Rachael Gunn’s disastrous summer at the Paris Games in 2024 has inspired a silly show about ‘Spraygun’ but its jibes are unfair
E
veryone can have a bad day at the office. But for most of us, it doesn’t take place in front of millions of viewers at the world’s biggest sporting event. Such was the lot of Rachael Gunn, AKA B-girl Raygun, who scored a memorable nul points for Australia at the Paris Olympics in 2024 with her routine topped off with a kangaroo hop.
Gunn was pilloried on social media, partly over the quality of her dance (more on that later), but mostly just the usual sexist guff directed at any woman in the public eye deemed to be in the wrong. A year later, the pile-on continues: this time in musical theatre form at Breaking the Musical, an Edinburgh fringe comedy that is either a funny bit of bants or a cruel character assassination, depending on your point of view.
The cardinal sin Gunn appears to have committed in Aussie comedian and writer Steph Broadbridge’s eyes is not being able to laugh at herself. A version of the show was cancelled in Sydney in December after receiving notice from Gunn’s lawyers. As Broadbridge told the New York Times, the jokes then got meaner, legal action became part of the show, the protagonist’s name became Spraygun and they called it fiction.
