While the Olympics were full of standout moments, none quite compared to Rachel “Raygun” Gunn’s performance during the breaking competition. The Australian breakdancer broke the internet after her zero-point earning routine, which didn’t win over the judges but certainly won over viewers’ hearts. The star (sorta-kinda) made a surprise appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday night, with Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch giving her best Raygun impression, decked in a replica of her Olympic uniform and flopping across the floor like fish out of water.
Dratch appeared after Fallon nodded to Raygun’s performance in his opening monologue, playing a clip of her moves as well, which includes a slightly (we cannot stress “slightly” enough) better version of the aforementioned fish-flop and some kangaroo hops. “You have to wonder where Raygun is right now,” Fallon said before he was interrupted by the same music Raygun danced to. Dratch then took the stage and only communicated through her moves. When she motioned to Fallon to join her, he did, with form closer to the real Raygun’s. (He did look a bit athletic!)
If you’re wondering how Raygun made it to the Olympic stage, it’s a fair question: The 36-year-old Gunn is a college professor who holds a music degree and a Ph.D. in cultural studies. She researches breaking, street dance, hip-hop, and gender at Macquarie University in Sydney and did, somehow, win the Oceania breaking championships to qualify for the Olympics.
As New Yorker columnist and filmmaker Jay Caspian Kang pointed out in a lengthy analysis on X, Gunn has written extensively about her own participation in a scene she’s now a part of. “We confessed what is subculturally considered a shameful secret: that Hip Hop is only part of our lives,” she wrote in a co-authored paper. “To gain respect and eventually a position of authority in the scene, you need to spend years representing, you need to know your history, you need to meet and learn from the right people, you need to be in the right places. This is not to say we disagree with these conventions, it is important to recognise those that have come before us, but how accessible is it?”
Caspian took issue with Gunn using the Olympic stage to further her work, center her lack of belonging, and inadvertently take away the spotlight from dancers with true skill. “I don’t get how she doesn’t see this as an act of colonization or whatever where she, alone, gets to subvert the meritocracy and hip hop culture by doing her kangaroo dance and forcing her own struggles as a white Woman who feels excluded at times from hip hop onto the sport’s biggest audience ever,” he wrote.
But while there were plenty real critiques of Raygun’s performance, most of the internet decided to lean into the fun, silly aspect of it all. “I’d like to personally thank Raygun for making millions of people worldwide think ‘huh, maybe I can make the Olympics too,’ ” wrote one social media user, while another noted, “I could live all my life and never come up with anything as funny as Raygun, the 36-year-old Australian Olympic breakdancer.”
