives.”
While Gunn is stepping away from competing, she said she is working on projects which aim to “encourage people to dance and have fun and be creative and be themselves.”
In a Thursday interview with “The Project,” Gunn clarified her comments she made on Tuesday. She emphasized that she is not retiring from breaking, but from competing.
“I was talking about competing, and yeah, I don’t really see myself competing anymore,” Gunn said.
“Raygun’s not retiring,” she said. “But I think I mean, because it’s different in breaking culture, I’m still going to dance, and I said that in the interview. I’m still going to dance, I’m still going to go to community jams. I’m still probably going to get down and and dance and enter a community jam, things like that.”
“But in terms of those elite competitions, and the Olympics,” Gunn will no longer compete, she said. “But, I’m still going.”