Add Page Six on Google Australian Olympic breakdancer Raygun felt like she brought “shame and embarrassment” to her country as the world was “crumbling” around her following her viral performance at the 2024 games.
“I was cringe,” Raygun, 38 (born Rachael Gunn) says in the new documentary “Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly,” which is now streaming on Netflix.
The Australian dancer went viral for her performance in the inaugural Olympic breakdance event at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Her bizarre dance – which included cheesy moves such as the sprinkler – failed to score a single point, and prompted global backlash.
The online response made her feel like her life “was crumbling around” her, she explains.
The Australian academic got into breakdancing as an adult, through her husband and coach, Samuel Free, a fellow breakdancer who went by the name, “Sammy Sex.”
Raygun got so enthusiastic that she did a PhD thesis on breakdancing, at Macquarie University in Sydney.
In 2020, after the Olympic Committee approved breakdancing as an Olympic sport, she won the qualifier in her country. She “naively” thought she’d be provided with a team of people to help her prepare for the Olympics – such as a dietician and a strength coach.
She had nothing but her husband as her coach, and nine months to get into Olympic shape, she recalls.
Previously, she hadn’t worked out regularly, but she threw herself into daily gym sessions. Raygun and Free soon realized they were out of their depth.
“It had become obvious to us that we weren’t even gonna win one [dance] battle at the Olympics,” Free says in the doc.
He explains that they shifted their aims to a more “realistic” goal of just getting one vote out of nine judges and that would have been a win for them.
Raygun ultimately got zero votes at the Olympics.
In the months before Paris, she was prescribed antidepressants and her husband notes that she was suffering from “physical exhaustion, cognitive exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion.”
She didn’t quit before the Olympics because she didn’t want to have “regrets,” she explains.
Her routine included dance moves such as the sprinkler and the kangaroo because breakdancing is “not always about the most athletic movement, it’s about the art,” she says.
Free notes that her routine was supposed to celebrate “Australian culture.” He acknowledges that the moves were “a bit cheesy” but they wanted to have “fun” and make it a “moment.”
When he watched her performance in Paris, he was “struck by the beauty” of it.
The world didn’t have the same response, and Raygun’s dance instantly went viral on Twitter, with tweets such as, “This is the worst thing Australia has ever done.”
An Olympics handler warned her following the routine that something was “brewing” on social media and advised her to go offline for a few days until it blew over.
The backlash was a “growing monster,” she says.
“It really saddened me to see how many women decided to hate on me. It was a hot topic talking point to rip into me.”
The dancer says she kept thinking that the response would be in a couple days, but “it just kept getting an extra gust of wind.”
Her husband recalls, “It wasn’t certain we would get through it. It was like a massive trauma.”
At her lowest, she felt like, “I was falling into a dark pit” and “realized my life as I know it is over.”
Conspiracy theories online began claiming that Free was part of the Australian Olympic Committee and rigged his wife’s entry.
“This misinformation is getting a lot of traction,” Free says, adding, “I wasn’t a judge. I was never on any selection committee.”
Leah Clark, a former fellow Australian breakdancer who went by the name “Flix,” says in the doc that she used to consider Raygun a friend. “But with her Olympic performance, I was offended by it. I was embarrassed by it.”
Nevertheless, she also participated in their country’s Olympic qualifier, along with the top Australian female breakdancers, and Raygun was “the best” of the bunch “on that day,” she admits.
Amid the global criticism, Raygun eventually got a lifeline in the form of the English billionaire, Richard Branson.
The tycoon, 76, invited her on a September 2024 Virgin Voyages cruise because he thought her performance was “extraordinary,” he said.
That “joyful” experience on the cruise showed Raygun that she could get through it.
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In November 2024, Raygun announced her retirement from dancing, following the “really upsetting” response. However, the doc follows the Olympian as she began re-emerging at dance events in 2025.
Raygun says her goal was simply to dance “in front of people” to show that the global backlash didn’t “defeat” her.
“I know for sure I’m never gonna stop dancing,” she declares, adding, “I know I’m a dorky white woman… and I’m OK with that.”
“I recently made the decision to leave my job in academia. I’m excited for what’s next,” she says.
In an interview published Aug. 31, Raygun told People that she hopes this documentary “opens doors.”
The experience made her “resilient,” she told the outlet, but she’s constantly “checking in” on her mental health, “and if I need to pull back from things, if I need to just take it easy at home, then I do that.”
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