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Dr. Rachael Louise “Raygun” Gunn is a lecturer at Macquarie University, Australia, who has extensively studied and participated in the Sydney breaking (more commonly known as break dancing) scene. Her work has primarily focused on studying social dynamics in the breaking scene from feminist and queer perspectives: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=LLebtn8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra. Gunn has also demonstrated outstanding ability in the breaking scene, having won numerous competitions across Oceania and garnering wide respect from other Australian breakers.
Gunn has also been widely reported as having a background in Jazz, Tap dancing, and Ballroom dancing.

I put it to you that Rachael Gunn is intimately familiar with breaking, to a much higher degree than most breakers, having both personal and academic experience with the scene. Her academic work breaking down elements of the scene indicate a detailed understanding of the moves, speech, social and cultural contexts, modes of dress, relationship with gender, and numerous other individual aspects. She also has a detailed understanding of her relationship to the scene, having written a paper titled The ethics of living a double life: rethinking ownership, authenticity, and identity in hip hop culture, and spoken in interviews of being white and middle class in a scene that grew from socially impressed minorities.

So how could someone with the demonstrated knowledge and ability of Raygun not score a single point at all, having reached the Olympics as the highest scoring competitive b-girl in Oceania? Indeed, Martin Gillian, head breaking judge at the Olympics, praised her performance, and she's received extensive support from the breaking community in defence of her routine, so a score of zero seems impossibly unlikely.

The inclusion of breaking at the Olympic games was a controversial topic ahead of its debut, primarily due to concerns over the corporatization and dilution of breaking culture inclusion would bring, and was widely criticised by the breaking community. One person who studied the divide in opinions was Dr Rachael L Gunn, who in 2023 published The Australian breaking scene and the Olympic Games: The possibilities and politics of sportification, which criticised the IOC and WDSF’s implementation and homogenisation of the scene. From the conclusion of the paper:

[...] the concerns are centred on the impact upon culture, and a potential loss of agency and self-determination. Isolated from neighbouring countries, and consisting of distinct, localized scenes guided by individual agents, top-down decision-making led by the WDSF already impacts the social organization, identities and hierarchies of respect within the Australian breaking scene.

While sport and the Olympics are framed as ‘great equalizers’, the exclusivity of Australia’s sporting institutions along gendered, class and racialized lines means that breaking’s sportification may in fact impact the accessibility of breaking. While the ABA aims to ensure that Australian breakers retain self-determination and agency through this Olympic process, there are many obstacles that come with the introduction of concepts like governance, transparency and accountability. Making global what is essentially a localized practice invariably requires standardization, homogeneity, professionalism and risks further moving breaking away from its African American and Latin cultural traditions and histories.

I put it to you that Raygun's olympic performance was in fact carefully calculated to show off breaking without meeting a single olympic criteria, as a protest against the inclusion of the sport, choosing to show breaking off as an artistic medium rather than athletic one. Using movements that were specifically contextual to Australia's presence in an international space, her performance was a criticism of the IOCs attempt to represent breaking as a gymnastic sport rather than artistic expression, and directly intended to sabotage the inclusion of breaking - and expected resulting gentrification of the scene - in the Olympics.
Currently it has been confirmed that the 2028 Olympic Games will not feature breaking, and there are currently no plans to include it in the 2032 Games.
Raygun wins.

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[-] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 39 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Or she could just be bad, and there wasn't anyone better at the trials?

Look at her qualifiers leading up to the Olympics. Or the promotional piece she did. They are still at a sub par level, and that's being generous.

[-] GaveUp@hexbear.net 31 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Hexbear tries way too hard to be contrarian sometimes

[-] milk_thief@hexbear.net 23 points 4 months ago

the reason I am not doing serious discussions on here, also, if you excuse me, I am heading back to the beanis mines

[-] ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net 7 points 4 months ago

Stolen valor, I'm the only hexbear who actually works in the bean mines

[-] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 5 points 4 months ago

How dare you accuse me of trying. I looked at the second article title and the post wrote itself.

[-] ClimateChangeAnxiety@hexbear.net 27 points 4 months ago

According to a tiktok I saw (fantastic source I know) the competition she won to qualify had very few real competitors because a lot of people couldn’t afford to attend

[-] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 29 points 4 months ago

Olympians are basically all rich kids for reasons such as this

[-] aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I mean that's how it goes for a lot of these niche sports in certain regions. For instance the womens South African and African speed climbing champion and record holder doesn't even train on a full sized speed climbing wall, and travels over 1000km by bus once a month to practice on a full sized wall, which isn't even officially certified. Resources are slim and a lot of athletes have to get inventive with training and attending competitions. Which means that sometimes you just can't attend certain competitions.

[-] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 21 points 4 months ago

Yeah people are acting like it's weird that a country is significantly outclassed by the competition in an Olympic competition but do these people even watch the Olympics? That shit happens all the time.

If you want to know what happened on stage you have to watch the round robin. If you haven't seen how her dancing changed over time but that even at the start when she was seriously trying she was no where near her competition's level of skill, then you don't know what happened. By the time she was doing the kangaroo hop thing it was her sixth public dance off against someone obviously better.

She started dancing in her 20s, is 36 and took a bunch of years off dancing for her PhD. Her competition was all under 20 and have been doing nothing but breaking since they were in single digits. It's not supernatural.

[-] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 13 points 4 months ago

Real Jamaican bobsled team hours

Yeah but they were cool

[-] gueybana@hexbear.net 5 points 4 months ago

You’re saying that if I dedicated 6 months into breakdancing I could be in the Olympics?

[-] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 12 points 4 months ago

If you live in a region of the world that isn't competitive in that sport and you're rich enough to attend qualifying matches then IDK maybe honestly. It's not like the 16 people qualifying for an event are the 16 best athletes in the world that's not how the Olympics works

[-] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 3 points 4 months ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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