Australian Break Dancing Sensation Raygun Receives A Hero's Welcome Home, But How Did She Ever Qualify For The Olympics in The First Place?

First let me pre-apologize for writing a second blog on the theme of Olympic breakdancing. But I've been borderline fascinated with Raygun ever since she burst her way onto the internet last Friday with what I'm going to go ahead and dub the worst performance in the history of the Olympics. In all sports. Even worse than when Derek Redmond broke down crying mid-race and needed his daddy to come out of the crowd to carry him across the finish line.  

I'm sorry, I'm sorry that's a joke. It was the first Olympic moment that popped in my head. Only kidding Derek. I'm not comparing you to Raygun. You were a legitimate competitor and that was a very touching moment.

For 99% of the world who will never think twice about breakdancing, Raygun's performance at the Olympics was nothing more than a funny viral moment. But you gotta feel bad for the rest of the breakdancers. Almost nobody can tell you who took home the Olympic gold in men's or woman's breaking. But everybody knows who Raygun is. 

You also gotta feel bad for the rest of Australia's Olympians. They had the 4th most gold medals of any country (18). They won 53 medals total. But to a large portion of the world who doesn't closely follow the Olympics, Raygun's "breakdancing" is the only thing they'll remember. If you Google "Australia Olympics", you'll find more stories about Raygun than anyone else from Australia. It's kinda sad really. But for the love of god, do NOT try telling that Australia's "Chief de Mission", Anna Meares.

I kinda feel like Raygun's struggles coming up in the breakdancing world are besides the point. Australia sent a terrible breakdancer to the Olympics. During the competition, in response to her opponent spinning around on her head, Raygun kangaroo hopped in her face. That's just objectively hilarious. 

Secondly, I'm sorry Anna Mears, but I can unequivocally tell you, without ever being to Australia… without knowing a single Australian… without knowing a single breakdancer or anything at all about the sport of breakdancing… Raygun is not the best female breakdancer in your country. I refuse to believe it. I guarantee you there are breakdancers in Australia who didn't get the chance to qualify who would have outperformed her. They probably had no idea qualifying was even happening. Also, I bet I could have found you 5 other female Australian Olympians with far superior athletic ability, who with a week of practice could have put together something better than what Raygun showed us. 

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But allegedly, Raygun is the best breakdancer in Australia with the means to qualify. I did some digging to try and find out what exactly Australia's qualifying process looked like. I wanted to see how the hell Raygun qualifying even happened. And as you might have guessed, there's a whole ass controversy surrounding how breakdancing was handled at this year's Olympics.

Fox Sports - The first international “battle” recognised by the IOC was in 1997 - but the sport’s breakthrough moment came when it was admitted to the Youth Olympics in 2018.

The problem was, it blindsided the breaking community.

A furore erupted after what some saw as an underhanded plot by the World DanceSport Federation to join the Olympic program.

The WDSF initially wanted to get ballroom dancing in the Games, but knew it was seen as too dated to secure the audience Olympic officials were desperate to attain - GenZ.

So without any official global organisation to challenge them, the WDSF pivoted to breaking. And suddenly the sport was in the Olympics.

So you have these ball room dancing experts in the World DanceSport Federation who weaseled their way into overseeing qualifying for Olympic Breaking. They don't know shit about the sport. Breakdancers across the world were pissed. Many of the leading voices in breaking were vehemently against it's inclusion. They'd rather it not be included at all than have it run by the WDSF. They knew with the WDSF in charge, the whole thing would be a joke.

Serouj “Midus” Aprahamian, assistant professor of dance at the University of Illinois and one of the leading voices against breaking’s inclusion at the Olympics, summed up the controversy when writing a petition against the WDSF ahead of the 2018 Youth Olympics in Argentina. 

“The WDSF is a competitive ballroom dance organisation. It has absolutely no connection or credibility with any legitimate entity in the worldwide breaking community,” he wrote. 

“That the IOC has allowed these impostors to oversee breaking at the Youth Olympics is a travesty and a scandal.

“Would the IOC allow the Badminton World Federation to oversee baseball? Would it allow the Federation for Equestrian Sports to oversee auto-racing? Why would the Olympics accept such a polar opposite and illegitimate entity as the WDSF to have anything to do with breaking?

“This action is immoral, illogical, and insulting to the hundreds of thousands of B-boys and B-girls worldwide who live and breathe this culture.”

It's like if Olympic Writing were made into an event, but then they put Barstool Sports in charge of it running it. We'd still welcome the best writers in the world to compete. We'd even hire legitimate authors, professors, and real writers to help us try and run a legitimate competition. But we're still going to fuck things up, because we aren't real writers. And inevitably, many of the best writers in the world would never even consider being involved because they don't respect Barstool Sports. Why would they? Even if we're technically affiliated with the Olympics

And I'm assuming since the World DanceSport Federation doesn't know much about breakdancing, that's why they deemed the country of Australia deserving of a spot. Even though Australia had no official breakdancing federation, and no legitimate organization in charge of competitive breakdancing. So when they came to Australia to inquire about the breakdancing scene, guess who took charge?

The sport in Australia was just as disorganised when its big moment came in 2019 and inclusion in the Olympics was secured.

Australia had no recognised national federation so, as reported by the SMH, Gunn took up the challenge.

“It was like, ‘Well this is in [the Olympics] now’,” she said.

“So we’d better make sure that we’re not being misrepresented. People were really worried about what happened in the ’80s, where the narrative kind of got carried away from what breaking was, and a lot of the culture and the history was lost.

“We needed to make sure that there was a seat at the table for us, even though it’s not something that we planned or necessarily dreamed of.” 

I'm unclear how much involvement Gunn truly did have with the WDSF, and what her exact role was in organizing the competitions (if much at all). But Australia held their qualifiers. And guess who finished first, securing the Australia women's only automatic qualifying spot? Raygun.

In October, 2023, the inaugural WDSF Oceania Breaking Championships were held at Sydney Town Hall. Thirty-seven B-Boys and 15 B-Girls from the Pacific region competed for the incredible prize of a chance to be an Olympian. The event was broadcast around the world live on the Olympic Channel.

Sixteen-year-old Jeff “J-Attack” Dunne won the B-Boys’ competition, while Raygun took gold in the B-Girls’ category.

I'm not even sure Raygun deserved to win that. The girl in the green was by no means impressive, but she at least had a little footwork going. And as if that scene didn't make things apparent enough that Australia breakdancing was about to make national news in a not-so-great way, when Australia's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place finishers attempted to qualify through the Olympic Qualifier Series… in a breakdancing competition of 40 women… Australia's girls finished 37th, 38th, and 40th. 

That's how Raygun happens. 

It's almost like Raygun, who's PhD thesis was titled, "Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: a B-Girl's Experience of B-boying", just loved breakdancing so fucking much that nobody in Australia had the heart to get in her way. I mean… she's literally a breakdancing professor. I'm shocked that even exists. It's like in the end they just said, "Well we're probably going to suck anyways. We might as well let Raygun compete since she cares about breakdancing more than anybody else in the world."

I still can't help but think there are far better breakdancing women in Australia. There's gotta be a homeless person somewhere in Sydney who's making $30 per day in loose change spinning around on a cardboard box who would stuff Raygun in a locker. I'm not saying Raygun, or the good people of the WDSF intentionally didn't seek out the best breakdancers in Australia. I just don't think they even knew how to find them. It was horribly disorganized from the jump, and Raygun is the one who took initiative. 

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The Olympics tried to rush an event that probably never should have been an Olympic event in the first place, and they ended up with the most embarrassingly viral moment of the entire Olympics. For better or worse (probably better), breakdancing was a one-time thing in the Olympics. Every Olympics the home country gets to give a regionally popular sport a chance to shine, and for some reason Paris chose that. And if for some reason breaking makes a comeback in a future Olympics, maybe just let Red Bull be in charge. 

And maybe make sure Australia's invitation gets lost in the mail.