Australian breakdancer Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn has revealed she won’t compete again “for a while” as she continues to deal with the fallout from her Olympics performance.
Raygun arguably became the story of the Paris Games after her performance in the breaking competition went viral.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Raygun apologises to breakdancing community.
Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today
The 36-year-old academic scored a total of zero points in all of her round-robin breaking battles after pulling out some of the more obscure dance moves the competition saw.
She has since been ridiculed, mocked, celebrated and defended in what has been a whirlwind of fame that included a phone call from world-famous billionaire Sir Richard Branson.
Raygun has stayed silent throughout the aftermath, except for a video on her Instagram page where she spoke of her devastation.
But now, one month after the ordeal, Raygun has given her first public interview with Channel 10’s The Project.
While trying to remain positive throughout the fallout, Raygun admitted to being contacted by Branson.
“The upside is you get random people contacting you that you never thought would ever notice you,” she said on The Project.
“You know, and it’s not just, like, breakers that you’ve respected for a decade.
“It’s someone like Sir Richard Branson calling you to say that he enjoyed your performance and he thought that it was ‘plucky’ and ‘courageous’ and ‘fun’.
“And he would love to do something with me and have me on some cruises with Boy George. Like, what is life? I don’t know.”
The call from Branson was a rare positive in a sea of negative criticism.
Raygun was advised to stay off social media, but was aware of some of the outrage directed at her.
“I didn’t understand the scale of it,” she said.
“I did preview some comments and I was like, ‘Oh, no’, and this kind of sick feeling started coming out. I was like, ‘Oh, goodness! What has happened?’”
As for the performance itself, Raygun said she hasn’t watched it back and knew she was going to be up against it with her unique style.
“I knew my chances were slim,” she said.
“As soon as I qualified, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, what have I done?’ Because I knew that I was going get beaten and I knew that people were not going to understand my style and what I was going to do.
“I wanted to bring out some Australian moves and themes. You know, I love our Olympic mascot, B-K, the boxing kangaroo, and I wanted to show that. And that’s the wonderful thing about breaking — you can take inspiration from any source.
“I had to go with what I was good at, I had to go with my strengths.”
Raygun has been tipped to cash in from the instant fame and has even hired a new specialist talent agent.
But her competition days appear over.
“I don’t think I’ll be competing for a while. Not really wanting to be in the spotlight, breaking, competing,” she said.
“It’s been nice. It’s been a bit of a process to try and start dancing again. Like, that’s actually been tough. You know, it was my medicine, and then it turned into my source of stress.
“So, I’m really happy that it gets to go back to being my medicine. I can kind of finally feel free again. I’m looking forward to breaking, but, no, I don’t think I’ll compete for a while.”
Raygun was a happy figure throughout the interview, choosing to focus on the positives rather than the negatives.
“I’ll survive. I’m alright. The positives are just amazing. I would rather much focus on the positives out of this and the positive responses and the joy that I’ve brought people,” she said.
“It’s going out there and just having fun and going as hard as you can in the face of, you know, losing.”
