Well, it’s happened! Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn has officially retired from breaking after the mass backlash she received over her performance at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
Revealing the news live on Aussie radio, Raygun announced that she’s kangaroo-hopping out of competitive breaking for good.
“I still break, but I don’t compete. I’m not going to compete any more. No. No,” Gunn said on 2DayFM’s Jimmy & Nath on Thursday.
“I was going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems really difficult for me to do now to approach a battle.”
After scoring zero for her Kath Day-Knight-esque dance moves at the Paris Olympics, the controversial athlete faced an intense amount of criticism from the public, which she cites as her reason for stepping away.
“It’s been really upsetting. I just didn’t have any control over how people saw me or who I was,” Gunn said.
“Dancing is so much fun, and it makes you feel good. I don’t think people should feel crap about the way that they dance.
“If you get out there, and you have fun on the dance floor, then just own it.”
It comes just weeks after Raygun graced the cover of Stellar Magazine where she said her “whole world has changed” since the Olympics.
“My identity has changed. My relationships have changed, for better or for worse. It’s in times like these that you find out who your real friends are, unfortunately,” she told the magazine, before revealing that she’s focusing on her health and her family who have also been impacted by the Olympic Games buzz.
Raygun on the cover of Stellar. (Credit: Stellar Magazine)
Interestingly, she did not share in the interview that she had retired from breaking, but she did tease that she has some exciting things coming.
Without revealing too much, Raygun shared that she’s been working on a few projects “centred around self-expression and joyfulness”. How intriguing!
