Rachael Gunn: From Olympic meme to Netflix spotlight in ‘Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly’
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — It’s no secret how the breaking news on Raygun unfolded at the Paris Olympics: the memes and the mockery came thick and fast.
The Australian breaker at the center of it all, Rachael Gunn, has told how she had an inkling of how it might go when she saw a therapist ahead of the 2024 Games.
The trailer for “Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly,” a Netflix documentary launched this month, begins with Gunn recounting how she went to the therapist in a panic right before the Olympics and was asked what’s the worst that could happen?
“The whole world could laugh at me,” she recalled answering, before adding that the therapist responded: “Do you think that’s reasonable?”
Cue clips and sounds of hysterical laughing in the wake of her now infamous and much-trolled performance when breaking made its Olympic debut in France.
In the documentary, the Sydney-based Gunn recalled her feelings in the aftermath of her competition.
“I was cringe. I brought shame and embarrassment on the country. That was rough,” she said. “I felt like my life was just crumbling before me in a way that I could never have anticipated, and I was just trying to get through the day. I felt like I was falling into a dark pit.”
He dance moves, including the kangaroo and the sprinkler, didn’t get a single vote from the Olympic judges but still went viral.
Gunn said at first some of the memes were humorous but “then the tone started to change. And it just kept getting more crazy.”
There was even a planned musical named after her in December 2024, until legal intervention meant the production went ahead under a different title.
At the time, Gunn said the fallout from her Olympic gig left her “devastated” and forced her to retire from competition. Still, she said she appreciated the attention from famous comedians like late-night host Jimmy Fallon.
In the streaming documentary, Gunn addressed rumors about how she qualified for the Olympics as well as how the fallout left her feeling. She’s no longer a university lecturer and, among other things, Gunn’s website describes her as a “speaker, educator, and performer who brings energy, insight, and positivity to every stage.”
As she said in the documentary: “I can’t just be a meme.”
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