Aussie Breakdancer Raygun Wins Over the Internet with 'Kangaroo' Moves at Paris Olympics

Although Raygun lost to some younger competitors from Team USA, France and Lithuania, she became a viral sensation online after viewers saw her moves

Raygun
Raygun competes during the Breaking B-Girls Round Robin Group B battle against Team USA's Logistx. Photo:

Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty

As breaking — a.k.a. breakdancing — marks its first year as an Olympic sport, one competitor from Australia has captured the internet's attention with her moves.

Australian dancer Raygun, 36, garnered worldwide attention after she showed off some of her unique breaking moves at the women's b-girl 2024 Paris Olympics on Friday, Aug. 9 — and fans shared their jokes and compliments alike.

"I could live all my life and never come up with anything as funny as Raygun, the 36-year-old Australian Olympic breakdancer," one X (formerly Twitter) user wrote above a photo of Raygun posing for the camera, wearing a color-coordinated tracksuit and baseball hat in Australia's colors gold and green. The post garnered over 50,000 likes on X.

"There has not been an Olympic performance this dominant since Usain Bolt’s 100m sprint at Beijing in 2008," another X user joked. "Honestly, the moment Raygun broke out her Kangaroo move this competition was over! Give her the #breakdancing gold 🥇."

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Australia's Rachael Gunn (R), known as Raygun competes against France's Sya Dembele, known as Syssy.

ODD ANDERSEN/AFP via Getty

Olympics viewers also shared some footage of her routine itself, which critics said paled in comparison to some of her younger opponents' medal-winning moves.

One social media user joked that her moves described "me tryna get the duvet off when i’m too hot at night" and another wrote they resembled "what my nephew does after telling all of us to 'watch this.'"

Friday's Round Robin competition saw each b-girl — the colloquial term for a breaker — and 16 b-boys battle against each other one-on-one as a panel of judges determined whose moves best matched the music.

"Athletes will use a combination of power moves—including windmills, the 6-step, and freezes—as they adapt their style and improvise to the beat of the DJ’s tracks in a bid to secure the judges’ votes and take home the first Olympic breaking medals," the Olympics' official website states of the breaking rule system.

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Although Raygun (whose real name is Rachael Gunn) eventually lost her Round Robin-style competition against Team USA's b-girl Logistx, 21, France's Syssy, 16, and Lithuania's Nicka, 17, her competition is hardly the end of her breaking journey.

According to her Olympics profile, the 36-year-old is a university professor in Australia and was a jazz and ballroom dancer before she got into breaking. She even studies breaking in her work as a professor — according to her biography page for Macquarie University, located in Sydney. She works as a lecturer, studying "the cultural politics of breaking."

"It is such an honor and a privilege to be, you know, one of sixteen women from around the world competing in breaking’s debut at the Olympics," Gunn said in an Instagram video shared on Thursday. "I hope that seeing breaking at the Olympics inspires a whole new generation of breakers."

To learn more about all the Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls, come to people.com to check out ongoing coverage before, during and after the games. And sign up for Going for Gold, our Olympics newsletter, to get the biggest stories from the Games delivered straight to your inbox. Watch the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, beginning July 26, on NBC and Peacock.

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