Power moves: Why Raygun won the weirdest Olympics ever



The Paris 2024 Olympics will be known for its many bizarre scandals. The entire event felt upside down, backward, like a festival in Opposite Land. From the blasphemy of radicals to the unprecedented use of AI-guided mass surveillance to the nasty outcomes of gender ideology, there was a darkness looming over the games.

Then, caught in the maelstrom of it all, there was Snoop Dogg. He wound up being far more than a cultural ambassador. He was everywhere. He was actually having fun, full of energy and curiosity. And it wasn’t just because he was making $500,000 a day.

So it surprised nobody to see Snoop center stage at the Place de la Concorde for the breakdancing competition, which is basically interpretive dance with trash-talking and good music.

Snoop conducted the traditional “three ground strikes” ritual that preceded every single Olympic event this year. He strutted out in his customized Skechers.

Breakdancing, also known as breaking, was among the final events of the 2.5-week games. This year also marked its first appearance in the Olympics.

The commentators gushed about how history was being made by the inclusion of breaking at the Olympics and how it was part of the sport’s “groundbreaking journey.”

And they aren’t wrong. How did a music-driven subculture combining Russian folk dance with rap music wind up in the Olympics?

The whole competition was bizarre and completely uncalled for. I loved it. I couldn’t decide if it was over the top politically correct (it definitely was) or beautifully subversive. Or just, well, lame and inauthentic.

Breaking badly

Qualifying took place in a round-robin competition, in which two opponents faced off in a battle, which is the technical term for the dance-off. Each battle is a fight over 18 points, allocated by judges.

The women’s breakdance event featured girls from all over the world. There was even one from the Olympic Refugee Team (Talash). Ironically, she was disqualified for donning a cape with political messaging.

Among the 16 “Breaking Bad-girls” was Raygun, the Australian "cultural studies" professor who performed worse than any other breakdancer.

She started breaking in her mid-20s, which is apparently a late start; many of these dancers began honing their craft in early adolescence. At that age, Raygun (government name Rachael Gunn) was focusing on tap and jazz.

Her husband, Samuel Free, is her coach. He had been into breakdancing for a while when they met and convinced her to give it a try. She intertwined breakdancing with her academic career, then eventually began to compete in international events. In 2023, she qualified for the Olympics.

Even her students didn’t believe her.

As the announcer put it when the 36-year-old athlete stomped out to the stage, “Dr. Rachel Gunn. University lecturer by day, B-girl by night, and now an Olympian.”

It was a rocky debut. In her first battle, she faced Logistix, the 21-year-old B-girl who began breaking when she was 7 years old.

Raygun's dancing here reminded me of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” dance scenes, like this one. If she had danced like that at a wedding reception, she’d have been a massive hit.

For her second performance, Raygun yawned with performative boredom. (This classifies as a power move.) The commentator, with impressive kindness, complimented her for “starting a conversation.”

Each B-girl had three chances to score. Raygun didn’t score a single point. Zero. Unanimous. To some, this was like failing out of clown school.

But what’s more impressive is that by tanking, Raygun actually legitimized the sport. She separated it from the inclusive and overly interpretive art form.

This was the most postmodern Olympics to date. In her failure, Raygun won adulation.

“It’s all about commitment,” said one of the announcers during Raygun’s disastrous routine. “Dance is all about character, all about showing who you are.”

Her political compass is nuts. She’s practically the Robin DiAngelo of hip-hop culture. Or maybe Rachel Dolezal. As an academic, her politics align with the leftist wing of the academic class. He dissertation examines "the intersection of gender and Sydney's breaking culture."

Her type tend to be pretentious, unbearable, nasty. They relish their control as gatekeepers. But they seem to have lost their authority over coolness.

Still, is Raygun’s political orientation bad enough to justify the trolling she’s faced? Most of the mockery just seemed mean. Raygun never forced politics into any of it — either in her performance or its weird viral spillover.

She posted a quote on Instagram: "don't be afraid to be different, go out there and represent yourself, you never know where that's gonna take you"

Wreck the technique

Meanwhile America walked away from the Olympics with a single bronze medal in the sport/art form it invented

Competitive breakdancing has official guidelines and metrics. Judges assess breakdancers according to five criteria: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality, all of which require coordination, flexibility, rhythm, and style.

“Vocabulary” denotes the breakdancers' variability in moves.

“Style” is a measure of uniqueness. Every breakdancer is expected to have a distinctly personal approach to moving around. Part of this is attitude, the performative confidence a B-boy or B-girl exudes.

For all of these reasons, breaking was a difficult sport for the Olympics, although there are plenty of judge-determined competitions, many of which also involve an artistic and creative style.

“Repeating,” for example, is when one of the breakdancers reuses a move already performed. There are flips, leaps, and spins, including the famous head spin trick. Or the “freeze,” another common maneuver, which requires the breakdancer to stop abruptly in order to seem stunned mid-air.

All of these are officially classified as “power moves.” Which is hilarious.

Fear of a wack planet

Before Raygun vanishes from the public consciousness, we should talk about the future of Olympic breakdancing. It may not have one. It won’t be part of the the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, which will feature flag football and squash, as well as the re-emergence of softball and baseball.

But breakdancing paired well with the unhinged weirdness of the 2024 Olympics. I hope it sticks around.

Dancing is hard, but worthwhile. It takes a lot of courage to dance. To practice dancing is as strange as it is to practice talking.

“This dance really does bring the world together,” says one of the commentators for the women’s qualifying breakdance.

Maybe it sounds hokey. Maybe it’s easy to laugh at. But who cares? Dancing is our oldest human voice. Dancing is an expression of vitality. Throughout history, it has been an act of youthful defiance. Dance is galvanic; it bursts and springs. Maybe it's that dancing feels so perfect.

To dance is to forget, to forget the intoxicating whirl of life, in the place you fell, in the same untucked schedule of each day you thought you knew, guided always by something that can only be called “belief.”

To dance is to fall apart in front of everyone. To dance is to break open. To dance is to cry in public.

To dance is to be a freak show in undiscovered territory, a place where everyone is freakish and on display yet happy to have company. To dance is to pretend a new backstory.

WATCH: Joe Rogan notices something about the Olympics that no one else is talking about



A global firestorm has ignited over the Olympics’ decision to feature a blasphemous opening ceremony performance that mocked “The Last Supper,” as well as its position (or lack thereof) on gender and who can compete in what division.

But Joe Rogan is surprised people aren’t up in arms over what he thinks is a third controversy.

Dave Rubin plays the clip of Rogan explaining to Khalil Rountree Jr. how the Olympics is “a giant scam.”

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

“You have the best athletes in the world participating in their disciplines ... and then on top of that you have enormous amounts of money being made and none of it's going to the athletes,” said Rogan, adding that the entire ordeal “is a giant scam.”

He then pointed out that the same people who put on “that ridiculous opening ceremony where you got a bunch of drag queens in ‘The Last Supper’” are the same people who are “reaping all the money and sucking all the cash out of these athletes.”

On top of scamming the athletes, the people behind the scenes of the Olympics are also hurting the communities where the Olympics are hosted. Rogan pointed to Brazil as an example.

“So if it's going to be in Brazil, they build this f****** enormous place for it to participate in ... and then after that — nothing! And then all the people there who are poor are like, ‘Hey where the f*** did this money come from and why didn't you just spend it on the community?”’ Rogan said, pointing out that “the money they make is astronomical.”

“The Olympics makes billions and billions of money in television revenue and advertising revenue, and they don't give any of it to the athletes, so it just goes to the committee ... and these are the crazy people that are putting on ‘The Last Supper’ with transsexuals,” he continued.

“The whole Olympics is just people getting f***ed over.”

To see more of Rogan’s commentary, watch the clip above.

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Sabo strikes ... the Olympic Games



It's not that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif doesn't look like a woman — this is the Olympics, not a beauty contest.

It's that Khelif doesn't punch like a woman, either — at least judging by Italian boxer Angela Carini's reaction after Khelif hit her in the face with a punishing straight right. Just 46 seconds into the bout, Carini gave up.

Carini was in severe pain, but she wasn't injured. This was a pre-emptive decision for her own safety. Khelif hit with a power that Carini had never faced from any other female opponent in her boxing career.

Now, maybe Khelif is simply that talented and Carini just a sore loser who met her match.

But the news that Khelif had previously been disqualified from last year's world championships after unspecified sex testing by a different regulatory authority, the International Boxing Association, certainly raises suspicions — suspicions that won't be allayed any time soon. The IBA isn't allowed to reveal the tests it based the disqualification on. And the media instantly paints any attempts to pursue the issue as ideologically motivated — a "transvestigation," if you will.

Making this a "trans" issue is disingenuous; ironically, activists refuse to admit that Khelif could be one of those rare cases in which sex really is on a spectrum: those classified as intersex or as having differences in sex development. In these cases, even a person with XX chromosomes could have significantly more testosterone than other women, providing a distinct physical advantage.

Carini and other female athletes like her deserve clarity on this issue.

In the meantime, the spectacle of Carini's despair in defeat remains haunting. It's the despair of someone denied the chance to prove herself in fair competition.

It's this image that dissident artist Sabo highlights in his latest work, seen above. A biting commentary on what gender ideology has done to girls' and women's sports.

Meanwhile, having already clinched a bronze medal, Khelif continues to tear through the competition. Khelif will face Thailand's Janjaem Suwannapheng late this afternoon in the semifinals.

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Couch: Sprinter Allyson Felix might be our last authentic Olympic superstar and hero



No one will remember Allyson Felix as the greatest American track athlete in history. That's because she never told us she was. Nike never told us that, either, so how could she be?

Felix was the most important American athlete at the Tokyo Olympics, right when we needed her most. At 35 and in her final Olympics, she won the gold medal in the 4x400 relay and the bronze in the 400-meter individual sprint. That gave her 11 Olympic medals, making her the most decorated Olympic track athlete in American history, even more so than Carl Lewis. More than Jesse Owens. More than Wilma Rudolph. More than Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Babe Didrikson, Jim Thorpe, or Michael Johnson.

That's not why we needed her so much, though. Felix showed that you can be a superstar in the look-at-me generation without focusing entirely on yourself. You can stand for something socially important to you and at the same time stand up to corporate backers and not sell your soul.

Did we even know someone like Allyson Felix could still exist? Let's hope people get the message, because the Olympics were defined by fallen stars more than superstars. From all appearances, Felix is a healthy, happy, strong, proud new mother with a lot of guts, a lot of money, and a lot of Olympic medals.

By contrast, what do you see when you look at Simone Biles? Or Naomi Osaka? Or Novak Djokovic? They never smiled once. They were hyped up by the GOAT machine – corporate sponsors insisting that they are the best ever and will do even more in Tokyo. And they failed miserably. Grim, unhappy, needing mental help.

It's a trendy thing now to say that Biles and Osaka have "started the discussion" about mental health in sports, or even just among young people. I can see how that's true and important, but it's also important that Felix be in that same discussion.

She is the correct path to the mountaintop, the safest path, the healthiest path. In a world where LeBron James will stand up for social causes except anything that is critical of China and Nike, where his bread is buttered, Felix stood up to Nike, risked her finances, and made real change.

She was under no less pressure than Biles or Osaka to make the most of herself and to be the best. And her stances were always with others in mind.

She did it right.

She decided to start a family and got pregnant in 2018, as her contract with Nike was up. She was offered a new deal, which came, she said, with a 70% pay cut.

Felix felt wronged and also felt that the apparel business in general treated women athletes poorly when they decided to have families. So she stood up for them, as well as herself, in a social justice stance that was genuine and from the heart. She wrote an editorial in the New York Times that said:

"I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn't be punished if I didn't perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth. I wanted to set a new standard. If I, one of Nike's most widely marketed athletes, couldn't secure these protections, who could? Nike declined."

Under Felix's pressure, as well as pressure from other athletes, Nike and the industry buckled. Nike changed its policy.

Felix had an emergency C-section in November 2018 at 32 weeks pregnant because of a health issue that threatened both her life and her daughter's. Felix then became an advocate for health issues regarding black women and pregnancy.

This is the way to do social justice, without corporate direction or a self-aggrandizing marketing plan. The pressure on the mental health of today's athletes is coming from so many places, mostly from social media and excessive parents. And when athletes reach the top, the corporate marketers are waiting for them, to heap on more pressure.

Felix, who was once a prodigy, found her way through it all. We saw her in the Olympic trials on Father's Day needing to finish in the top three. She took the lead, fell back to fourth and fifth, then relentlessly came back and qualified for Tokyo.

All with her daughter, Camryn, in the stands watching.

You rarely take a lead in a sprint, fall behind, and come back. She did it again in Tokyo in the 400 to win the bronze medal.

Is Felix the GOAT of American track and field? I still feel Lewis probably is. You don't always have to be hyped up that way to matter. Felix could be the last role model to prove it.

Whitlock: US Olympic relay failure exposes the bigger problem undermining the success of black men



The Olympic 4 x 100 relay is racist. That's the only logical explanation for the embarrassing performance of the United States men's relay team last night and over the past two decades.

In our country, Olympic-level sprinting is dominated by black men. The 4 x 100 relay requires four black American men to work cohesively together for approximately 38 seconds.

We can't do it. We certainly couldn't do it last night. And we've struggled doing it for the past 20 years.

In a qualifying heat at the Tokyo Games, Team USA finished sixth, behind China, Canada, Italy, Germany, and Ghana. It's impossible to make the relay final from sixth place in a heat. The United States won't be winning any sort of medal in an event we absolutely dominated until the race turned racist after our 2000 title at the Sydney Games.

Up until 2004, Team USA had won the gold in 15 of the 20 4 x 100 relays held in Olympic history. We owned the track and virtually all the sprints. We flashed our God-given gifts, our work ethic, and our ability to work as a team for the greater good. It was a showcase of black American excellence. Bob Hayes, Jim Hines, Carl Lewis, and Maurice Greene took the baton symbolically handed to them by Jesse Owens and represented this country at the highest level.

Then something very disturbing happened at the 2004 Olympics. Systemic racism started easing its way into the event at the Athens Games. America finished second in Greece.

Ibram X. Kendi argues the systemic relay racism was always there. But it wasn't until 2008 that black Twitter and ESPN pointed out that the Proud Boys, Trump supporters, and right-wing insurrectionists began manipulating the relay batons and the baton exchange zones. This manipulation made it impossible for black American men to excel in track and field's premier relay event.

America has not won a single medal in the relay since white bigots took control of the relay.

OK, I'm being sarcastic. Systemic racism has nothing to do with the two-decades-long failure of our once-dominant relay team. Systemic dysfunction actually explains the failure. What we witnessed last night is a symptom of a larger problem we in black America are loath to discuss.

Rather than having uncomfortable conversations with white people, we need to have uncomfortable conversations amongst ourselves concerning the fact that black men don't function well together.

It's obvious to everyone else. We're the only people who refuse to talk about it. We just hope the Crips and Bloods get old and retire. We think our kids will learn to resolve conflict without resorting to violence when white liberals decide to teach us other options.

If we ignore our dysfunction long enough, it will go away.

That kind of wishful thinking led to last night's relay fiasco. What transpired last night surprised no one paying attention. It's the equivalent of feigning disbelief on a Monday morning when you learn of how many black men or boys were gunned down over a weekend in Chicago, or Baltimore, or Indianapolis, or New York City. Black male dysfunction is expected.

Hours before the qualifying heat, the Washington Post published a long piece detailing the relay team's baton issues. The piece was titled, "Medal or nothing: U.S. men's sprinters have a handoff problem." The story reads as prophecy.

Last night, U.S. sprinters Ronnie Baker and Fred Kerley struggled mightily to complete the second baton exchange. It took three attempts. By the time it was completed, Baker and Kerley were side by side and Kerley was at a relative standstill. Anchorman Cravon Gillespie briefly climbed to third place and then faded badly as he began to look around at his competitors. Reaction to the collapse was swift and angry.

"The USA team did everything wrong in the men's relay," Carl Lewis complained via Twitter. "The passing system is wrong, athletes running the wrong legs, and it was clear that there was no leadership. It was a total embarrassment, and completely unacceptable for a USA team to look worse than the AAU kids I saw."

We got smoked by China. Not a Jamaican team led by Usain Bolt. China won the heat. Germany beat us. Ghana beat us. Ghana advanced to the final. Ghana apparently doesn't give a damn about the Proud Boys and the insurrectionists.

We can't use COVID protocols as an excuse. All the other countries have had limited practices because of the pandemic. You can't cover up 20 years of failure with excuses.

I know I keep making sarcastic jokes about racism. I'm doing it because the most damaging racism impacting black people today is the use of racism to eliminate accountability and responsibility for black men. Our sprinters are irresponsible because we fail to hold them accountable for their failure.

Black people across the globe immigrate to America and achieve their dreams because they embrace a far different mentality than what's cultivated in black American culture. Black sprinters in Ghana, Jamaica, Canada, and everywhere else don't have the kind of baton problems we have.

We can't work together. What happened?

When you're raised in family dysfunction, that dysfunction follows you for life, especially when you never acknowledge it, pretend it never existed, or believe it's white people's responsibility to address it or adjust to your dysfunction.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with black people. The problem is culture. We've embraced a culture that undermines our success. We've been programmed to believe our actions don't really determine our destiny. The actions of white people are all that matter. This worldview eliminates accountability and empowers irresponsibility.

Re-watch the 4 X 100 relay qualifier. Maybe one member of the Chinese relay is good enough to make our relay team. But China smoked us. How? Why? It's not talent. It's culture. It's an inability to set egos aside and work together in a cohesive fashion.

Let's say white people pitted us against each other. Let's say it started in slavery. No problem. I agree it happened. I also think it's insanely foolish to expect white people to fix it. It's not going to happen. It's no different from a man breaking your leg in a fight and expecting him to do the rehabilitation. Only you can do the rehab.

Black men, we have a culture problem. What are we going to do about it?

Our silence is violence.

Wang Yuguo/Xinhua via Getty Images

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