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Rachael Gunn has not fully recovered from the events a year ago that derailed her academic career and made her a viral internet sensation for all the wrong reasons. But given her time over, she would do it all again. And she would probably advise colleagues to do likewise.

¡°One of the big criticisms of academics is that they live in an academic bubble, and their work has no meaning beyond the ivory tower,¡± said Gunn, a cultural studies lecturer at Sydney¡¯s Macquarie University. ¡°Academic work should interact with the real world¡­It should impact people personally.¡±

The impact was personal after Gunn competed in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris as the breakdancer ¡°Raygun¡±. Her kangaroo hopping-inspired routine in the 9 August heats failed to win a single point from the judges and attracted derision around the globe. Her moves and outfit were mocked and she was accused of unethical conduct. An anonymous petition, since deleted, demanded a ¡°public apology¡± from Gunn and Australian chef de mission Anna Meares. It accused the dancer of denying crucial funding to Indigenous opponents and rigging the Olympics selection process in cahoots with her husband and coach Samuel Free.

The ¡°disgraceful¡± claims were??by the Australian Olympic Committee, which said neither Gunn nor Free held any positions in the sport¡¯s governing bodies and she had obtained selection legitimately by winning the World Dance Sport Federation¡¯s Oceania championships in 2023. But the ¡°shitstorm¡± was just beginning.

¡°Everyone said¡­¡®This will blow over by Monday¡¯,¡± Gunn told Times Higher Education. ¡°It didn¡¯t. Then, ¡®It¡¯ll blow over by next week¡¯. It didn¡¯t. I came back home [to Australia] and it started up again. We had paparazzi outside our place taking pictures of us doing our Woollies shopping or going to get a coffee.

¡°Things start to settle down and then some other crazy thing happens. I¡¯m the¡­number two Halloween costume in the world, or everyone¡¯s wearing a T-shirt with my face on it. I got a birthday card that had me on it. It¡¯s had a huge impact in terms of my confidence [and] ability to go back into the classroom. I live in a totally different reality. Adjusting to [that] and processing everything that I went through has taken priority over the long-term impacts on my academic career.¡±

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Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

Some of the impacts have been positive, Gunn joked. ¡°A lot of people have downloaded¡­my journal articles. I think I¡¯ve got one of the most-read theses out there. Perhaps misread.¡±

On the downside, her ¡°very clear¡± academic plans went up in smoke. ¡°I had to¡­step away from some projects I had lined up after the Olympics. Everything I do is under scrutiny, and I put the people that I work with at risk. I¡¯m sure?Sky News?or someone would love to go into the nitty-gritty of what I¡¯m doing now. If someone¡¯s tagged a photo with me on Instagram, the haters jump on board. I don¡¯t want other people to be dragged into that.¡±

Gunn said she had reduced her workload to a day a week after the Olympics. ¡°I just wasn¡¯t in a space to do anything. My whole body, my brain ¨C I was just in shock for quite some time and was quite fragile.¡± Even now, she focuses on work ¡°related to teaching¡±, like helping with marking and setting up courses.

¡°I don¡¯t go on campus much, and when I go, I try and keep a low profile,¡± she said. ¡°My whole life has been upended. It¡¯s impacted family. It¡¯s impacted my friends. It¡¯s impacted breakers and the dance scene. There are¡­real-life ramifications for going viral and being under that level of scrutiny ¨C the criticism, the hate, the abuse, the shame. Therapy; antidepressants; learning how to leave the house by myself.¡±

The ¡°vast amount of misinformation¡± that is out there about her has been ¡°really hurtful and hard¡± to deal with, Gunn said: ¡°Not only the conspiracy theories. People just think I¡¯m this kind of privileged academic [who] took a spot from more deserving, underprivileged kids ¨C [that] I¡¯m all about me.¡±

Despite all this, she would ¡°do it all over again¡± because of ¡°the beautiful messages I¡¯ve received¡± and ¡°the positive impact I¡¯ve had¡­particularly on young girls, in terms of going out there and expressing yourself and not listening to people that are just trying to tear you down¡±.

She has used the platform the Olympics have given her to ¡°give back¡±, she says. ¡°I¡¯ve done a lot of charity work, particularly in the mental health space. I¡¯ve helped a small community that¡­was affected by a storm, [raising] funds for the only preschool in town. I¡¯ve done lots of money-raising for women¡¯s shelters; Unicef.

¡°It¡¯s been really, really amazing to be able to turn this shitstorm into something that I can do good with¡­and that¡¯s what we¡¯re going to continue to try and do. Young people; mental health; social media; feeling empowered and confident to go out there and be different. We should embrace that. We shouldn¡¯t tear people down, just because we don¡¯t [like] their dance moves. You don¡¯t like my dance moves? That¡¯s OK. You don¡¯t have to.¡±

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Wendell Teodoro/Getty Images

Media coverage has painted a different picture of Gunn. Much on her management team¡¯s efforts to trademark her Raygun stage name and obstruct a spoof musical based on her, currently running at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe under the title . Her lawyers stopped a debut performance of the show in Sydney from going ahead in December, threatening the venue with??over intellectual property issues.

The show¡¯s creator, comedian Steph Broadbridge,??the cancellation on Instagram. ¡°They were¡­worried that I was damaging her brand, which I would never do,¡± Broadbridge said. ¡°She doesn¡¯t need me to do that.¡±

The post elicited offers to help fund Broadbridge¡¯s legal fight, along with some criticism. ¡°Pretty sure it¡¯s common decentcy [sic] to ask someone¡¯s permission before going out to try and¡­make money [from] their name,¡± one comment reads.

In a video??posted on her own Instagram site, Gunn said she had been ¡°blindsided¡± by the musical, adding: ¡°Had we known about it sooner, there could have been a different outcome.¡± As well as her stage name, her management had taken action to trademark her ¡°kangaroo silhouette pose¡± after receiving word that somebody else was seeking to trademark them for commercial purposes, she explained. ¡°Please remember that just because you hear or read something about someone on social media that doesn¡¯t mean it¡¯s the full story or even that it¡¯s true.¡±

The musical proceeded,?, after the main character was renamed and the dance routine was changed. Before Edinburgh it was??at comedy and fringe festivals in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

Meanwhile, Gunn has attracted??for falling over on a nightclub dance floor and declining to appear on the TV show?Dancing with the Stars. She has contradicted widespread reports about her retirement from competitive breakdancing after saying she was ¡°not going to compete any more¡± on 2DayFM. ¡°I was going to keep competing, for sure, but¡­that seems a really difficult thing for me to do now,¡± she said, in an??with the Sydney radio station. ¡°People will be filming it. It¡¯ll go online and it¡¯s just not going to mean the same thing.¡±

Gunn confirmed to THE?that she had not retired. ¡°At that particular point in time¡­it was hard to imagine going back out there, but I¡¯m still dancing and I still am going to enter competitions. The type of competitions I enter might be different, but breaking is not like other sports. Breaking is a culture and you can¡¯t retire from culture.¡±

She said breakdancing was a ¡°fascinating¡± academic research topic ¡°because it¡¯s so understudied¡±. But its main attraction was in testing herself. ¡°The biggest driver for me has always been about pushing past limitations.

¡°We don¡¯t truly know what a body can do. Breaking is a really interesting answer to that question because it constantly shows us new ways of spinning or¡­jumping. Competition [is] an important part of breaking because you¡¯re trying to outdo your opponent; you¡¯re trying to one-up them. You¡¯re trying to develop your name and get that respect. I¡¯ve been in the breaking scene for 15 years now. I was breaking before I became¡­an academic. I wanted to keep pushing and see how far I could go.¡±

Her academic career ¡°probably hindered¡± her breakdancing, she concedes. ¡°I don¡¯t think that you can be¡­elite at both. [To be] elite, that has to be your life. People live and breathe only that one thing. I wasn¡¯t like my competitors, who have had the elite athlete experience.¡±

In any case, Australia is a breakdancing backwater. ¡°We just don¡¯t have the resources¡­to compete in the global breaking scene. We don¡¯t have the funding, the infrastructure. We¡¯ve got to travel to Europe or Asia or the US to enter the big competitions. But the honour, the privilege to go out there and represent your country ¨C how can you pass up that opportunity?¡±

Pushing past her limitations included learning to spin on her head ¨C even if that move¡¯s inclusion in her Olympics performances eluded many of her critics. ¡°I think most people only saw the 15-second takedown clip that was shared around the world [stitching] together some of the more awkward moves,¡± she said.

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Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images

¡°People that watched it live, particularly the people in the stadium, had a very different experience to the people that only knew my name after the viral clip and memes. I was a good target for a lot of reasons ¨C being older, my career, my outfit. Educated career woman. No kids. ¡®You should be picking the kids up from school, not out here embarrassing us.¡¯ I think I ticked a lot of troll boxes.¡±

The judges¡¯ failure to award Gunn any points did not mean that they considered her performance without merit. Competitors were assessed against five criteria and won points from each judge who deemed them superior on at least three aspects. Some judges rated Gunn ahead on some criteria ¨C particularly originality ¨C against her three round-robin opponents, of whom one was the world champion and two were aged less than half her 36 years.

Moreover, several other competitors attracted no points in some or all of their bouts. Morocco¡¯s Fatima Zahra El-Mamouny, the African champion, earned no points in her first two bouts and two out of 18 in her third. And Gunn¡¯s 16-year-old compatriot, Jeff ¡°J-Attack¡± Dunne, also finished last in the male breaking event. ¡°That was the biggest competition we¡¯ve ever been in,¡± she said.

Australian breakdancers are simply not in the same league as their opponents from the US, Europe or East Asia, she explained, and Australia ¡°thought it was a pretty big joke¡± when the sport¡¯s inclusion in the Olympics was announced. ¡°The reaction in places like Japan and Korea was like, ¡®OK, how many medals can we get?¡¯¡±

Of course, ¡°anything can happen at the Olympics. Sometimes luck is involved.¡± Australian speed skater Steve Bradbury famously won Australia¡¯s first-ever winter Olympics gold medal after his four finalist opponents crashed, marking the triumphant end of a career that had featured four Olympics, an earlier bronze and some horrific injuries.

People have ¡°the wrong idea¡± about Bradbury, Gunn said. ¡°He was a world champ. Everyone just thinks he¡¯s this guy off the street that got lucky.¡± But he had the good fortune of being male. ¡°Australia is particularly hard on women. We¡¯re not afforded the same kind of larrikin status, the same kind of¡­forgiveness.¡±

The Paris Olympics were??as the first summer games to reach gender parity, with an equal number of male and female competitors. Yet controversies involving women seemed more durable than those involving men. ¡°It¡¯s¡­like two steps forward, one-and-three-quarter steps back,¡± Gunn said. ¡°The people that were really put under the microscope and attacked were women.¡±

Arguably the same is true in academia, into which she is gradually easing herself back. She is still mostly focusing on teaching rather than research for fear of negatively affecting colleagues, and the academic career plans that she had before the Olympics have still to be fully reformulated. Nevertheless, she still counts her ordeal as a win, partly because the ¡°storm around me¡± undermined stereotypes about both breakers and academics.

¡°I¡¯ve got colleagues¡­in heavy metal bands. I¡¯ve got colleagues that make films. I¡¯ve got colleagues into romance fiction. Academia is a much broader place than people think. And that¡¯s a good thing.¡±

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com