Rachel Gunn, better known as Ray Gunn, is Australia's top-ranked B-girl.
She's always had a love for dancing, but it wasn't until her 20s that she fell in love with breaking.
Coming fresh off victory in the 2023 Oceania Championships,
Ray Gunn is ready to dance her way into the Paris Olympics,
with the Paris Games marking the first time the sport will be on display at an Olympic level.
By day, Ray Gunn is a full-time university lecturer,
and has combined her passion for feminism with her love of breaking
to write a PhD on the intersection of gender and breaking culture,
bringing her passion for the sport into the classroom with her.
My name's Sophie, and I'm the producer here at the Female Athlete Project.
Chloe caught up with Rach as she was prepping her final moves in the lead-up to the Paris Games.
This chat is so interesting, especially if, like me, you didn't know much about breaking,
because Ray Gunn takes us through,
all the regulations and rules we need to know for the Paris Games.
We hope you enjoy it, and it gets you ready to cheer on Ray Gunn
and all the other B-girls in just a few days' time on August 9.
Rachel, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's going to be great to have a chat.
You're currently preparing for the Olympics.
How on earth does that feel?
Oh, it's still like something that I feel like I'm going to wake up from a dream.
One day I'll be like, that was a random dream, me preparing for the Olympics.
It's wild, because I never thought that I would be an Olympian.
You know, I was more of a dancey kid, and breaking wasn't in the Olympics.
So, you know, this has just been totally unexpected, but also a real honour and a privilege.
Take us back to you as a little kid.
What were you like, and how did you find a love for dancing?
Oh, look, I was a little bit of a weirdo, to be honest.
I'm here for that.
Like, honestly, looking back, I'm just like, oh, I don't know.
There were some odd things that I did.
Like, for example, bringing my parents in on a Saturday and making them watch me perform
to the entire Lion King soundtrack in a lion outfit as well.
The full length of the soundtrack.
The full length of the soundtrack.
I didn't have that much material, mind you.
Like, were they paying $20?
$20 to watch a show, or it was free entry?
It was free entry.
They filmed it, and they were just laughing behind the camera at times because they kept
thinking that it would be over, and it just kept going on.
It just never ended.
Great soundtrack, though.
So many different emotions.
So, kind of like the kind of kid that just was in my own world was a little bit odd,
and, you know, I think that also explains.
Maybe why, you know, I fell into breaking in my mid-twenties.
Like, I've always kind of done things a little bit differently.
And so, what kind of dance were you doing when you were younger?
I actually did ballroom for many years, like six or seven years, and competed with my siblings.
So, very illustrically ballroom.
And then I did jazz and tap for many years as well.
I tried ballet here and there, but not cut out.
And then, what did I do?
I think I did a little bit of swing dancing as well with my partner, which was a lot of
And I did a bit of studio hip hop.
So, I really just like trying different things.
And, you know, I tried a lot of different sport as well.
I like kind of just, yeah, trying new things, seeing what I like, seeing what I can do.
Like, for example, not a water polo player.
Good to check that off the list.
I learned that the hard way over a term where I almost drowned.
Safety first, kids in the water.
So, I tried breaking then in my mid-twenties, which was really nice because I hadn't been
dancing for a few years.
Like, you know, being a dancer is really expensive, although studio classes.
But breaking, it's totally different with breaking.
I mean, you learn the foundation.
I did go to classes for a little bit, but then you just go and practice that foundation
with others in a PCYC or a community hall or even in a public space that people use for
So, it was much cheaper and it makes it so much more accessible.
And I think that's also one of the great things about having it in the Olympics because it
attracts a different group of people.
Yeah, that's really cool.
Because there's a lot of, like, if we look at sports as a whole, there's a lot of barriers
There's a lot of barriers to different types of sports as well.
And so, it's actually really cool when you hear examples of, like, you can just get involved
by going down and finding a local group.
You don't need a uniform.
You don't need any equipment.
You know, you can pretty much wear what you'd wear on the street.
And it's a very social culture, very social sport where people help each other.
People teach each other moves.
People teach each other different combinations.
And then you go to an event and you battle and you see other people's progress.
And it's really positive.
So, for that reason, yeah, it definitely captures a different group of people, particularly
people that maybe want to participate in sport or, you know, do something physically active
but don't have the whole kind of nuclear family around them to drive them all over New South
Wales to take them to all the sporting engagements and things like that.
You know, there's so many things associated with traditional sport that excludes a number
Touch on the foundations of breaking.
Without going into too much, give us like a high level rundown of the foundations.
So, you, this is a really interesting question and it's a tricky one to answer.
So, first of all, let me explain breaking a little bit.
So, you have top rock, which is the standing part of the dance.
And that's often the way that you start your set or your round.
You walk out onto the dance floor.
You're showing your confidence.
And then you're responding to the music and showing your musicality.
Then you drop to the floor.
And you might do some footwork.
So, footwork is the stuff where you're in a like a squat or a tabletop position and
you're doing lots of kicks and spins and things like that.
And then you've also got power moves, which are like the really kind of spinny gymnastic-y
So, windmills, head spins.
And freezes, which is just, you know, as you, as it suggests, a held pose.
Usually a pretty difficult one though.
And ideally to a beat in the music.
So, it's like, duh, you know, and it's like really kind of exaggerates it.
So, when you learn, start to learn breaking, you're learning kind of the basic steps of
each of those elements.
How do I explain it?
So, yeah, you learn some kind of, yeah, more classic steps in each of the elements and
then you're expected to build off from that.
So, come up with your own variations or come up with your own even new combinations.
But the foundation is pretty broad and pretty big that it just, you know, I'm still mastering
But, you know, like things like one freeze can help you then go into...
Go into a power move, you know, or doing footwork can help you then with this other power move.
So, it kind of helps you step up in terms of your performance of different aspects of
I love learning this stuff.
It's really cool.
How did it become an Olympic sport and how did you feel when you found out that it was
going to be in Paris?
It really came as a surprise to the breaking community.
That it was being considered as an Olympic sport.
It's not something that we'd been advocating for a long time or anything like that.
The IOC, I think, in general, was trying to shift to include more youth-oriented urban
So, you know, skateboarding, BMX and all that kind of comes into that.
So, breaking when they were kind of when they found out about breaking, they were like,
this could really work.
But we didn't have any global governing body.
We didn't even have any national sporting federation.
It was still very grassroots.
So, the World Dance Sport Federation, which governs ballroom, are the governing body for
breaking in the Olympics.
And that's only happened since the IOC's decision.
Well, I think they authored the submission to the IOC saying, hey, we could be the ones
And put breaking in the Olympics.
And the IOC's like, yep, that works for us.
And did it work for the breaking community?
It was a bit of an adjustment at first.
I think there was definitely some, what's going on here?
Who are these people?
What do they know about breaking?
But there was, you know, some really great people in the breaking community that went
and spoke to the WDSF and had a really collegial relationship.
You know, with the, the breaking was in the Youth Olympic Games in 2018 in Buenos Aires.
And it went really, really well.
You know, breakers were in charge of many aspects of the event.
There were breaking judges.
We got a preview of how it might work.
So, I think by and large, the reaction then was like, okay, this, this could be really
But we had to, just to ensure we still had a seat at the table and that we were all being
We had to rush and make all our own national sporting federations.
So, us breaking was only established in 2019.
It's a bizarre concept, isn't it?
So, it's been a really huge learning curve, not only for us individually, but, you know,
as, you know, the organization, the association in terms of thinking about things like national
rankings and, you know, policies and who can do this and who can do that.
Like, it's just been a total shift in our culture.
And is that quite strange for something that the whole concept of it can be around the
culture and the community and the fact that you can do it at your local PCYC to then come
in and have a lot of rules and regulations that didn't necessarily align with the sports
values or, sorry, I guess the dancers' values?
Yeah, look, I think, I mean, it's a great team at AusBreaking and I think they've done
really well to find that balance.
But it doesn't mean that all the breaking events in Australia need to be under this
particular kind of framework.
So, you know, if you don't want to have those kinds of events, you can go to a totally different
And that's the same around the world as well.
If you don't want to go to those WDSF events, the World Dance Sport Federation events, there's
a lot of other breaking events that aren't bound by the same kind of rules and regulations
So, you know, and we've seen that reaction in not only in Australia, but around the world.
People go, you know, that's great.
Breaking's in the Olympics.
Not my vibe, though.
I'm going to go to these events and I'm going to do these other things.
What has your process been like to qualify for the Paris Games?
Well, yeah, this, yeah, there was a lot of unknowns, you know, so much.
So, how Osbury King was established in 2019, it was announced to be in the Olympics in
2020, and there was so many things that kept changing in terms of how the qualifications
were going to work because, you know, we were building the ground under us.
You know, so things just kept shifting and changing.
So, we didn't know whether we were going to get an Oceania qualifier.
We didn't know if we'd get Oceania spots.
So, the last few years, I've been traveling to international events, trying to figure out
if we were going to rack up some world ranking points, just in case they might want some
representatives from this region.
And, but we were able to get an Oceania qualifier.
It almost didn't happen because we couldn't get sponsors, which was, you know, kind of
I thought that it'd be much easier to get sponsors on board with the Olympics, but it
was really, really tough.
And, but it was like six weeks notice that we were suddenly going to get Oceania qualifiers.
And, I was going to Europe for another competition in between then.
So, it was like pretty stressful.
And, I was working full time as a lecturer.
We're going to get to that.
We're going to get to that.
So, the preparation was intense.
I think at that stage, I just had to look at all the moves and combos that I had.
And, I went through everything.
And, I looked to see what was going to be battle ready.
And, the way that the competition works, it was over two days.
And, I did the preliminary round on day one, which was the highest ranked.
So, I was really pumped that I got that score there.
But, then I had all the battles on the next day.
And, that was eight rounds, I think I did.
It's going to be even more at the Olympics.
It's going to be like.
For the people that get to the podium, it'll be 15.
That's a huge amount.
So, what actually happens in the Olympics?
Can you talk us through the process of competing in those battles?
So, all the women's are on one day or the men's are on the next day.
And, it's going to start with a group stage round robin.
So, you battle everyone in your group, four groups of four.
And, then the top two from each group go to the knockout stage.
Of top eight goes all the way to the final and third place.
Each battle is at least two rounds.
So, in the round robin stage, it's two rounds.
And, if there's a tie, they count judges votes.
But, in the knockout stage, it's all three rounds.
Which is just like full on.
So, each round's like.
They're not timed.
They're about 45 seconds to a minute.
Because it's more about what you're doing.
Rather than how long you're going for.
So, and they're high intensity.
So, that's going to be absolutely exhausting.
For those people that make it to the podium.
Have I heard that they.
You don't know the music.
So, you come out ready to battle.
And, you don't know what the song's going to be.
And, you have to adapt.
And, it's something that you get better at.
Because all battles are like that.
That's universal.
It's not just Olympics.
It's part of breaking.
I've never known what music it's going to be.
And, so you walk out there.
The music starts playing.
And, you do your thing.
And, then it gets.
So, after say 45 seconds to a minute.
How do you do your freezes?
If you don't know.
So, the songs that are on offer.
I've got so many questions.
I can't even get a sentence out.
So, let me paint a picture for you.
So, let's pretend we're battling.
So, we're on either end of the dance floor.
We're sharing the floor.
And, the music starts.
Now, at the Olympics.
They pick who's going to go first.
Because, there is a bit of an advantage to going second.
And, often at these other non-Olympic competitions.
You'll have like a standoff.
For like two minutes.
As to who's going to go first.
So, they've gotten.
So, they're just saying like.
In this instance.
You're going first.
But, if I'm really feeling it.
Which sometimes happens.
Sometimes people decide.
They want to go out first.
Maybe they love the song.
Maybe they've got in their head what they want to do.
They don't want to forget it.
Could psych out the competitor.
Could psych out the competitor.
Because, they're so chill.
They're so ready to go.
So, I go out and do my thing.
About 45 seconds to a minute.
Now, even though I don't know what the song is.
I have an understanding of the musical structure of the songs.
Like, I know that on every eighth or first count.
There's going to be a bit of a moment.
So, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
So, I can think to like.
I hear it coming up.
I can think to hit my freeze.
There's a change.
There's a bigger change.
And, it's not like you're counting in your head.
You just kind of.
Because, you've listened to this kind of music for years and years and years.
It's really cool.
So, when you finish.
You're like finish.
And, you always finish strong.
And, your opponent comes out.
Now, they've already had your entire set to listen to the song.
So, they've got a much better.
Understanding of the music or what things might come up.
Or, little textures that they can pick up on.
And, they've seen what you've done.
So, there's a huge advantage to going second.
Because, now they've got that musicality.
And, they can also maybe respond to what you've done.
So, they've seen your head spin.
But, they can do a better head spin.
So, they're going to bring their better head spin out.
They've seen your flares.
But, they've got their own flare variation maybe.
They're going to bring that out.
Or, they've seen what you do and gone, actually, you know, got to ignore all that.
And, I'm going to bring out my own creative stuff, which I know that you can't even do.
So, there's a different way of attacking or responding.
They finish their round.
Now, the judges have seconds to evaluate this.
Oh, it's really fast.
It's really fast.
So, they are now deciding between those two dancers.
They're looking at five criteria.
So, vocabulary, execution, technique, musicality, and originality.
And, they have to just decide who got higher across that five criteria.
Each criteria is worth 20%.
And then, overall, you know, whoever scored higher across the board wins that round.
And then, you'll see a color flash up on the screen.
But, there's always one dancer's red.
The other dancer's blue.
And so, you might see, depends on what stage of the battle.
It might come up during the battle or maybe it's only at the end.
It'll have, you know, red, red, red, blue, blue, blue, you know, however many, whatever the judges' votes were.
Meanwhile, I'm going back out again.
Oh, for the next round?
For the next round.
Straight away, the DJ changes the music.
So, there's no break.
So, you each finish your first round.
Judges really quickly do that.
And then, bang, next song, you're up.
I mean, we're not even, some people don't even wait for the judges.
Some people do or they're just kind of, like, grooving.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, typically, you just, the battle keeps going.
It's really fast.
It's really fast.
So, the judges, it's just like a sliding scale.
So, all they have to do is, you know.
Bring the slider across a little bit.
And then, submit.
But, sometimes, they're just, yeah.
It's pretty, it's pretty fast.
And then, so, you go again.
And then, maybe you go, there's a third round, depending on the competition.
And then, they bring up all the votes.
And whoever's won the most rounds has won the battle.
I'm getting my head around it.
So, you won the 2023 Oceania Championships.
Preparation for that, I was looking at all my moves and combos and going, okay, what's
going to be sharp?
What do I have down?
And then, like, put that all in a list because one of my strengths is my range of vocab.
So, I wanted to really ensure that I showed that across the battle.
One of the things that you're not meant to do is repeat.
So, particularly, like, big or key combos or moves.
So, you know, you might see people.
Repeat head spins, but they might have a little variation to it.
So, they might just, you know, they have their legs together or their legs apart or their
hands around like this or something like that.
So, you've got to make it different.
So, which is pretty crazy when you think about how many rounds then you have to do and how
much movement that you need to practice and have down.
So, I was preparing.
So, I was preparing all my combos and kind of having them, you know, up my sleeve as
well as, you know, I had a few kind of practice battle days with my crewmates and kind of
like perform all these things at intensity as well.
So, but it was a pretty stressful event.
Like, it was one of the biggest events I think we've had in Australia.
So, it was an amazing experience.
All the judges were international.
MC was international, but we had an Australian MC with him as well.
And DJs were international.
So, it was like really huge.
And how will you feel competing against the rest of the world over in Paris?
Oh, look, you know, sometimes I'm really excited and other times I'm really nervous.
It depends what day or what time of day it is.
It really fluctuates.
Because like to be on the stage with some of these people, like what they can do is
just absolutely amazing.
And they've got so much experience.
Us Aussies are definitely the underdogs.
So, but, you know, I'm, I'm training so hard to try and like go out there and do my absolute
You touched on being a full-time lecturer.
Can you talk to us about the academic component of your life, which is quite a large component.
Quite a large component.
And look, it's, I don't know if balance is the right word.
It's like frantic shifting.
Eating in cars, changing outfits.
I feel like my, um, my bag always has like two, my bag always has two main things.
It's like my knee pads and my laptop.
It's a good combo.
Because I need my knee pads to break.
And then, yeah, just do some emails quickly or like do some revisions on a chapter that
I submitted or copy edit this article I did or moderate.
Those grades, like there's just like finding snatches of time to do some work, um, which
Probably not great for the stress, but anyway.
Where did you find a passion for academia?
Um, yeah, I think so in my undergrad, to be honest, um, I just, you know, had, I didn't
really know what I wanted to do after university and I really enjoyed studying.
and I really liked what I was studying.
So in my bachelor's, I was looking at like, um, popular music cultures and different kinds
And it's just so interesting looking at the way that people connect with popular music
and, you know, whether it's like the nostalgia tours of like, you know, the rolling stones
or deep purple or whatever, or it's young people creating these, you know, uh, big circles
of fandom, you know, these worlds of fandom.
So I just found that really interesting.
And then, yeah, I didn't know what I wanted to do after school.
I went and worked for a bit and hated every job that I had.
So I was like, I'm just going to go back to uni and just keep studying and, and I've just,
yeah, I always really like research and writing.
And we've got two members of our team at TFAP who have been taught by you at Macquarie Uni,
So Stinger Dom, who does our socials and Jordan, who does some graphics for us as well.
And I remember both of them.
They'll be stoked.
They'll both, cause they both, when I said I was, we were getting you on the podcast,
they both were like, oh my goodness.
So I think they're both going to be stoked that you remember them.
What is that process like going from like, obviously loving the study part, but then
actually imparting knowledge to other people?
Um, I first started tutoring.
Um, so taking, you know, uh, leading the classes at uni in 2011 and I think my first semester,
I was totally passionate.
I was totally petrified, like honestly, and the kids could sense it as well.
They could smell it.
You never want them to be able to smell that.
So, um, you know, it was a really like a daunting process and learning how to mark and things
It was, it was really intense.
And then I think, um, I decided to just focus more on my PhD a bit more.
And then I think I went back to tutoring in 2013 and then I did it like every semester
until I finished.
And then 2017, I started my, my job as a lecturer and I started lecturing again to begin with
like terrified, like, especially because I was teaching really big first year media units
and you have like a really big lecture theater of, you know, young people and you just kind
of, uh, hoping that you're, you're just trying to engage them in whatever way you can.
And then I got like a little bit of a performer at times as well, just to try and keep them
engaged and keep them connected.
But there were times where I was just like, what am I doing?
You know, I'm so bad at this.
This is so boring or, you know, they're going to know that I'm a fraud, you know, things
But, um, baptism by fire, you know, it was, it was, you know, looking back at it, it was
I had some really great students in particularly in those early years.
I had a lot of really fun classes.
And, and it was really great and, you know, I've gotten a lot more comfortable now giving
lectures and talking to people, talking in front of people and things like that.
But yeah, it's really great in a classroom if you can help people either think differently
about the world or see the potential that they have.
Like those moments are just so like, you know, precious and they keep you going through all
the other moments where students don't want to be there or haven't done anything.
Or haven't done any prep or, you know, aren't listening to you.
The grim, the grim components, but it is, those, those moments are really powerful.
And it's quite amazing as an educator that you have the ability to kind of help people
on that journey to realize those things.
Yeah, it is, it is really great.
And I, and I always try to make my classrooms quite fun and, um, try to be quite approachable
and things like that.
And, and it's so wonderful to hear that some of my students are, you know, new students,
you know, now working in the industry and, you know, I was doing a thing at Channel Nine
the other week and I had a couple of students contact me as well that were in the crowd.
So, you know, it's, I love hearing from, from past students.
So it's, it's really awesome.
And a number of years ago you did a PhD that centered around the intersection of gender
and breaking culture.
What does that look like?
What does that mean?
So when I started my PhD, um.
When I started my PhD, um, I wasn't sure exactly what it was that I was going to investigate.
Still kind of popular music, youth cultures kind of thing.
And you know, I'd been with my partner for a few years now.
He was the one that got me into breaking because he was a breaker.
So I met him when I was 20.
I think I was in my third year of my undergrad and, um, he got me into breaking.
He encouraged me to do it and taught me like so much of what I know.
And, um, and, and he said, you know, oh, is there any research on breaking out there?
That's a really good question.
And I was looking into it and there really wasn't much at all.
Wasn't even much on Aussie hip hop in the last couple of years and a lot more on rap
than there was on, on breaking.
So I was like, maybe I could do my PhD on this, like that would be wild, you know?
And then it kind of happened at the same time that I was learning breaking and I was studying,
So I, as I started learning breaking, like having come from a dance background, doing
jazz and tap these very much more effeminate kind of styles of dance, I was really noticing
like significant changes to my body and way of moving as I was learning breaking, like
breaking is a very masculine, masculine eyes dance, very in your face.
It's a lot more kind of feminine aspects.
But particularly, you know, well, 15 years ago, it was a very particular style of dance
in the style of moving.
And so it was really interesting noticing these changes to me and these changes to how
people were perceiving me as well, you know, like the, the way that people might comment
on my change in dress or my change in the way that I was walking or, you know, aren't
you worried you're going to get big muscles or why don't you do something a little bit
more feminine, you know?
And I just noticed all these reactions and I thought it was a really interesting way
that people were trying to police gender.
And I also was noticing how I could do things in breaking that I didn't think as a girl
So it just opened up all these different questions about the possibilities of gender and it's
made even more interesting and breaking because so many of our competitions were mixed.
They weren't girl competitions, boy competitions, they were opens.
And so in an opens competition, there's so much more possibility for you to say something
or to push what people might expect of you because you're all in the same context.
So many of my competitions I'd be battling with and against other guys.
And it was a really positive, it's a really positive force for kind of changing what people
Particularly women can do.
And, you know, there was a time like in the kind of mid 2016, 2017 was a really exciting
time for b-girls around the world because suddenly they were winning all these competitions
against the guys.
And like people just didn't think that was possible.
But they were winning and they were like totally like smoking these guys and it was so awesome
and it was so empowering to see.
But with the Olympics kind of coming along, the competition is separated.
So we've had way less women entering opens competitions.
So it's kind of, it's really interesting the way that it's both opened up female participation
because I think it is really good to have a platform for women to compete.
It gives you a lot more experience and confidence, but we haven't seen the same level of women
winning these big opens competitions against guys.
So it's, it's an interesting space that the way that's changed over the past few years,
It's, yeah, I find that stuff really fascinating.
And I wanted to ask you as well, have you found it interesting when you're, you have
this identity in what you do in the academic space and then people find out that you dance
on the side and there's this like, oh my goodness, like I can't believe it.
Like I imagine that's a common thing that you kind of get from people, but then does
that also translate to that?
That then becomes your identity from a storytelling perspective.
Like this is Rachel.
She is an incredible academic, but wow, she's actually going to the Olympics for break.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it kind of becomes like you have these two lives, which is just your everyday life
that you live and it's your passions and what you love, but it becomes in a storytelling
sense, it becomes your whole identity.
It's, it's becoming that it totally.
And I think I'm still kind of grappling with the way that it's, it's becoming that.
But yeah, these, these two lives that are kind of overlapping, but reshaping as, as I
And yeah, I dunno, it's, it's pretty wild.
I'm still coming to terms with it.
And this year you've been doing some more research around people's perceptions of breaking
being included in the Olympics.
So I, I coauthored an article, um, actually with another breaker.
I'm breaking as well.
So, you know, there, there's more of us around, um, and I interviewed, um, Australian breakers
about, you know, what they thought about breaking Olympic inclusion.
What were their, what did they think, you know, it was good about it.
What were they concerned about it?
And yeah, that article came out this year and it was really interesting that everyone,
almost everyone said that, like, this is such a positive force in terms of legitimizing,
breaking in other people's eyes.
Breaking's legitimate for us.
It's a legitimate athletic activity for us, but so many people have just disregarded it,
including people's, you know, close family and friends, you know?
And so that's always kind of been a little bit hard for them, um, you know, to feel, you
know, not having that support.
And if anything, having like, what are you still doing that for, you know, what are you
wasting your time with that?
You know, people are being asked about their training, you know, there's, there's interest
and excitement and respect there.
And so that's been a huge factor.
And of course, you know, the potential opportunities for, um, you know, doing something with breaking,
um, in terms of work, like, you know, coaching roles, hopefully rolling out school programs,
community outreach programs, just by, because people know about breaking, like, you know,
Those barriers were in place, those doors were shut to us because people didn't know
or understand breaking.
But then on the other hand, you know, there are definitely concerns about, you know, these
kind of top down institutional, um, approaches and, you know, the loss of agency and decision
making and particularly in such a grassroots and accessible, uh, form as breaking, you
know, concerns that it might lose some of that.
It's really interesting.
So, um, in terms of the legitimacy, even in breakers families and people that they know,
has there been pushback from the broader public or have you found people have been genuinely
accepting and excited about the Olympics?
I think there's definitely been pushed back from the broader public.
Um, I feel like my role is like, you know, with every media interview I do, it's like
hearts and minds, like I'm going out there changing hearts and minds because by and large,
the reaction was totally negative about breakings inclusion in the Olympics.
I think it's just, it's just so.
It's just so true.
olympics yeah it was really sad but i think it really comes from a place of ignorance like people
when they think of breaking they think of some electric boogaloo kind of backspin worm combination
that they did in the 80s on some cardboard or or what they do at the office christmas party every
year you know that's a bad association isn't it like i'm i'm yet to do a media like a you know
interview on tv without or on the radio without someone mentioning the worm to me so oh dear that's
not good so that's that's a challenge that they can do the worm probably yeah so you know maybe
they could be the next maybe they could be the next representative though isn't it yeah i mean
so people just don't know about breaking and then as soon as i explain a little bit to them
and as soon as they see a little bit you know it's it's um
it's a totally different view but yeah i mean i don't i i don't read the comments on articles that
are shared and things like that so um but you know they've been pretty negative but they've been funny
negative like so i okay i did read some because they were funny like one said oh you know breaking
the olympics what are they going to have in next marbles oh and then another one what are they
going to have in next hairdressing i don't even understand that one i don't know these ones i
don't know yeah so i it's wild yeah yeah so i think i think i started out with like you know
85 of the australian public hating it and i think i'm getting down to like you know 50
or halfway is good i respect your work there you're on the grind yes yeah uh well i'm hoping
the tfap audience will be completely on board yeah thanks we'll see yeah we'll push them in
the right direction we'll help you out
what is your favorite failure oh see that's such a funny um combination of words because i don't
think i necessarily associate failures with you know a positive kind of experience but totally
i think there have been some failures that have been game changers for me and have helped get me
to where i am so i think it was that was that 2019 or 2018
maybe anyway around that time um there's a really big competition in sydney every year called
destructive steps it's now a huge street dance festival it's absolutely massive attracts all
these people from around australia and overseas and i think they'd only just introduced the b-girl
competition maybe the year before or something like that and i was like and i didn't do very
well in it the year before but i don't think i'd finish my phd i don't think i'd finish my phd i
didn't finish my phd long before that so you know and so i was like all right yeah i'm gonna train
and i'm gonna i'm gonna win next year and i got all the way to the final and i lost and i lost to
a 13 year old japanese girl as well i know she was all the way from japan and it just like you
know here i was how old was i at that point 30 or something i was like what am i doing you know i
think it was just particularly right and i think it was just particularly right and i think it was
just particularly rough and and you know and some people were like oh i thought you took that and
you know this always happens in breaking you i thought you took that or you know it was close
blah blah but i was like you know what i just need to get better like i just need it to be clearer
that i won uh i need there to be no doubt that i win and i just need to dominate and so that
started the journey of trying to dominate in australia and really train hard and and
be number one i love that it's really cool i love and i also love that language i think it's really
cool hearing athletes be really clear about that i think sometimes when you interview athletes and
you see like post-match interviews and things like that there's this real sense of humility
and people not necessarily being straight up but i love that like really clear language of like i
need to dominate and show that i'm the best yeah and it took me years um i entered that battle
every year and i only won it last year
wow so it was like five years later or something that i finally won it because you often have like
an international guest or someone come over it's not just australians so yeah so yeah i was like
yes you did it that would have felt really nice it was really good yeah that was not long before
oceania as well so i was like yes i can do this that's awesome congratulations thank you thank
you so much for your time today it's been it's been amazing to sit down and chat and learn more
about what you do i i cannot wait to watch so august 9th
is me yes and then you can watch jay attack on august 10th how good yeah cannot wait to tune
in and best of luck thank you so much thanks so much for listening if you got something out of
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