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Usain Bolt wins Twitter gold

Usain Bolt won gold in the 200m at the London Olympics, and also entered the record books as the most tweeted-about Olympic athlete ever.

 

Kevin Morris

Streaming

Posted on Aug 10, 2012   Updated on Jun 2, 2021, 1:03 pm CDT

Usain Bolt is really fast, as his multiple world records and gold medals can attest. Now he’s broken another record, thanks to all the people who talk about how fast he is: He’s the most talked about Olympic athlete on Twitter, ever.

Bolt cruised to victory in the 200m at the 2012 London Olympics Thursday, earning a gold and leading a sweep of the top three spots by Jamaican sprinters. Bolt quickly dominated Twitter, too, garnering 80,000 Tweets per minute following his win, according to Twitter’s official account.

That’s an Olympic record, but not a world record. The most tweeted sporting event ever was this year’s European championship, which saw an astonishing 15,000 tweets per second, or 900,000 per minute.

But the world’s fascination with athletics has nothing on the passion of nostalgic Japanese TV viewers. A rebroadcast of Japanese animation classic Castle in the Sky still holds the records for most tweets ever, topping out at 25,088 per second.

How does the self-described “most naturally gifted athlete the world has ever seen” feel about finishing behind an old cartoon?

Photo via Usain Bolt/Twitter

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*First Published: Aug 10, 2012, 11:15 am CDT