No. 1 in the world.
One of the lasting sensations of the 2024 summer Olympics, hosted gorgeously by Paris, is Rachael “Raygun” Gunn. The Australian breakdancer burst upon the scene thanks to a widely-shared performance in which she received zero points but won the attention of the entire world.
Now, typically Olympic stories are snuffed along with the torch, only to reappear as questions on trivia shows or four years later as footnotes in the next Olympics. Raygun, though, has busted the trend, memes continuing to populate various social medias, important interviews delivered to important outlets.
And now, mere days ago, it has been revealed that she is the number 1 breakdancer in the whole world as tabulated by the World Dance Sport Federation or WDSF.
Per The august New York Times:
The ranking is based on events over the past year, the federation explained. During that time, the majority of breakers were focused on qualifying for the Olympics.
But because they have limited fields with a small number of competitors, Olympic qualifying events and the Olympics themselves do not count toward the world rankings. Therefore, Raygun’s low-scoring performance at the Games did not hurt her ranking at all.
Further complicating the rankings, there were hardly any events in the last 52 weeks that weren’t Olympic qualifiers. The federation said that no official breaking events were held in 2024 before the Olympics, to allow “athletes to focus solely on the last part of their Olympic qualification without the added pressure of additional ranking events.”
So there you have it. David Lee Scales, in any case, brought up Raygun’s performance during our now twice weekly chat, today, in reference to a listener letter wondering if the Australian had succeeded in “breaking” dancing, as it were, likening it to Dave Parmenter famously paddling out at the 1988 Op Pro in Huntington on a longboard because the waves were so terrible.
An act of rebellion.
I argued that Raygun was not rebelling but had, through fate and weirdness, unwittingly become the face of breakdancing. Ma and Pa at the store having never watched, nor thought about, breakdancing before knowing her name, her moves, maybe even her current number 1 status as it has been reported everywhere, including The august New York Times. No, she ain’t Parmenter, she’s Ben Gravy. The beloved New Jersey novelty wave enthusiast who certainly has a bigger following than almost all professional surfers, especially amongst people who have never cared nor thought about surfing. He fills large movie theaters with his special blend of everyman and stoke. A hero wide and far.
Do you disagree? Well then who would you nominate as surfing’s Raygun?
Enjoy the episode, in its entirety, here.
