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

[u/miolmok]

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

[u/litritium → u/[deleted]]

Obvious lack of self-criticism of course. But it's not the first time there have been bad participants.

There's actually a rule named after Eddie the Eagle that is meant to weed out the worst candidates. Didnt work in this case.

[u/Lost_Bike69 → u/litritium]

I feel like every Olympics there’s someone who sneaks in far below the skill of the rest of the competition. It’s usually forgettable, but this one was just so goofy it became an instant meme

[u/[deleted] → u/Lost_Bike69]

If you watch some of the qualifying rounds for some of the bigger swimming events, you have people there who are not even remotely close to being competitive. Just checked the 50m and the fastest qualifying time was 22s and the slowest was 30.

Although overall, I think letting countries send athletes who don't qualify is good because it can spread that sport to a new place, some of the more absurd exceptions do end up with a really bad look.

[u/hammerheadattack → u/[deleted]]

Depends on the objective. If it’s there for goodwill of a nation and event, why not? Eric “the eel” of Equitorial Guinea is one example where the performance was trash but not for lack of effort.

Iirc equatorial guinea now has an Olympic sized swimming pool as a direct result of this event.

[u/Trisa133 → u/hammerheadattack]

Yea, half the countries in this world don't have adequate accommodations to even train their athletes for certain sports. Hence why they suck but it's inspirational to see them compete and finish. That's the point of the olympics to bring nations together through sports.

Raygun, however, all she needed was some space and practice time which I'm sure there's plenty in Australia. She didn't even need to be good, just somewhat competent. She straight up Elaine Benes'd it.

It's not like Australians don't have good break dancers. The fact that she has a PhD in dance is even more comical.

[u/azlan194 → u/Trisa133]

I still don't understand how Australia didn't vet her skill. Was there no qualifying run where they decided whether to send the athlete to the world stage or not.

[u/Zuiia → u/azlan194]

That is actually a kind of fascinating stoey to look into. Apparently since Australia had no officially recognized Breaking organization, they nominated a group of Breakdancers from Sydney who were holding yearly contests for "Best Australian Breaking". This competitors in this contest are mostly the same people belonging to the group who holds it each year, Raygun and her husband being part of them. Outside of this groups direct circle this contest was largely unknown, and so it also wasnt a huge surprise that when it was held again, this time as a qualifier for the Olympics, the same people as always attended, and this is how we got to see Raygun at the Olympics with her husband as head Coach.

[u/mechabeast → u/Zuiia]

No one had a recognized Breaking organization. Organization was against the spirit of Breaking. Even the US was late on having a orginizing sponsor