Running events have an objective measuring stick to compare performances (time). Bhutanese ultrarunner Kinzang Lhamo has been praised all over the media for running a race that would be at least 23 minutes too slow to qualify her for the Boston Marathon in her age group. Because of the universality slots, she was able to compete on the highest stage of the sport despite having a lifetime marathon PR slower than that of many moderately serious casual runners. Had it not been for the universality slots, her space would have gone to a 2:2x:xx marathoner somewhere with immense talent whose dedicated her whole life to the sport. Let’s face it, this performance was remarkably poor, over an hour and a half behind the winner.
Meanwhile, someone’s performance in a different sport (breaking) that has been judged as a poor performance becomes a viral running joke at the athletes expense? Breaking has considerable subjectivity in the scoring (judges give points for categories like “musicality” and “originality”).
Public opinion is funny in that it’s totally fine to laugh at and meme a poor performance in one sport and celebrate one in another.
Finally and secondarily, here’s my hot take - breaking has no place in the Olympics to begin with. Imagine what it would look like if Simone Biles, a real athlete (or really any competitive floor gymnast), decided for fun they wanted to compete in breaking to bring home some extra hardware.
Honestly, anyone in good health who trained properly for a marathon (4-6 months) can easily run her time.
But most people saw raygun’s dance and (probably wrongly) thought “I could do that, today” not “if I trained for 6 months, I could dance better than her”.
There is undeniably a difference in public perception of privilege too. Ray gun would have had more sympathy and less derision had she not been from a wealthy, sporting nation.
On a wonderful fall day with a high of 56F on a pancake flat course? Sure, I could be convinced that’s true.
On this course with it’s 438m of gain on a pretty hot and muggy day (91 was the high for the day, not sure what it peaked at by noon)? Press X to doubt that “good health” and 6 months of training would be sufficient for someone with little to no running background or endurance sports background.