"Rachael wanted to bulk up her ResearchGate profile" - Tweet on Raygun's alleged motive behind Olympics fiasco goes viral

Australian breakdancer Rachel Gunn, who is better known as B-Girl Raygun on the internet, made headlines last week after her supposedly unusual performance at the 2024 Paris Olympics. In the now-viral videos, she was seen squirming and hopping around the dance floor, while touching her toes, which subsequently turned into a meme.

In the wake of this, editor, podcaster, and internet personality Hannah Berrelli took to X to share her views about Raygun’s performance. She began her lengthy post by writing how she tried to give Rachel Gunn the benefit of the doubt, but upon investigation into her bio, she realized that the Olympian did not take breakdancing as a serious sport.

“Her little stunt diminishes Australia on the world stage. Hundreds of Australian athletes who will have dedicated their entire lives to athletic excellence will be forgotten because Rachael wanted to bulk up her ResearchGate profile. Rather than their medals and efforts, this is what Australia will be remembered for,” Berrelli wrote.

Hannah Berreilli's comments on Rachel Gunn. (Image via X/ HannahBerreilli)

The RedFem podcast co-host further slammed Raygun for using the Olympics stage to advance her career as a doctorate in cultural studies with a specialty in “the gender politics of movement and breakdancer." She claimed that it would not only minimize the chances of Australians in future Olympics but also women athletes worldwide.

Hannah Berrelli’s August 10 tweet has now garnered severe traction online. At the time of writing, it had earned over 47,000 likes, 1700 comments, and 6200 reposts.

---

Exploring Hannah Berrelli’s tweet on Raygun Olympics performance

Over the weekend, Hannah Berrelli reshared a video of Rachel Gunn’s Olympics show and added a long caption to it, sharing her disappointment. She began by saying how she “looked into” Raygun and concluded that she made a mockery of not only breakdancing but the Olympics as a whole, for “self-advancement.”

“I thought maybe I should feel sorry for the woman, athletes can choke, and maybe it was cruel for people to be making fun of her," she wrote.

She added:

"Alternatively, I thought it may be possible she was led up the garden path, told she was a good break dancer when she wasn’t, and I can’t imagine anything more humiliating than realizing you are in fact not a talented athlete on the world stage.”

She mentioned upon research she discovered that Raygun is a doctorate with her area of expertise being gender politics in breakdancing and movement, who has written about “how including breakdance in the Olympics changes it from a practice within an alternative subculture, to a hegemonic one that incorporates the dance into what she sees as Australia’s settler colonialist project.”

“I am 100% certain what she is doing here, in wearing the Australia kit even, is trying to make some subversive point she can later write journal articles about. This whole episode is demonstrative of the supreme selfishness of woke identity politics studies,” Berrelli noted.

The internet personality blamed Rachel Gunn’s antics for having a “disastrous effect” on breakdancing’s status as a sport and its “not secure” position in the Olympics, adding that it won’t be “taken seriously after this.”

“Good job Rachael, you really showed those chauvinist nationalists, hundreds of women and girls will not get their Olympic opportunity now. Rachael represents so much of what is totally lecherous about cultural studies academics,” Hannah stated.

Hannah Berrelli blamed Raygun for picking an “understudied” subject area in order to “rise through the ranks quickly” while wreaking “absolute havoc into the lives of the people” she was studying. She also pointed out that this was possible because breakdancing academics in Australia were rare, thus condemning Gunn’s actions.

---

All you need to know about Raygun

Rachel Gunn is a native of Hornsby, New South Wales. She has been dancing since her childhood, and previously practised jazz and ballroom dancing. However, she only became interested in breakdancing after she married a professional breakdancer and began training in it while in her mid-20s.

She earned her doctorate in 2017 on “the intersection of gender and Sydney’s breaking culture.” In 2020, she joined the Australian Breaking Association and became its “top-ranked B-Girl.”

The following year, she participated in the World Breaking Championships in Paris followed by the one in Seoul 12 in 2022.

From there, she contested in the Oceania Championships in October 2023, thus qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Ahead of her recent performance, she said during an interview:

“I wasn’t a sporty kid, I was more of a dance kid. I never thought the Olympics would be on the cards for me. It’s such a privilege and it’s hugely exciting.”

However, following the backlash and trolling in the wake of her performance while ending the group stage with no points, Raygun defended herself by telling the reporters that all her moves were “original.” She also stated:

“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best, the dynamic and the power moves, so I wanted to move differently, be artistic and creative because how many chances do you get in a lifetime to do that on an international stage? I was always the underdog and wanted to make my mark in a different way.”

Likewise, Anna Meares, the chef de mission of Australia, clapped back at trolls and critics calling Raygun the “best female breakdancer” in their country and an “absolutely loved member” of the Olympics team.

She further mentioned that Rachel was one of the first breakdancers in Australia and had to overcome many challenges to succeed in a “male-dominated sport.”

At present, the 36-year-old Gunn is a lecturer at the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature at Macquarie University, Sydney. As per her bio on the school’s website, she is an “interdisciplinary and practice-based” researcher interested in the “cultural politics of breaking.”