Australian Olympic breaker Rachael Gunn retires from competition

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B-Girl Raygun of Team Australia competes during the B-Girls Round Robin - Group B on day fourteen of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Place de la Concorde on August 09, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

Rachael Gunn, the Australian breaker who was widely ridiculed for her unconventional routine at the Paris Olympics, plans to retire from competition.

Gunn, a university lecturer from Sydney, told an Australian radio station that she had initially planned to keep competing despite the criticism, but said the experience had been so "upsetting" that she changed her mind.

"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."

"Raygun" failed to get on the scoreboard in all three of her competition rounds in Paris, with a routine that included unorthodox moves such as a kangaroo hop. Her questionable performance spawned conspiracy theories about how she qualified for the Games.

In a television interview for The Project on Australia’s Channel 10 in September, she recalled being chased by cameras through Paris streets and dealing with the very public reaction to her performance.

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"People didn’t understand breaking and were just angry about my performance," Gunn said. "The conspiracy theories were just awful and that was really upsetting."

She apologized for the commotion, but again defended her performance and said she was thankful for support from others in the sport.

It was the first time breaking was an Olympic sport, and it may be the last. The sport is not on the competition list for Los Angeles in 2028, and also is unlikely to appear in 2032 at Brisbane, Australia.