The 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics are remembered for many arresting moments, from the astounding opening ceremony on the River Seine, to the grand return of champion gymnast Simone Biles.

Less conventionally, millions will recall the performance of Australian breaking athlete B-girl Rachael Gunn – aka Raygun – that reverberated wildly across the globe for long afterwards.

Calculating that she could not compete with her opponents’ athleticism, Gunn developed a breaking aesthetic based on Australiana. Dressed in an Australian tracksuit, while kangaroo hopping and jerking like a water sprinkler, she tried to impress the judges with creativity rather than power moves.

Gunn was unsuccessful, losing all three round-robin battles and scoring zero. Although an Olympic judge praised elements of her performance, the backlash that followed was overwhelming.

All this drama has resulted in a Netflix documentary titled Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly, produced by US filmmakers Chapman Way and Maclain Way, as part of its Untold sport documentary series.

Given the worldwide media coverage of Gunn, including a 2025 ABC Inside Story program, is there much more to say about Australia’s infamous breaker?

@somethingaboutkariana I’m interested in your thoughts. She’s really put a light on break dancing… it cant be denied #snoop #raygun #andycohen #wwhl #realityTV #olympics ♬ original sound – SomethingAboutThem

A broken Gunn

Gunn was criticised and mocked in a digital tidal wave of legacy news stories, meme-rich social media, and barbed observations by celebrities including Snoop Dogg and Adele.

She became comic fodder for US late-night talk shows. Some in the Australian break scene even felt she had satirised them.

Worse, false accusations started to spread of Gunn conspiring with her breaker husband/coach Samuel Free (and others) to rig her selection for Paris. The rumour led to a Change.org petition, which was later withdrawn.

Then came a nasty intellectual property dispute with Sydney comedian Steph Broadbridge over a planned parody show titled Raygun: The Musical. Broadbridge eventually axed the show in response to a heavy-handed letter from Gunn’s lawyers.

The Netflix narrative

Netflix largely frames Breaking Badly around Gunn’s perspective. Notably one of its executive producers, Stephanie Scicchitano, is managing director of the company that represents Gunn.

If viewers are expecting bombshell revelations, they will be disappointed.

The documentary offers an intimate portrait of Gunn’s experience before, during and after Paris, with substantial input from her husband and parents. The narrative is largely favourable to her, with no mention of her legal threats regarding Raygun: The Musical.

Most of the external commentary comes from Australian B-girls Tinylocks (Sammy) and Flix (Leah Clark), with whom she has a complicated friendship and rivalry. Both were deeply unimpressed by her performance in Paris.

The program displays various sides of Gunn – including vulnerable contestant, successful Olympic qualifier, credentialled academic, and wry self-critic – but does so in the absence of any critical interrogation.

Viewers with strong views about Gunn will probably retain them after watching. The rest are ushered into her corner by a point-of-view storytelling style that appeals to our better selves. It is unbecoming to kick a person as they “open up”.

The documentary ends on an uplifting note. Gunn is brought back to Australia on a Virgin Voyages pleasure cruise as part of a collaboration with billionaire Richard Branson.

She quits academia and resumes breaking, and is still “figuring out” whether she is Rachael or Raygun. The final images resemble a promotional pitch.

Unfolding the story

Television may have artfully fashioned Gunn’s story, but it does not end with her. What are the broader lessons here?

Breaking Badly shows how scandals in sport can be generated out of matters that seem not especially serious. Gunn’s kangaroo hop garnered far more media attention than United Nations criticisms that French authorities had targeted vulnerable communities during the Olympics in the name of collective security.

A sport event “goes viral” for a range of reasons. In this case, a key ingredient was how easily Gunn’s televised performance could be manipulated for click-based humour on a global scale.

But beneath all the frivolity are some deep tensions. The status of breaking as an Olympic sport was already contentious before Gunn took the spotlight. The negative publicity she received spread across the whole sport, causing problems for fellow Australian B-girls in particular.

In the documentary, Gunn justifiably complains her gender played a big part in her often-cruel treatment. Few know that her male counterpart in Paris, J Attack (Jeffrey Dunne), received just two votes. Sport is a historically male-dominated institution, and breaking is no exception.

But any gender disadvantage was countered to some degree by the benefits of being white, well-educated and from a comfortable suburb in Sydney’s Upper North Shore.

Breaking emerged from the hip-hop scene and was developed by urban African Americans and Puerto Ricans. Australia’s own breaking community is dominated by young people of colour from generally less affluent areas.

Gunn has been accused of appropriating black and brown culture. Some see her as a “cultural tourist” who does not represent – and in Paris implicitly ridiculed – less privileged breakers.

Breaking Badly reveals how Gunn, like many other athletes, was seriously under-prepared for the intense, often unforgiving scrutiny of the global “media sports cultural complex”.

Few could have handled the torrent of intrusive attention that submerged her. Yet, ironically, she agreed to let Netflix resurrect her turbulent times for public consumption.

Those of us watching this documentary must confront a troubling question of our own. What part did we play in the communal crucifixion of this B-girl?

Untold Raygun: Breaking Badly is showing on Netflix now

David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.