Australian breaker Rachael Gunn on Wednesday told a Sydney radio station that she plans to retire from competition just three months after her unconventional routine at the Paris Olympics led to her being ridiculed and prompted questions about how she qualified for the Games.
The now-37-year-old Sydney university lecturer failed to get on the scoreboard in all three of her competition rounds in August, with a routine that included unorthodox moves such as a kangaroo hop.
Gunn had initially planned to keep competing, but said the experience had been so “upsetting” that she changed her mind.
Photo: AP
“I just didn’t have any control over how people saw me or who I was,” she told radio station 2DayFM. “I was going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems really difficult for me to do now. I think the level of scrutiny that’s going to be there, and people will be filming it, and it will go online.”
Breaking was being contested at an Olympics for the first time, but it is not scheduled on the Olympic program for Los Angeles in 2028 or for Brisbane, Australia, in 2032.
“Raygun” as she was known, was later ridiculed on social media, with some posts also questioning the Olympic qualifying process.
In a television interview for The Project on Australia’s Channel 10 in September, she told of being chased by cameras through Paris streets and how she dealt with the very public reaction to her performance.
“That was really wild,” she said. “If people are chasing me, what do I do? That really did put me in a state of panic. I was nervous to be out in public. It was pretty nerve-wracking for a while.”
Gunn’s performance was mocked online and on television, including in a sketch on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night TV show.
Gunn said she would not stop breaking entirely.
“I still dance and I still break, but that’s like, in my living room with my partner,” she said.
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