Rachael Gunn says Raygun’s Paris 2024 Olympic breakdancing debut was “not as bad as I thought!” after finally watching the routine in full. She made the comment in an interview with published on Wednesday, revisiting the performance that turned her into a viral sensation and left her with a result that drew no points from the judges.
Gunn said the first wave of attention was overwhelming. “When I went viral, it was surreal. It made me feel kind of sick in the stomach – this sense of dread. I just thought: ‘Surely, this is not actually happening. Surely, this is a weird, egotistical dream I’m having where I think my face is spread around the world.’ It was a really strange experience,” she said.
Paris 2024 and the viral swing
Gunn said she had only seen “little bits and pieces” of her performance before that full rewatch, which is the part that changed her view. She also said, “Paris is now just a part of my story” and added, “For me, it’s more about radical acceptance of everything that’s happened and just one foot in front of the other, just trying to move ahead.”
The shift matters because her breakdancing debut did not stay a sporting footnote. It became an online event, then a public identity problem, with Gunn saying she gets “absolutely rubbished online” but a “very, very different response in person.” Her line about online reaction being overstated cuts against the way the episode lived on across social media.
Online reaction versus in person
Gunn said, “I do think that we put in a little bit too much credence in online reactions.” She followed that with a cleaner line: “But online is not the real world.”
She also said female athletes face more scrutiny than male athletes, pointing to how women are judged on performance, clothing, and body shape. That context helps explain why a no-points result at Paris 2024 became more than a scoreline; it became a durable image she is still working to redraw.
Untold: Raygun: Breaking Badly
The next piece of the story is Untold: Raygun: Breaking Badly, the forthcoming Netflix documentary. Gunn’s latest comments give that project a clearer frame: not a comeback arc, but a chance to show how she is recasting a performance that once looked like a punchline and now reads, to her at least, as survivable.
That is the practical takeaway for anyone still tracking the fallout: Gunn is not trying to erase Paris 2024. She is trying to absorb it, publicly, before the documentary gives the whole episode a larger audience again.
