to think Rachel 'Raygun' gun has broken the phrase 'Oh for the confidence of a mediocre man'?

raygun-bloody auto carrot.

the kid skateboarders can stay-they are fantastic. Breakdancing can get in the bin though-what ever it was rayon thought they were doing, ive seen better done by drunks outside pubs at chucking out time

I think she must have some MH issues, the lack of self awareness is just unbelievable. And the confidence/ arrogance to actually perform on a world stage. That is definitely some level of delusion that I think is Mh related. Have friends in Aus who say she's a laughing stock. If you go on her FB page she seems to have a lot of supporters ( with extra sleuthing) have found that they seem to be family memes who encourage this lunacy.

I thought it was Honey G making a comeback at first.

I have to say that one of the things that I feel uncomfortable about with all this is that she, as a white woman, participated in something from black culture and made an absolute mockery of it on the world stage (whether an intentional mockery or not)

This is the bit I can't get away from. I've seen her speaking about breakdancing culture and how she's the one to bring it to the world and 'explain' breakdancing etc (lightly paraphrasing - I'll try to find the clip, but it's a fairly widely circulated, pre-Olympic one I think).

There are several uncomfortable strands of this whole debarcle.

This has got to be number one on the list of 'sports' that I hope they drop before the next Olympics. Skateboarding by 12 year olds is 2nd. What a joke.

Sadly university admins are either captured by silly ideology or don’t have the courage to stand up to it.

It's like watching Kath dancing with her little kangaroo paws up in Kath & Kim 😁

Who is funding this stuff?

Yes I know she has a PhD.
Ahhh so you believe this was entirely contrived? No, she's been doing battles for several years.

Haven't read the thread so I'm guessing this may have been posted already but she knew exactly what she was doing.

She has a PhD which if you look on Twitter has parts quoted about how breakdancing is losing its cultural identity because it is being 'sportified' - ie. becoming uniform moves.

https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/rachael-wanted-bulk-researchgate-profile-tweet-raygun-s-alleged-motive-behind-olympics-fiasco-goes-viral

Hannah Berellis tweet sort of explains it as discussed in this article above but there are better/deeper anaslyses on Twitter with extracts from her phd posted.

RayGunn is no fool and knew what she was doing including founding the Australian break dancing association, getting her husband in as coach and manipulating the selection.

This isn't some mediocre self confident woman at all. It's someone with a very specific aim and agenda and has achieved excatly what she set out to do and will probably write a book about it and get paid a bunch for media work on the back of it.

Not defending Raygun’s particular thesis here as I haven’t read it, but that’s hardly a problem with the PhD system. Of course people will study and write theses on major cultural and sporting activities- boiling it down to “a PhD in breakdancing” or “a PhD in ABBA” or whatever will always make it sound a bit stupid but it will have a much more nuanced question behind it.

Yeah, I'm finding that pretty uncomfortable - would they have the same objection to a black person doing a terrible foxtrot? I watched a bit of the women and don't think I saw any black dancers, is it acceptable that they were doing it as they weren't awful? Who decides how bad you have to be before it becomes racist?

I absolutely hate the term 'black culture' as it suggests all black people share culture, which for some reason always seems to mean things like rap music or breakdancing; there's significantly more diversity amongst black people than white people, both culturally and genetically. Do people really think the Maasai Mara are identical to Aboriginal Australians, that the Omo tribes are the same as Jamaican Rastafarians etc?

This woman was awful full stop - her skin tone had nothing to do with it.

She has written a PhD on break and teaches at a good uni in a total non subject - the sort that was brilliantly shown up a few years ago when deliberately nonsense papers were published by leading journals who couldn’t tell them from the apparently serious ones, because there is no academic rigour.

What day job? Sorry I've clearly missed something, because my understanding is she doesn't consider herself remotely ridiculous! She thinks the issue is merely that her moves are too creative for some.

The Olympics is becoming ridiculous with some of the 'sports' they promote. It needs pulling back to the mainstream track and field type activities.

On the other hand it does encourage some to have a go, like the bobsleigh team or Eddie the Eagle. Many competitors take part knowing they don't have a chance but give it their best, sometimes I think these are the true olympians, no big prize money for them just do your best.

I noticed someone mentioned Liz Truss already. Yep I was reminded of her too 🤣

😂 Quite a few people on Twitter saying she looks like their dog when it finds some shit to roll in 😂

She nicked that move off me. 😒

I keep seeing comments that say an indigenous Australian would be better at breakdancing. Why? Because there must be a closer connection with Black American culture? Seems awfully racist to me.