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Raygun and the Olympic blame game · The Front

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  Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
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  Speaker 1: the news from The Australian. From the Australian, here's what's
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  Speaker 1: on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Monday, August twelve.
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  Speaker 1: Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be cross examined by
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  Speaker 1: Council for Brittany Higgins when he appears as a witness
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  Speaker 1: for the senator suing Higgins for defamation former Defense Minister
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  Speaker 1: Linda Reynolds. We'll have live coverage from the WA Supreme
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  Speaker 1: Court all week at the Australian dot Com Dot you.
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  Speaker 1: A twenty seven year old woman took her life after
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  Speaker 1: debt collectors for the National Disability Insurance Scheme pursued her
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  Speaker 1: over for a twenty eight thousand dollars debt. That's according
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  Speaker 1: to her parents. In an exclusive for The Australian Today,
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  Speaker 1: Australian Olympic boss Anna Meears has lashed trolls for mocking
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  Speaker 1: breakdowncer Rachel raygun Gum after her startling performance in the
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  Speaker 1: last days of the Paris Olympics. So where does the
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  Speaker 1: responsibility lie for an Australian athlete's global humiliation. Every Olympic
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  Speaker 1: Games turns up a folk hero. We've had Eddie b Eagle,
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  Speaker 1: the British ski jumper who in nineteen eighty eight finished
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  Speaker 1: a resounding last but became a crowd sensation. Or Eddie
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  Speaker 1: the Eel who in two thousand Sydney Games swam the
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  Speaker 1: slowest one hundred meters freestyle in Olympic history, one of
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  Speaker 1: his first dips in a fifty meter pool to a
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  Speaker 1: roaring standing ovation. Well, I thought I'd seen everything in
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  Speaker 1: the Olympics.
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  Speaker 2: Rooming call.
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  Speaker 1: Speed skater Stephen Bradbury, who I would defend as a
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  Speaker 1: master tactician art who Australians embraced for the pure dumb
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  Speaker 1: luck of winning a race after everybody else fell over.
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  Speaker 2: Bradbury way off the pace and Lee is now the
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  Speaker 2: challenger for owner Lee coming up on the outside when
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  Speaker 2: Lee has gone down and Bradberry, who was in.
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  Speaker 1: A perfect spot, states over the line.
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  Speaker 2: Australia's first ever went to Olympics gold medal.
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  Speaker 3: Stephen Bradbury is the.
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  Speaker 1: Champion, and now there's Reagum, the thirty six year old
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  Speaker 1: university lecturer with a PhD in breakdancing culture, was Australia's
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  Speaker 1: sole female team member in what the Olympics are calling
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  Speaker 1: breaking a new sport in the twenty twenty four Games.
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  Speaker 1: Very unlikely to reappear in future.
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  Speaker 3: Will you gunn represent her country?
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  Speaker 1: Ygun was terrible, terrible in the way you or I
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  Speaker 1: would be terrible at breakdancing or pole vaulting or gymnastic
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  Speaker 1: ribbon dancing or judo or weightlifting. That is, we would
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  Speaker 1: be normal, normal levels of coordination, normal levels of skill.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing wrong with that. But does normal belong at the
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  Speaker 1: highest levels of athletic excellence to be televised live to
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  Speaker 1: an audience of billions? I chattered to our sportswriter, Will Swanton,
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  Speaker 1: and I've got to warn you we got a serious
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  Speaker 1: case of the giggles during this interview. Will Swanton is
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  Speaker 1: a sports writer with The Australian. Will you were at
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  Speaker 1: the Place de la Concord when Reagun made her international debut.
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  Speaker 1: Tell me what you thought when you saw her come
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  Speaker 1: onto the stage?
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  Speaker 2: Oh?
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  Speaker 3: Just that name Raygun. Now I never heard of Raygun,
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  Speaker 3: Like I actually not being the world's most experienced breaking reporter,
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  Speaker 3: Not exactly. No, And I actually said some of mate
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  Speaker 3: sitting next to me, what time is gun ray On Gun.
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  Speaker 3: Ray It's ray Gun. So sitting there and they introduced
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  Speaker 3: the sixteen be Girls as they're called, know that like
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  Speaker 3: being called athletes. Apparently they're all be Girls in Breaking
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  Speaker 3: and they're all wearing the Americans and the French and
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  Speaker 3: their Japanese. They're wearing their funky hip hop clothes. And
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  Speaker 3: then Raygun comes out in the Australian team track suit,
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  Speaker 3: all right, And that was the first time I thought,
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  Speaker 3: what's going on here? What's this? The first thing I
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  Speaker 3: thought was Alissa Healey and the women's One Day cricket team,
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  Speaker 3: just like it looked like the cricket in before that,
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  Speaker 3: well Sydney, all kind of thing. But that's all right,
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  Speaker 3: And I literally thought she was going to get changed.
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  Speaker 3: Before she came out to compete, she was just in
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  Speaker 3: her trackings. So they have one on one battles as
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  Speaker 3: they call it, which is basically just a dance on
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  Speaker 3: like Zoolander. And so she came out and she was
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  Speaker 3: you couldn't say she was breaking like the rest of them.
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  Speaker 1: First came the judges verdict with zero. Then came the
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  Speaker 1: social media verdict. I'm trying to see, they says somebody,
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  Speaker 1: mama hopped out the soccer man and came to the
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  Speaker 1: stage and we're what is going on here?
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  Speaker 3: So Massy, you're from Australian and you've done lied on
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  Speaker 3: your Olympics application and said that you know how to
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  Speaker 3: break dance bunny rabbit kanker with one of those two
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  Speaker 3: I got moves.
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  Speaker 1: So what you're gonna do? I'm a worm of.
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  Speaker 3: A feeling that maybe we're not taking the break dancing
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  Speaker 3: very seriously.
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  Speaker 2: She did.
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  Speaker 1: Mama turned up her moves. This I say, I love
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  Speaker 1: her originality though, yeah, yeah, for sure, I love fortibut
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  Speaker 1: of this stuff. You ain't seen.
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  Speaker 2: But at all.
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  Speaker 1: Did you think at any point is this a spoof
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  Speaker 1: or is this a joke or did you know from
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  Speaker 1: the very beginning that actually this we were seeing someone
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  Speaker 1: who was just not have the same athletic standard as
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  Speaker 1: the other competitors.
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  Speaker 3: So she qualified through the Oceania Championships. She's the reigning
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  Speaker 3: Oceania champion of breaking so she earned her spot and
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  Speaker 3: she won. So there's a tournament and the winner got
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  Speaker 3: together the Olympics and I'm fascinated. I can't see any
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  Speaker 3: pottage anyway. Her final, Like, I didn't think it was
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  Speaker 3: a spoof, and I didn't think of I just thought
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  Speaker 3: that she. I mean, it's funny, we're all trying to
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  Speaker 3: find polite ways of putting it. But she just wasn't
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  Speaker 3: up to that standard, like remotely up to that standard.
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  Speaker 1: After the event, but before it all went sour on
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  Speaker 1: social media, Rachel Gunn came out to speak to the journos.
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  Speaker 3: Just a lovely woman, and she was thrilled. We've been
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  Speaker 3: part of the Olympics and I just wanted to do
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  Speaker 3: it my way and it's been such an honor and
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  Speaker 3: what a treat and Breaking might never be here again,
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  Speaker 3: and it's just all been so much fun. And we're
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  Speaker 3: looking at her thinking, oh my gosh, she's got no
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  Speaker 3: idea yet of what's happening on social media. I think
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  Speaker 3: it was a bad It was probably a bad look
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  Speaker 3: for the Olympics. I don't mean just her performance. I
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  Speaker 3: just think Breaking didn't suit the Olympics. It didn't fit
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  Speaker 3: the Olympics.
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  Speaker 2: I love Rachel, and I think that what has occurred
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  Speaker 2: on social media with trolls and keyboard warriors and taking
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  Speaker 2: those coins and giving them airtime has been really disappointing.
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  Speaker 1: Animir is the boss of the Olympic team complained publicly
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  Speaker 1: that trolls Will being unkind to raygun She is.
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  Speaker 2: The best breakdancer female that we have for Australia. She
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  Speaker 2: has represented the Olympic team the Olympic spirit with great
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  Speaker 2: enthusiasm and I absolutely love her courage, I love her
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  Speaker 2: character and I feel very disappointed for her that she
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  Speaker 2: has come under the attack that she has.
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  Speaker 1: And I think we could probably agree that some people
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  Speaker 1: have been unkind to.
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  Speaker 3: Her, but Will doesn't.
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  Speaker 1: The AOC and animirs have to take some responsibility for
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  Speaker 1: putting Rachel Gunn in a position where she was going
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  Speaker 1: to be humiliated internationally. Don't bear some responsibility for that.
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  Speaker 3: I'm sure Rachel is probably shattered. She was trying to
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  Speaker 3: give everyone a bit of a job quity. But there's
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  Speaker 3: also from Rachel's point of view, if you're for any athlete,
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  Speaker 3: if you're willing to step up into something as big
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  Speaker 3: as the Olympic, there's the chance that you could be
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  Speaker 3: praised from the roof pops as some kind of sporting hero,
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  Speaker 3: which everyone's happen to do. But for any professional sport
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  Speaker 3: or once you step out there, you're up for praise
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  Speaker 3: to be mocked ridiculed, criticized, told how great you are,
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  Speaker 3: told that you were great. So that's all part and
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  Speaker 3: parcel of us. There is definitely a part of it
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  Speaker 3: where if the AOC sends an athlete out there, there
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  Speaker 3: has to be some recognition of this is Olympic competition.
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  Speaker 3: It has to be taken seriously. But I think they
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  Speaker 3: do have to accept that once you become an Olympic
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  Speaker 3: athlete and you're in what was a high profile event,
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  Speaker 3: you're up to be judged.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up. It was an otherwise stunning games for Australia,
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  Speaker 1: So how did we do so well? In a fortnite
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  Speaker 1: it'll be the Paralympics where everyone has an incredible backstory.
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  Speaker 1: We'll have all the action twenty four to seven at
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  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au for our subscribers. We'll
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  Speaker 1: be back after this break. Olympic Games usually follow a
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  Speaker 1: pattern for Australia. We start very strong in the pool
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  Speaker 1: with gold medals and advance Australia fair coming from all directions.
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  Speaker 1: We all love Week one, but in the Olympiads of
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  Speaker 1: recent memory, Weeks two and three are a little less
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  Speaker 1: spine tingling. As we watch ken you win the marathon,
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  Speaker 1: Sweden win the high jump and China win everything else.
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  Speaker 1: By the closing ceremony, Australians are cheerfully celebrating a sixteenth
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  Speaker 1: place in the sports we know when not very good.
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  Speaker 1: At Paris has been different. The golds have kept coming
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  Speaker 1: in sports we don't normally prosper in road, cycling, skateboarding, bremx.
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  Speaker 1: This Olympics, Australia has done incredibly well, mind blowingly well.
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  Speaker 1: So what's changed that's incredible?
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  Speaker 3: I think one thing that has happened a lot of
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  Speaker 3: other countries have become stronger and they started taking medals
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  Speaker 3: off the powerhouses as well. And the swimming it gets
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  Speaker 3: and it's not all America winning the swimming. Well, my
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  Speaker 3: impression is across all the sports, a lot more nations
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  Speaker 3: are winning medals, which are taking some off Great Britain
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  Speaker 3: and taking some off France and taking some off Japan.
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  Speaker 3: So the top two America and China are miles ahead,
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  Speaker 3: and then the rest of the top ten is a
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  Speaker 3: bit of a bunch and we're just snuck through. But
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  Speaker 3: like the men's doubles tennis at Roland Garros, it was
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  Speaker 3: a class, but they were John Piers and Matt Ebden,
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  Speaker 3: a couple of thirty six year olds who live on
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  Speaker 3: the same street in Perth. Wives are best friends, kids
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  Speaker 3: play together, all that kind of stuff. Unseated doubles players
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  Speaker 3: in a field that had Raffa Adal and Alcoraz playing
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  Speaker 3: together and all that kind of thing, and that was
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  Speaker 3: just the unlikeliest gold medal. It's lucky for Australia that
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  Speaker 3: the swimming is the first week because it's everyone on
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  Speaker 3: a high from night one. So ari Arm one gold
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  Speaker 3: that first night and the women's relay one gold that
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  Speaker 3: first night. So Australia's got two gold medals the first night.
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  Speaker 3: It's all celebratory. Back at the village where was I
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  Speaker 3: think if swimming was weak too, if we had the
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  Speaker 3: ass the first week would be down and it wouldn't
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  Speaker 3: have that same But I think they all fed each
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  Speaker 3: other off a bit. The impression I get is that
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  Speaker 3: they just had a ball. They're in Paris, the old
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  Speaker 3: backdrop is one of the great cities in the world.
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  Speaker 3: They've done incredibly well. I think Anime even in the
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  Speaker 3: way I think she was a bit off the mark
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  Speaker 3: with defending ray Gan, because like some form of comment
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  Speaker 3: was always going to happen once they sent her out there.
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  Speaker 3: But I think in a way that was also an
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  Speaker 3: example of Anna just hears deeply about all these athletes,
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  Speaker 3: and I'm sure the way she is around the village
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  Speaker 3: just constantly encouraging them. She's done great things as an Olympian,
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  Speaker 3: so they've got someone there who's actually done it, who's
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  Speaker 3: spurring them on. The impression I get is that she's
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  Speaker 3: whipped up this fantastic team and spirit. I think that's
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  Speaker 3: been part of it. But Anna and everyt they should
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  Speaker 3: be incredibly proud of themselves.
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  Speaker 1: Will Swanton is a sports writer with The Australian. You
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  Speaker 1: can check out his reporting right now at the Australian
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  Speaker 1: dot com dot au