Australian breakdancer Rachel Gunn, better known as B-Girl Raygun, may not have scored a single point at the Paris Olympics with her viral performances, but she’s the one laughing now. According to new rankings released by the World DanceSport Federation, the governing body for breakdancing, Raygun is now the world’s No. 1 female breaker.
Raygun won the 2023 WDSF Oceania Championships, which earned her 1,000 ranking points. Her victory in that event is how she earned her spot at the Olympics. None of the women’s break medalists 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.
Why Raygun is #1
How did this happen? How did Raygun get to be #1 when the top three Olympic medalists weren’t even in the top ten? Enough people were asking that question that the WDSF had to release a statement explaining why Raygun was #1 right now.
The rankings are based on the points from each breaker’s best four performances over the past 12 months. (Points expire after 52 weeks.) And like a number of sports leading up to the Olympics, breaking has adjusted its schedule and points allocation so athletes can focus on preparing for the Games in Paris.
As a result, three major events did not contribute to the rankings: the Olympic qualifiers in Shanghai and Budapest, and the Olympic Games themselves. So while Raygun earned zero points from the Olympics for her performance, the medalists did not earn any either, despite finishing in the top three.
Not only did these three major events not yield any points, they were also among the few events held last year.
“Furthermore, in accordance with the Olympic qualification system, no ranking events were intentionally held between 31 December 2023 and the Paris 2024 Olympic Games,” the WDSF statement said. “This strategic planning ensured that athletes could focus exclusively on the final part of their Olympic qualification without the added pressure of additional ranking events.”
So right now, most of the other events have their points expired and no other points are coming in because of the Olympics. That means most breakers are only going to let the points from one event determine their ranking. And since Raygun won one of the last non-Olympic events, she is now the #1 breaker in the world.
