Raygun fans can rejoice: the Australian viral breakdancing sensation did score some points at the Paris Olympics after all.
Dr. Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn has a PhD in breakdancing culture and has been competing in the dance battle sport for over a decade.
However, the Australian became a global meme at the Olympics due to her routine that included kangaroo jumps and rolling on the ground like a snake, along with her decision to wear the Australian tracksuit during her battles.
Overnight, Raygun, who remained in Europe for a pre-planned stay after the Olympics, broke her silence after days of widespread ridicule on social media.
While it was widely reported that Raygun did not earn a single point during her three battles at the Olympics, she revealed that was not entirely true.
‘Fun fact: There are actually no points for breaking. If you want to see how the judges thought I compared to my opponents, you can see the comparison percentages for all (six) criteria on Olympics.com. All the results are there.’
Daily Mail Australia has reviewed the official Olympic breaking rules and scorecards from the Paris Games.
To understand the score, you have to go back to the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, where breaking was introduced ahead of its grand debut at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
The judges were given tablets with digital DJ sliders to score the six different criteria in breaking.
Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn did not receive any points from any of the judges under the new Trivium scoring system that was first used at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.
The judges were not impressed by Raygun’s moves, including the T-Rex pose he struck.
While breakdancing originated on the streets of New York City in the 1960s, it has since evolved into a global dance sport that includes a fixed set of rules that ensure fair competition.
A minimum of three or more judges in an odd number score the battles based on six criteria: creativity, personality, technique, variety, performance and musicality. At the Olympics, there were nine judges.
Each parameter has a different weight in a battle, with technique, performativity and creativity accounting for 60 percent of the total score, while variety, musicality and personality make up the remaining 40 percent.
The judges cast their votes after each round and the one with the most points is declared the winner.
One part of Raygun’s claim was correct: “points” were not used to score dancers. Instead, judges used DJ faders to evaluate dancers at the Paris Games.
It’s called the Trivium Judging System and the World Dance Sport Federation, the governing body for breaking at the Olympic Games, first implemented the scoring system at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.
It was created by breakdance industry figures Niels ‘Storm’ Robitzky and Kevin ‘Renegade’ Gopie and approved by the WDSF for the Olympic Games.
“The Trivium value system is a holistic evaluation model in which all criteria are interrelated. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts,” states the WDSF regulations for the Youth Olympic Games.
‘Therefore, judges must analyse the entire performance with all its content, its aspects and how it develops.
‘The term ‘Trivium’ comes from medieval Latin and was intended to designate a place where three paths meet. It was later used to describe the study of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, conceptually analogous to the mind-body-soul trilogy.’
The evaluation criteria were divided into three categories: The Trivium, The Body: Physical Quality, The Soul: Interpretive Quality and The Mind: Artistic Quality.
This was the judging system at the Paris Olympics, with sliders for each category. The dancer with the most “votes” in their color would win that judge’s overall point.
Each category is further divided into two more categories, with six sliders in total used to evaluate a breakdancer’s performance. Body includes technique and variety, soul includes performativity and musicality, while mind includes creativity and personality.
For Raygun to have scored no “points” in his three battles, all six sliders would have been moved to zero.
The results of the sliders are fed into a digital scoring system, and while there are no “points,” the winner is determined by percentage.
Before a dance battle, all sliders are placed in the middle position and both dancers are seated at 50 percent each.
At the Paris Olympics there were nine judges in total. Their combined scores were added up to give a total result, red or blue. The scores of all nine judges were then tallied and the dancer who scored five or more “points” in their favour was awarded the victory.
Raygun did not win the favor of any of the nine judges in his three dance battles.
The three scorecards on the official Paris Olympics website show that Raygun failed to score a single overall point from any of the nine judges.
That doesn’t mean that Raygun didn’t have some small wins in his contest, though. Because the scoring system only shows the judges’ overall results, it doesn’t show individual categories in which Raygun could have won.
For example, with Judge 1, you might have beaten your opponent in creativity and personality. However, since you would have lost in the other four categories, it counts as an overall loss with that judge.
So if you look deeper into the scorecards, you can see that Raygun actually scored some points.
Against American dancer Logistyx she impressed two judges in the originality category in round 1 and also earned votes from two judges in round 2, for originality and vocabulary.
In her match against Frenchwoman Sya Dembélé, alias Syssy, Raygun only managed one point, in the second round and again for originality.
Finally, Raygun also scored two points against Lithuanian Nicka for his originality in the first round.
When you break down the scores, you can see that Raygun won a few points with a couple of judges, but not enough to take the overall win for that judge, for that round.
However, even in his best rounds, Raygun only scored two points to his opponent’s 54, demonstrating how complete the results were.
However, many of the results were close and decided by only 1 or 2 percentage points.
The system is not perfect, but many consider it the best method to date for scoring breaking as a competitive sport.
“My complaints about Trivium are directed at more specific features, such as the use of a continuous sliding scale and shortcut functions,” wrote amateur dancer Jason Wu for Merdium.
“It is possible to review and test these parts of the framework to see if they can be improved. I hope Trivium evolves or inspires alternatives in the future.”
