SI:AM | Why Viral Olympics Flop ‘Raygun’ Earned World No. 1 Ranking in Breaking

Her ranking raised plenty of eyebrows, but there’s an explanation.

Gunn went viral over the summer for her poor performance in Paris. / Rob Schumacher-Imagn Images

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🟠 Deshaun Watson’s contract
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There’s a logical explanation

Anyone who watched the breakdancing competition at the Paris Olympics this summer would have been shocked when the sport’s governing body released its updated world rankings on Tuesday and the much-maligned “Raygun” held the No.1 spot.

Rachael Gunn, a 37-year-old Australian university lecturer known in the sport as B-Girl Raygun, went viral during the Paris Games for all the wrong reasons. She failed to earn a single point during the inaugural Olympic breaking competition and was widely ridiculed for performing moves that paled in comparison to her fellow competitors.

But despite that performance, Gunn claimed the No. 1 spot in the new world rankings released Tuesday by the World DanceSport Federation. It was a development that inevitably raised plenty of eyebrows, and so the WDSF was compelled to release a statement explaining how she earned the top spot.

Competitors earn points for their performances in competitions sanctioned by the WDSF and the rankings are based on the points earned in the athletes’ four best competitions in the past calendar year. Gunn’s ranking is based on her win at the Oceania Continental Championships in October 2023, which earned her 1,000 ranking points. Japan’s B-Girl Riko also earned 1,000 points for winning a World Series event in Hong Kong in December 2023, but Gunn won the tiebreaker because WDSF rules establish that continental championship events take precedence over World Series events.

The other main reason for the questionable rankings is that they’re based on a limited number of events. They do not include results from the two Olympic qualifying events held in May and June of this year, or from the Olympics. Most notably, the WDSF has not held any ranking events since the start of 2024, so as to not interfere with the Olympics.

“This strategic scheduling allowed athletes to focus solely on the last part of their Olympic qualification without the added pressure of additional ranking events,” the federation said. “Consequently, by the end of the Olympic Games, many of the competition results included in the ranking had expired, leading to the current situation where many athletes have only one competition result contributing to their ranking.”

The rankings also don’t present an optimal view of the sport because many breakers don’t participate in WDSF events. The federation only began sponsoring world championships in breaking in 2019, one year before the IOC announced that the sport would be included in the Paris Games and one year after it debuted at the Youth Olympics. Breaking originated in New York City more than 40 years ago and there are several organizations that sponsor competitions. One of the largest and longest-running is the Red Bull BC One, which was first held in 2004.

Many breakers only participated in WDSF events in order to qualify for the Olympics. None of the six medalists from Paris have any WDSF world rankings points. Zack Slusser, the vice president of Breaking for Gold USA, told the Associated Press that breakers “had no incentive, no desire” to participate in WDSF events that were not tied to Olympic qualification.

“Because they’re not cultural events,” Slusser explained. “They are not enjoyable.”

The fractured nature of competitive breaking makes it impossible to put together an accurate ranking of the best breakers in the world. Nothing makes that more clear than seeing Gunn, one of the most memorably inept Olympic athletes in recent history, at the top of the list. But Gunn won’t be in the top spot for much longer. Her 1,000 world ranking points from winning the Oceania championships will expire on Oct. 28 and the WDSF will hold its first ranking event in 10 months beginning on Oct. 19. Then the world will have a new No. 1 breaker. At least in the eyes of the WDSF.

Fields (2) is likely to start this week. / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

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