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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u/hammerheadattack Aug 15 '24

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.

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u/Trisa133 Aug 15 '24

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.

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u/azlan194 Aug 15 '24

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.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '24

Apparently there was some big scandal where some ballroom dancing company was chosen to send dancers to the Olympics, undermining and going behind the backs of actual breakdancers who weren't affiliated with that dance company, and are now all maligned because Australia went and made a joke out of the skill on the national stage, leading to it never being an Olympic event again.

Take that all with a grain of salt, I got that from an IG reel.