From The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey. We've loved bringing you insights from our journals around the nation and the world this year. Over this holiday break, we're revisiting some of our biggest and best episodes from a huge year in the news. This episode originally aired on August twelve, when her Olympic performance propelled Australian breaker Rachel gunn Aka regum to global infamy, and when another Olympic legend leapt to her defense, the blame game began. The Front will return
with all new episodes on Monday, January thirteen. Just hit follow or subscribe to hear the latest every morning. Every Olympic Games turns up a folk hero. We've had Eddie the Eagle, the British ski jumper who in nineteen eighty eight finished a resounding last but became a crowd sensation. Or Eddie the Eel, who in two thousand Sydney Games swam the slowest one hundred meters freestyle in Olympic history, one of his first dips in a fifty meter pool
to a roaring standing ovation. Well, I thought I'd seen everything in the Olympics.
Rooming plot.
Speed skater Stephen Bradbury, who I would defend as a master tactician art who Australians embraced for the pure dumb luck of winning a race after everybody else fell over.
Bradbury way off the pace and Lee is now the challenger for owner Lee coming up on the outside when Lee.
Has gone down and Bradbury was in a perfect spot states over the line.
Australia's first ever Winter Olympics called Metal.
Steven Bradbury is the.
Champion and now there's Raygun. The thirty six year old university lecturer with a PhD in breakdancing culture was Australia's sole female team member in what the Olympics are calling breaking a new sport in the twenty twenty four Games. Very unlikely to reappear in future.
Wire you Gun representing her country.
Raygun was terrible, terrible in the way you or I would be terrible at breakdancing or pole vaulting or gymnastic ribbon dancing or judo or weightlifting. That is, we would be normal, normal levels of coordination, normal levels of skill, nothing wrong with that, but does normal belong at the highest levels of athletic excellence to be televised live to an audience of billions. I chatted to our sports writer Will Swanton and I've got to warn you we got
a serious case of the giggles during this interview. Will Swanton is a sports writer with The Australian. Will you were at the Place de la Concord when Reagun made her international debut. Tell me what you thought when you saw her come onto the stage.
Oh, just that name Raygun. Now I've never heard of Raygun, Like I actually not being the world's most experienced breaking reporter, Not exactly no, And I actually said some of mate sitting next to me, what time is Gun? Ray On not done? Raids? Brad Gun so sitting there, and they introduced the sixteen b girls as they're called, know that like being called athletes. Apparently they're all be girls in breaking and they're all wearing the Americans and the French
and the Japanese. They're wearing their funky hip hop clothes. And then Ygun comes out in the Australian team track suit. All right, And that was the first time I thought, what's going on here? What's this? The first thing I thought was Alyssa Healey and the women's One Day cricket team just like it looked like the cricket in the fourth the North Sydney all kind of thing. But that's all right. And I literally thought she was going to get changed before she pame me out to compete. She
was just in her trackings. So they have one on one battles as they call it, which is basically just a dance on like Zoolander. And so she came out and she was you couldn't say she was breaking like the rest of them.
First came the judge's verdict with zero. Then came the social media verdict. I'm trying to see they said somebody Mama hopped out the soccer man and came to the stage and were what is going on here?
So mad?
You're from Australia and you've done lied on your Olympics application, and said that you know how to break dance Bunny rabbit kanker.
With one of those two.
I got moved. So what you're gonna do? I'm a worm a feeling that maybe we're not taking the break dancing very seriously.
She did.
Mama turned up her moves.
This I say, I love her originality though.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, I love ebut of this stuff you ain't seen but at all did you think at any point is this a spoof or is this a joke? Or did you know from the very beginning that actually this we were seeing someone who was just not of the same athletic standard as the other competitors.
So she qualified through the Oceania Championships. She's the reigning Oceania champion of breaking, so she earned her spot, and so there's a tournament and the winner got to go to the Olympics. And I'm fascinated. I can't see any footage anywhere her in that final, Like I didn't think it was a spoof, and I didn't think of I just thought that she I mean, it's funny, we're all trying to find polite ways of putting it, but she just wasn't up to that standard, like remotely up to that standard.
After the event, but before it all went sour on social media, Rachel Gunn came out to speak to the journos.
Just a lovely woman and she was thrilled with being part of the Olympics and I just wanted to do it my way and it's been such an honor and what a treat and Breaking might never be here again. Then it's just all been so much fun, and we're looking at her thinking, oh my gosh, she's got no idea yet of what's happening on social media. I think it was a bad It was probably a bad look for the Olympics. I don't mean just her performance. I
just think Breaking didn't suit the Olympics. It didn't fit the Olympics.
I love Rachel and I think that what has occurred on social media with trolls and keyboard warriors and taking those comments and giving them airtime has been really disappointing.
Adamir Is, the boss of the Olympic team, complained publicly that trolls were being unkind to Raygun.
She is the best breakdancer female that we have for Australia. She has represented the Olympic team the Olympic spirit with great enthusiasm and I absolutely love her courage, I love her character and I feel very disappointed for her that she has come under the attack that she has.
And I think we could probably agree that some people have been unkind to her, but will doesn't be AOC and enemies have to take some responsibility for putting Rachel Gunn in a position where she was going to be humiliated internationally. Don't bear some responsibility for that.
I'm sure Rachel is probably shattered. She was trying to give everyone a bit of joquidy. But there's also from Rachel's point of view, if you're for any athlete, if you're willing to step up into something as big as the Olympics, there's the chance that you could be praised from the roof pops as some kind of sporting hero, which everyone's happen to. But for any professional sport or once you step out there, you're up for praise, to be mocked, ridiculed, criticized, told how great you are, told
that you were great. So that's all part and parcel of us. There is definitely a part of it where if the AOC sends an athlete out there, there has to be some recognition of this is Olympic competition. It has to be taken seriously. But I think they do have to accept that once you be come an Olympic athlete and you're in what was a high profile event, you're up to be.
Judged coming up. It was an otherwise stunning games for Australia. So how did we do so well in a fortnight. It'll be the Paralympics where everyone has an incredible backstory. We'll have all the action twenty four to seven at the Australian dot com dot au for our subscribers. We'll be back after this break. Olympic Games usually follow a pattern for Australia. We start very strong in the pool with gold medals and advance Australia fair coming from all directions.
We all love Week one, but in the Olympiads of recent memory, Weeks two and three are a little less spine tingling As we watch ken You win the marathon, Sweden win the high jump and China win everything else. By the closing ceremony, Australians are cheerfully celebrating a sixteenth place in the sports we know when not very good. At Paris has been different. The golds have kept coming in sports we don't normally prosper in road, cycling, skateboarding, BMX.
This Olympics Australia has done incredibly well, mind blowingly well. So what's changed that's incredible?
I think one thing that has happened a lot of other countries have become stronger and they started taking medals off the powerhouses as well, and the swimming it gets and it's not all America winning the swimming. Well, my impression is across all the sports, a lot more nations are winning medals, which are taking off Great Britain and taking some of France and taking some off Japan. So the top two America and China and miles ahead, and then the rest of the top ten is a bit
of a bunch. Then we're just snuck through. But like the men's doubles tennis at Roland Garros, it was a classic, but they were John Pears and Matt Ebden, a couple of thirty six year olds who live on the same street in Perth. Wives are best friends, kids play together, all that kind of stuff. Unseated doubles players in a field that had Rafa Nadal and Alcahaz playing together and all that kind of thing, and that was just the
unlikelest gold medal. It's lucky for Australia that the swimming is the first week because it's everyone on a high from night one. So ari m one gold that first night and the women's relay one gold that first night, So Australia's got two gold medals the first night. It's all celebratory back at the village was I think if swimming was weak too, if we had the ass the first week would be down and it wouldn't have that same But I think they all fed each other off
a bit. The impression I get is that they just had a ball. They're in Paris, the whole backdrop is one of the great cities in the world. They've done incredibly well. I think Anime is even in the way I think she was a bit off the mark with defending Raygan, because like some form of comment was always going to happen once they sent her out there. But I think in a way that was also an example of Anna just cares deeply about all these athletes, and I'm sure the way she is around the village just
constantly encouraging them. She's done great things as an Olympian, so they've got someone there who's actually done it, who's spurring them on. The impression I get is that she's whipped up this fantastic team and spirit. I think that's been part of it. But ever they should be incredibly proud of themselves.
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