Breaking has officially made its debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the memes are going viral for the wrong reasons. The internet found a main character of the day, Australia’s Rachael Gunn, a.k.a. Raygun, who was eliminated in the preliminary phase of the competition after losing to opponents from Lithuania, the United States, and France. A lecturer at Macquarie University, where she focuses on breaking culture in Sydney, Gunn qualified for the Olympics after winning the Oceania Breaking Championships in 2023. Despite leaving the competition empty-handed, her … signature style displayed throughout several rounds won her a place in the Meme Hall of Fame.
For those of you heeding the unserious warnings online (even breaking superfan Ice-T has gone radio silent after promoting the event for weeks), she and the other dancers made history on August 9 as the first to ever compete in breaking at the Olympics. Ami Yuasa of Japan took home the gold medal, with Lithuania’s Dominika BaneviÄ (b-girl Nicka) winning silver and China’s Liu Qingyi (671) earning bronze. Even though the dancers have broken new ground at the Olympics, all the internet cares about is getting their little jokes in about Raygun. In an interview following the viral performance, Martin Gilian, the head judge of the Olympic breaking competition, defended Raygun’s appearance on August 11. “This is exactly what Raygun was doing,†he said, according to the Associated Press. “She got inspired by her surroundings, which in this case, for example, was a kangaroo.â€