Don’t count her out just yet! After making headlines last week for saying she was planning to step away from competing, viral breakdancer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn clarified Monday that she isn’t ready to give up the sport — and probably never will.
“I was talking, you know, on 2dayFM about how I’m not going to do certain competitions anymore, which didn’t seem like such a big deal because breaking is not going to be in the Olympics anyway,” she told Australia’s Today, per New York Post. “I’m still going to be part of community jams, or I’d like to go to community jams and still and still dance and still break — never used the word ‘retire,’ But, you know, it just caught on to the news cycle.”
“I’m not retiring. You try and stop me,” she added. “I’m not ever going to stop dancing. So if you hear that again, you know that it’s not the truth. You can’t retire from an art form. So that’s why I’m never going to stop.”
The Australian B-Girl became a fan-favorite of sorts during the Paris Olympics thanks to her unusual moves. But she said last week that competitions had become too “upsetting” following the Olympic games. “I just didn’t have any control over how people saw me or who I was,” she said at the time. “I was going to keep competing, for sure, but that seems really difficult for me to do now. I think the level of scrutiny that’s going to be there, and people will be filming it, and it will go online.”
Gunn said that while she faced hate and conspiracy theories, she also received support from people for her dancing. Adele even described Gunn’s Olympics routine as her “favorite thing” that happened during the Games.
“That’s what gets me through, the people that are like, ‘You have inspired me to go out there and do something that I’ve been too shy to do, you’ve brought joy, you brought laughter, we’re so proud of you’,” Gunn said. “And just really frickin’ lovely things that people have written and that’s what I hold on to.”
In August, after the Olympics, Gunn spoke out against the backlash she faced, sharing a video on Instagram, explaining that she took the sport “very seriously.” (She was also named the Number One breakdancer in September.)
“I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics. I gave my all, truly,” she said at the time. “I am honored to have been a part of the Australian Olympic team and been a part of breaking’s Olympic debut.”