Ben McCrum
Australian breakdancing sensation Raygun has revealed the four-word message she was told after the Olympic Games.
Raygun, real name Rachael Gunn, was one of the breakout stars of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, after she represented Australia in the B-Girls event.
Despite crashing out of the event in the very first round, Raygun went viral on social media due to her breakdancing performance and her stye.
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And now, she has revealed the warning she was given after her time in Paris ended.
Speaking to Australian talk show The Project, she said: "As soon as I finished, my media liaison from the AOC said, 'Oh, there's a bit of a storm brewing on social media. You might want to go off socials.'
"I didn't understand the scale of it. I did preview some comments and I was like, 'Oh, no,' and this kind of sick feeling started, started coming out.
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"I was like, "Oh, goodness! What has happened?"
She went on to admit that the backlash that she had recieved online impacted her mental health and opened up about the support she sought out to deal with it.
"Fortunately, I got some mental health support pretty quickly and I also went off social media, I went off the internet," she continued.
"But it's pretty up-and-down, but it's also just hard to process it all, honestly. Like, it's just still pretty hard to process.
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"It's been a pretty wild ride I'm not going to lie, I definitely have had my ups and downs, my good and bad days."
But, also stated that she believes that most of the negative reaction that she receives comes from people not understanding the sport of breaking and what it takes to compete at such a high level.
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She added: "A lot of the responses, though, is also just due to people not being very familiar with breaking and the diversity of approaches.
"It was so fantastic that the next day the judging chair, MG, came out and explained that in the breaking community what I did actually wasn't very shocking.
"You know, it's just a different approach in breaking. You have the athletic-style breakers and you also have the more artistic-style breakers and all of them are very valid."