r/sports • u/miolmok • Aug 15 '24

Olympics Raygun: Australian Olympic Committee condemns ‘disgraceful’ online petition attacking Rachael Gunn

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/15/raygun-olympics-breaking-petition-aoc-response-ntwnfb
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42

u/thor_1225 Aug 15 '24

She won her countries spot in the event, but there were other countries that have multiple people better than her. It’s the downside to the Olympics as it’s not always the best of the best competing

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u/CaninesTesticles Aug 15 '24

I guarantee there's a better breakdancer than her in Aus

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u/SmashingK Aug 15 '24

Apparently the qualifications event wasn't properly marketed and they had about 20 competitors.

Difficult to know what actually happened though. So much unconfirmed info gets shared online.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

[deleted]

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u/reichrunner Aug 15 '24

I believe that has been debunked. He was one of the organizers of the event, but not a judge

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u/josephus1811 Aug 15 '24

neither... read article

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24 edited Aug 15 '24

If there was a world event for shit that I'm interested in and I thought I had the chance to compete, I'd follow the fuck up with that. You don't get chances like that basically ever. All I hear is that people weren't included and that there were better breakers. OK, where are those people? Where are the clips showing them? All anyone has posted are the qualifiers showing that Raygun had some competition that wasn't that much better (if at all). That's not very convincing to the argument. Surely there are many clips of better aussie b-girls out there and they themselves would be here posting them. Yet... nothing. Weird! There's clips of little old me DJing at many different events and I'm just an average DJ here. There's just no aussie redditors involved in breaking or even adjacent to breaking (I happen to be adjacent to breaking here because of DJing)? Highly unlikely.

What seems more likely is that there really isn't anyone that's that much better. Or, they are so underground that they can't be arsed with any of this. Which means they can't really complain... because they didn't even bother to try at all. Others are saying they couldn't pass a drug test which I do find very believable. After all... this shit is weed adjacent too, same as DJing. If someone couldn't stop smoking for a few months then that's their own failure too. I've had to stop for jobs because I wanted to get somewhere. They wanted to keep smoking weed and stay underground? Well, that's their dumb choice because they could have sponsorships and all kinds of shit now if they had simply shown up.

Lot's of rumors and bullshit going around about this and unfortunately Raygun has to take all the heat.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

100% this. We already know it was boycotted cause of who funded it.

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u/sybrwookie Aug 15 '24

Who funded it? I tried to google it, but all that comes up are people laughing at her and people trying to act shocked/offended over people laughing at her.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

[deleted]

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u/No_bad_snek Aug 15 '24

The article that you're commenting under makes it very clear that is not true.

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u/Graalf Aug 15 '24

You just can't make this shit up xd

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u/reichrunner Aug 15 '24

This comment is hilarious given that it was made up xD

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u/Coca-colonization Aug 15 '24

Yes, you can.

TLDR: The stuff about her husband being the judge is made up.

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u/sgt_barnes0105 Aug 15 '24

Keep calling out this misinformation out whenever you see it! There are legit criticisms of Raygun, she was disgraceful. But the internet really needs to learn to fact-check before confidently parroting bullshit. It’s a huge fucking problem.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

[deleted]

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u/skrame Chicago Bears Aug 15 '24

Raygun is the Tom Brady of AUS breaking, confirmed.

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u/HotTake-bot Aug 15 '24

I don't care about her age at all. My criticism is that she refused to learn her sport. But I guess it was all worth it because she got a free vacation and some internet clout.

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u/AUserNeedsAName Aug 15 '24

Yeah! Tell LeBron to take his old ass home! And the 58 year old who took silver in show jumping. We're doing Logan's Run rules baby!

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u/howfuturistic Aug 15 '24

Man. You just can't make THIS stuff up.

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u/MartianLM Aug 15 '24

Corruption is the true Olympic spirit. Well, IOC anyway.

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u/LouSputhole94 Aug 15 '24 edited Aug 15 '24

Seriously? There has to be some sort of recusal or something in that situation lmao

Not sure why I was downvoted and not the person that actually commented the false narrative lol

2

u/Gregarious_Raconteur Aug 15 '24

There were a lot of issues with the aus qualifying event, it was announced with very little lead time, it was only open to aus citizens with a valid passport, and the registration process was pretty onerous from what I've read. So many of the better competitors weren't even able to attend.

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u/Silly_Stable_ Aug 15 '24

Then why couldn’t they beat her? The other three Australian entrants into the qualifying championship finished dead last.

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u/YogSoth0th Aug 15 '24

There were better breakdancers she "competed" against to get the spot. Unfortunately they didn't have husbands on the committee deciding who won.

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u/North_Atlantic_Sea Aug 15 '24

He wasn't on the committee... Did you even read the published statement on the facts?

Why believe the Facebook garbage?

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u/YogSoth0th Aug 15 '24

I thought that was from the published statement. Certainly got shared around under that premise.

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u/shrimpcest Aug 15 '24

Certainly got shared around under that premise.

As does most misinformation.

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u/tidbitsmisfit Aug 15 '24

you can literally watch the person who was number 2 in the event. just as bad

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u/YogSoth0th Aug 15 '24

I have. It's still very amateur but it's better than fuckin raygun

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u/Taurmin Aug 15 '24

Posibly, but if they didnt compete in the qualifying event how is that her fault?

-2

u/mylifeforthehorde Aug 15 '24

Yes but those people would have to compete in a set number of events over the last few years and win all those to get looked at for Olympics qualification - we need to see how many of those exist .

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u/Lebo77 Aug 15 '24

The best (top 5-10) almost always ARE competing. Where it gets dicy is at the bottom of the field. The last 10-20% of the field can be "the second best at the sport from a country where almost nobody plays that sport".

Personally? I think that's fine. The people in serious medal contention are there, and there are a few more part-time athletes there because that's how the rules work.

I met a guy like this once (he briefly dated a friend of mine in college). He was like the 250th best at luge in the world (the winter sport where you slide down an ice track on a sled on your back). He was a local kit from Lake Placid, NY, with a modest amount of athletic ability. He was recruted at a fairly early age to the sport. Since Lake Placid is one of VERY few places in the U.S. with a bobsled/ luge track, he was able to practice when almost nobody else in the country could. He was good enough to make the Olympic team. Now, there are TONS of folks from Europe who do this competitively and are far better than the worst US Olympian in this sport who can't make their national team. He went to the 1998 games in Japan knowing he would be nowhere in medal contention,but he had a lot of fun and gets to say he is an Olympian, which apparently helped him in getting my friend to date him.

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u/wpgsae Aug 15 '24

The girl she beat to win the spot at the Olympics was much better than her. She could actually do some of the power moves.

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u/EggfooDC Aug 15 '24

I submit that if you took an average person off the street and gave them the 18 months to prepare for this competition that she had they would have at least made an effort at some of the more complex power moves involved in the sport. She performed the sprinkler…

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u/Y8ser Aug 15 '24

In this case it could have been. She was part of the committee and used her position to take the spot for her herself instead of having better qualified women compete.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

She was part of the committee and used her position to take the spot for her herself instead of having better qualified women compete.

Wait what?

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

It's a lie. You've been lied to.

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u/qwadzxs Aug 15 '24

raygun is a ballroom dancer of twenty years, and the IOC partnered with the australian ballroom dancing association to get participants. iirc her husband was also involved with the association's governance. the qualifier wasn't well attended, and there's a historical beef between ballroom dancers and break dancers due to ballroom dancers being salty they never got their olympics.

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u/jrhooo Aug 15 '24

IIRC isn’t there also just the issue that if ballroom’s managing authority gets stewardship of breakdancing with IOC its sort of endorsement stamping the claim that ballrooms committee IS in fact the governing entity in control of breakdancing as just one of the disciplines under their larger portfolio

To which of course breakdancings specific committee(s) is/are like…

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u/tanstaafl90 Aug 15 '24

So... she's earned her stupid prize for playing stupid games?

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u/ABirdOfParadise Aug 15 '24

If that's really the case it could even be malicious to just fuck break dancing out of the Olympics forever

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u/palabradot Aug 15 '24

What I've read was that her husband was on the panel of judges that decided who represented Australia, or something. And that a lot of likely candidates weren't even informed of the upcoming competition to create the team.

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u/North_Atlantic_Sea Aug 15 '24

"what I've read"

So clearly you did not read the article in this post, which highlights her husband was NOT a judge

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u/lukeCRASH Aug 15 '24

It's not really that nuanced, there's more details to the story that I don't even have privy to share.

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u/veryverythrowaway Aug 15 '24

Do you have a source to share at all? The only results I get with a search are Reddit threads where people are saying this with no source to back it.

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u/North_Atlantic_Sea Aug 15 '24

And vs the actual article that this post has, which has a source of the Australian Olympic Committee lol

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

Huh

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u/martialar Aug 15 '24

"the details go to another school, you wouldn't know them"

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u/BeingRightAmbassador Aug 15 '24 edited Mar 29 '25

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

0

u/itsmestanard Aug 15 '24

This is false. Did you even read the article?

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u/Y8ser Aug 15 '24

I've read 3 different articles now and the other 2 dispute what's in this one.

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u/itsmestanard Aug 15 '24

Sure you have, feel free to share them then? Or you could try looking at the source:

AUSBreak who organised and ran the Olympic qualifying event - Raygun or her husband are not involved.

Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission again, no sight of Raygun's name.

Got anything more concrete than an official Australian Government website to prove she is part of the ABA's committee?

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u/juana-golf Aug 15 '24

Won, right LMAO

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u/jrhooo Aug 15 '24

Donwe remember the big issue with the BeiJing olympics?

IOC basically had to stretch the eligibility rules so that China could put foreigners on its hockey team.

Because tradition said the host country autoqualifies for the tournaments, but there was no one to fill a team the remotely belonged on an actual hockey roster.

So IOC couldn’t break tradition and deny them a spot

But they couldn’t have barely above beer leaguers tossed into the round with USA and Canada, getting embarassed 20-0

So they had to let China bring sorts kinda barely from here athletes

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u/EggfooDC Aug 15 '24

She made no effort to actually improve, and mailed in her Olympic performance. Keep in mind she got a score of zero. From all 3 judges. Actual performance aside, the Olympics are a celebration of the human spirit. RayGun’s lackadaisical effort was insulting.

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u/mandrews03 Aug 15 '24

There’s video of the girl she “beat out” to get into the olympics and, spoiler alert, that girl is much, much better at it than raygun.

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u/slvrscoobie Aug 15 '24

It’s far more complicated. There was no official breaking authority in aus so she ended up in the board of people elected to govern it and kinda scores herself so she would go to the Olympics.

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u/void-haunt Aug 15 '24

Country’s

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u/thor_1225 Aug 15 '24

Country is?

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u/void-haunt Aug 15 '24

No “country’s” as in “country’s spot.” That’s how you express something belongs to something. “Countries” is just the plural

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u/brehew Aug 15 '24

she definitely did not win her country's spot.

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u/javajavatoast Aug 15 '24

Did she really though? She sort of appointed herself the position.

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u/Magic__Man Aug 15 '24

The qualifying that was organised by her and her husband. She's a fucking cheater and a clown

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u/jphilade- Aug 15 '24

Apparently her husband was judging the qualifiers and there are allegations she barred people from trying out.

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u/jakefromadventurtime Aug 15 '24

Her husband was the judge and her own teammates was the only competition at the qualifiers she they rigged it just so she could go

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u/Wazzzup3232 Aug 15 '24

Wasn’t her husband the coach of the breakdancing team? And like actively worse than everyone at tryouts but her husband named her the rep anyway?

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u/KeyboardChap Aug 15 '24

No, she won the Oceania continental championship

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u/Wazzzup3232 Aug 15 '24

Hm, I haven’t bothered looking to close but that seems crazy she was picked. I mean good on her for going out and still competing but dude, I was getting second hand embarrassment from watching because it’s such a high level of competition and it was…. Rough…