Gunn is a 36-year-old lecturer at Macquarie University and a former B-girl who represented Australia in the Olympics. Gunn has attracted attention not only for her unique academic background in breaking, but also for her performances.
Gunn lost three straight matches in the round robin of the Paris breaking competition, scoring zero points against three competitors from the United States, France and Lithuania, but her moves became memes and sparked fierce backlash from people who questioned how she got into the competition.
Some online critics have alleged that Gunn unfairly qualified for Australia’s team. One petition circulated on change.org and since deleted suggested that Gunn set up a governing body to oversee the qualifying rounds and that her husband, Samuel Free, may have been part of the Australian “selection committee.”
But Gunn’s qualification process is relatively easy to follow, and here’s the details of how he qualified for Paris.
The World DanceSport Federation has announced the breaking qualification process for 2022.
The Paris Olympics partnered with the World DanceSport Federation (WDSF) to include breaking as an event after it debuted at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games, according to the official Olympic website.
The WDSF announced the qualification system in April 2022. There will be 32 spots in the competition (16 B-girls and 16 B-boys) and there will be three ways to qualify:
Breakers could qualify at the WDSF World Championships in Belgium in September 2023. There were two slots available, one for men and one for women. They could also qualify through continental qualifying tournaments, which had two slots each for men and women. The remaining 20 slots will be contested at the Olympic Qualification Series tournaments in Shanghai and Budapest in May and June 2024.
Australia’s regional qualifying event was the 2023 WDSF Breaking Oceania Championships, held in Sydney in October 2023. Regional organization AUS Breaking hosted the event.
Rachel Gunn (aka “Rae Gunn”) will compete in the 2023 WDSF Oceania Breaking Championships. Mark Kolbe/Getty Images
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, current president of AUS Breaking, Low Napalan, a breaker himself, founded the organisation in 2019. Breaking was confirmed as an Olympic sport in December 2020, and the organisation (then called the Australian Breaking Association) began registering breakers who wanted to compete in the event.
AUSBreaking has maintained a national ranking system since 2020. Gan ranked first in the inaugural rankings in 2020 and re-ranked in 2021. She placed second in both 2022 and 2023, according to publicly available records.
AUSBreaking announced in an Instagram post in September that registration was now open for the Oceania Championships. The organization announced a judging panel on October 18, 2023, made up of international breakers (none from Australia) and led by Japan’s Katsu One, meaning Free will not be one of the judges.
Gunn is now eligible to compete at the Oceania Championships in October 2023.
Gunn qualified for the WDSF World Championships in September 2023, her first chance to qualify for the Olympics. Dominika “Nikka” Banevich of Lithuania qualified first. Gunn placed 64th in the tournament, while Molly Therese “Holy Molly” Chapman of Australia placed 79th.
She then competed in the WDSF Oceania Breaking Championships in October of that year, where, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, she was the highest scoring B-girl on the first day of the tournament, placing her in the top 8. She continued to lead from the second day onwards, earning a spot in the preliminary round.
Australia could have potentially sent one more female athlete to the Olympics in 2024 through the qualifying series events in Shanghai and Budapest. B-Girls Holy Molly, Hannah and G-Clef, who placed 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the Oceania qualifier, competed but did not qualify.
The sports organization released a statement denying the allegations about Reagan’s eligibility.
On Monday, AUSBreaking released a statement about the qualification process, saying the Oceania Championships were judged under the same system as the 2024 Olympics. The organization also condemned the harassment of Gunn athletes.
“Ultimately, Rachel Gunn and Geoff Dunn followed the exact same process to achieve the highest results and secure their places to represent Australia in Paris,” the statement read. “Their selection was based solely on their performance on the day.”
The organization released a new statement Wednesday directly addressing the false claim that Gunn’s husband was one of the judges at the event.
“Contrary to the misinformation being circulated, Dr. Gunn’s husband, who is Rae Gunn’s coach, was not a member of the selection committee or judging committee,” the statement read. “This could be a conflict of interest, and the Olympic Games have strict standards that would never be tolerated.”
The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) also released a statement on Thursday, urging change.org to remove the petition, and further denying claims that Gunn’s husband was on the qualifying judging panel or that she held a leadership position with AUSBreaking.
“It’s shameful that an anonymous individual would publish falsehoods in this way,” AOC CEO Matt Carroll said in a statement. “This amounts to bullying, harassment and degrading behavior, and we demand that it be removed from the site immediately.”
A representative from change.org confirmed to Business Insider on Thursday that the petition had been flagged as misinformation, reviewed in accordance with the platform’s community guidelines, and removed from the platform.
“Change.org maintains strict guidelines against content that constitutes harassment, bullying or spreading misinformation. We take these issues seriously and will remove content that violates these standards to protect our users and maintain the integrity of our community,” a representative said in an emailed statement to BI.
Gunn released a statement on Thursday saying she was “honoured” to be part of Team Australia but that the “hate” that followed her performance was “devastating.” She did not specifically address the specific allegations about the qualification process but referred viewers to the AOC’s statement and the AUSBreaking post.
This story was originally published on Aug. 14, 2024 and has been updated to include the latest information and statements from stakeholders.
