Simply hours earlier than representing Australia on the Paris 2024 opening ceremony, Rachael Gunn had a panic assault in the course of the Olympic village.
Thrust into an setting filled with skilled athletes, it dawned on Gunn, whose skilled background is as a college lecturer, what she had bought herself into.
Often called Raygun when competing, she was about to participate within the breakdancing occasion – or breaking – which was making its Olympic debut.
“I felt like an imposter,” stated the 38-year-old breaker, throughout a brand new Netflix documentary about her expertise on the Video games.
She describes how she reacted when she noticed somebody she recognised from the Olympic group.
“I simply couldn’t cease crying… I had a panic assault. ‘What am I doing? What have I carried out? Ought to I be doing this?'” she stated.
Only a few hours later, she was crusing down the River Seine alongside the remainder of the Australian cohort, waving to onlookers.
Lower than a fortnight after that, her Olympic journey was over. Gunn did not win any of her three round-robin battles on the Video games, however walked away happy with how she had acquitted herself.
“Ending my final spherical, the world champion Nicka [Dominika Banevic] gave me props for my strikes, the MC celebrated my stuff and the vibe was simply usually good,” Gunn informed BBC Sport.
What she hadn’t anticipated was that one among her performances, by which she debuted some unconventional strikes together with a sprinkler and a kangaroo hop, had gone viral.
There have been memes. There was a sketch on The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon. Adele referenced the efficiency in one among her concert events. Chris Hemsworth defended Gunn in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel. At one level in August 2024, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese even felt moved to talk out, praising Gunn for having “a crack”.
“It was fairly wild the way in which I turned a subject of dialog in areas I by no means thought I might be,” stated Gunn.
Alongside the teasing, there have been extra sinister forces brewing, together with conspiracy theories about nepotism – for example that Gunn’s husband and coach, Samuel Free, had been on the choice committee when she certified to symbolize her nation on the Video games, when he hadn’t been.
“It was actually powerful when mine and Sammy’s credibility, ethics and motivations have been being known as into query,” Gunn stated.
“You possibly can simply spend 30 seconds researching and discover loads of sources to debunk these conspiracies, however that is not how individuals use the web anymore.”
That new-found scrutiny took a toll on Gunn’s psychological well being.
“I felt like my entire life was simply sort of crumbling earlier than me.. .and I used to be simply making an attempt to get by means of the day,” she says within the documentary.
Within the course of of constructing a movie about that point, nonetheless, she feels that she’s been in a position to regain some company.
“It is taken a very long time for me to course of what occurred,” Gunn informed BBC Sport.
“It is actually thrilling for me to lastly have a voice once more.”
