Australian breakdancer Rachel Gunn, known as B-Girl Raygun, failed to score a single point at the Paris Olympics with her viral performances, but she’s the one laughing now. According to the new rankings released by the World DanceSport Federation, the governing body for breakdancing, Raygun is now the No. 1 female breaker in the world.
Raygun won the 2023 WDSF Oceania Championships, which awarded her 1,000 ranking points. Her win in that event is how she earned her spot at the Olympics. None of medalists in women’s breaking at the Olympics — Ami Yuasa, known as B-Girl Ami (gold), Dominika Banevic, known as B-Girl Nicka (silver), and Liu Qingyi, known as B-Girl 671 (bronze) — are currently ranked in the top ten.
So how did this happen? How is Raygun No. 1 while the top three Olympic medalists weren’t even in the top ten? Enough people asked that question that the WDSF had to release a statement explaining why Raygun was currently No. 1.
The rankings are based on points from each breaker’s top four performances from the last 12 months. (Points expire after 52 weeks.) And as a number of sports do prior to the Olympics, breaking changed its schedule and the awarding of points to allow athletes to focus on preparation leading up to the Paris Games.
Due to that, three major events did not contribute to the rankings points: Olympic qualifiers in Shanghai and Budapest, and the Olympic Games itself. So while Raygun earned zero points from the Olympics due to her performance, the medalists didn’t earn any either despite finishing in the top three.
Not only did those three major events not contribute to the points, but they were some of the only events held over the past year.
“Furthermore, in alignment with the Olympic Qualification System, ranking events were intentionally not held between 31 December 2023 and the Olympic Games Paris 2024,” the WDSF statement read. “This strategic scheduling allowed athletes to focus solely on the last part of their Olympic qualification without the added pressure of additional ranking events.”
So right now, the points from most other events have expired, and there are no other points coming in due to the Olympics. That means most breakers have the points from just one event deciding their ranking. And since Raygun won one of the last non-Olympics events, she’s now the No. 1 breaker in the world.
