![Ray Gun]()
Tip of the cap to anyone in this life who qualify for the Olympic Games. It's an honor to represent your country on the grandest, most prestigious international athletic stage imaginable. Not all athletes are created equal, but when it came to the Summer Olympics debut of breakdancing, well, the reviews were mixed at best. At the center of breaking's polarization was
Australia's moonlighting B-girl Raygun, a PhD-holding professor by day who made it to Paris somehow.
Raygun blew up so much that killjoy Olympic figureheads were ripping down footage of her three losing routines left and right, with her kangaroo move about the only memeable clip remaining. If
Elon Musk can give the green light for rampant adult content on his X platform, can he at least rig the algorithm to include just-as-available cutups of the full Raygun Olympic experience? Probably too much to ask. We still have some of the goods...
https://twitter.com/meehawl/status/1822076918570872849
https://twitter.com/beeboboz03/status/1821944755934146907
https://twitter.com/alex_abads/status/1821945716064821450
The best way I could ever spin Raygun's routines — all of which received "zero" scores from the Olympic judges — would be framing them as avant-garde improvisational interpretive theatre dance performance art pieces. That's the most convoluted word salad of a label you'll ever hear. Only way I can make any artistic sense of it.
Anyway, the breaking artist known in real life as Rachael Gunn made her grand return to her native land, and promptly put on a routine for a crowd of dazzled fans in this recently-surfaced video:
https://twitter.com/MadisonKittay/status/1822776578184540596
Yep. Still not quite hitting it for me. Definitely not going to miss breakdancing at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, that's for sure. If Rachael Gunn can be an Olympic athlete, you can't convince me that Team USA can't deploy the likes of Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, or John David Washington in flag football.
https://twitter.com/MattFitz_gerald/status/1822765871699493016
I will defend this innovative, genius concept till the cows come home. It's just as rational if not more so than the pro-Raygun rhetoric of key figureheads who are defending her at the moment.
As
reported by The BBC, two-time cycling gold medalist and Australian Paris Games chef de mission Anna Meares had glowing words for Raygun's bravery.
"I think that what has occurred on social media with trolls and keyboard warriors... has been really disappointing. I absolutely love her courage. I love her character."
Then there was lead Olympic breakdancing judge Martin Gillan, who opined, "Breaking is all about originality and bringing something new to the table...and this is exactly what Raygun was doing."
Finally, and this is the best for last, the words of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: "The Olympics is about people participating in sport...and Raygun had a crack, good on her."
This is precisely the point I was making when writing about Raygun before. The Bryan Cranston interview clip I still can't find where he has to deal with the uncomfortable reality of watching an actor's performance and putting on a good face for them afterwards despite it not being for him. Cranston's two bits of positive feedback were either, "You're having fun!" or, "You did it!"
Yep. In his colloquial vernacular, Anthony Albanese's "Raygun had a crack" line is pretty much a 100% spot-on translation of what Cranston is getting at. Raygun had a crack. She did it. She did the thing. Being a b-girl at the Olympics. Good for her! But really her street routine for her adoring fans drives home the point that that's all it was in Paris. She did it. She had fun.
Sorry I just burst out in a sort of slap-happy fit of laughter whilst trying to figure out how to stick the landing of this article. Like Raygun's Olympic showing, I think it's the idea of it — the principle of the thing — that counts more than the outcome.
Take it away, Sky News Australia!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYGksDdyeig
