Gunn is a 36-year-old lecturer at Macquarie University and a B-Girl who represented Australia at the Olympics in breaking. Gunn made a splash not only for her unique background — her academic research focuses on breaking — but also due to her performance.
Gunn notched three straight losses in the round-robin portion of the breaking competition in Paris, scoring zero points against her three competitors from the United States, France, and Lithuania. Her moves, however, turned her into a meme — and brought about a wave of backlash from those questioning how she got into the games at all.
Some critics online have claimed that Gunn unfairly obtained her spot on Team Australia. One viral petition alleges that Gunn established the governing body that managed the qualifier and that Gunn’s husband Samuel Free may have been part of the “selection panel” for Australia’s representatives.
But Gunn’s qualifying process is relatively simple to trace — here’s a breakdown of how she qualified for the Paris games.
The World DanceSport Federation announced the breaking qualifying process in 2022
The Paris Olympics presented breaking in partnership with the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF), adding it to the games after its debut at the Summer Youth Olympic Games in 2018, according to the official Olympics website.
The WDSF announced the qualifying system in April 2022. There were 32 spots — 16 B-Girls and 16 B-Boys — available in the games, and three different ways to qualify.
- Breakers could qualify at the WDSF World Championships held in Belgium in September 2023. There were two spots available — one man and one woman.
- Breakers could also qualify through a continental qualifying event, each of which had two spots available for a man and a woman.
- The remaining 20 spots were up for grabs at Olympic qualifier series events in Shanghai and Budapest in May and June 2024.
Australia’s regional qualifying event was the 2023 WDSF Breaking Oceania Championship, which was held in Sydney in October 2023. The regional organization Ausbreaking organized the event.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, current Ausbreaking president Lowe Napalan — himself a breaker — established the organization in 2019. Breaking was confirmed as a 2024 Olympic sport in December 2020, and the organization (then called the Australian Breaking Association) began to take registrations for breakers interested in competing at the games.
Ausbreaking has maintained a national ranking system dating back to 2020. Gunn ranked first in the inaugural 2020 ranking, then again in 2021. She placed second in both 2022 and 2023, according to publicly available records.
Ausbreaking announced in a September 2023 Instagram post that registration was open for the Oceania championship. The organization announced the judging panel, composed of international breakers (none from Australia) and headed up by Katsu One of Japan, on October 18, 2023 — meaning Free wasn’t one of the judges.
Gunn qualified at the Oceania Championship in October 2023
Gunn competed at the WDSF World Championship in September 2023 — the first opportunity to earn a spot at the Olympics. Dominika “Nicka” Banevič of Lithuania took the first-place qualifying spot. Gunn took 64th in the competition, while fellow Australian Molly Therese “Holy Molly” Chapman took 79th.
She then competed in the WDSF Oceania Breaking Championship in October of that year. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, she was the top-scoring B-Girl on the first day of the competition and made it to the top eight. After the second day, she emerged on top and earned the qualifying spot.
Australia had the potential to send one more woman to the Olympics via the qualifier series events held in Shanghai and Budapest in 2024. The second, third, and fourth place B-Girls from the Oceania qualifier — Holy Molly, Hannah, and G-Clef — competed, but did not earn a spot.
Ausbreaking has released multiple statements refuting claims about Raygun’s qualification
On Monday, Ausbreaking released a statement about the qualifying process, saying that the Oceania championships were judged using the same system as the 2024 Olympics. The organization also condemned harassment against Gunn.
“Ultimately, Rachael Gunn and Jeff Dunne emerged as the top performers in exactly the same process, securing their spots to represent Australia in Paris,” the statement reads. “Their selection was based solely on their performance in their battles on that day.”
On Wednesday, the organization released another statement directly addressing the false claim that Gunn’s husband was one of the judges at the event.
“Contrary to circulating misinformation, Dr. Gunn’s husband, Raygun’s coach, was not a member of the selection panel or judging committee,” the statement reads. “This would have constituted a conflict of interest, and the Olympics hold strict standards that would never have allowed this to pass.”
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