Thursday, August 9, 2012

One of the great things we've seen during the Olympics is sports stars or presenters signing up for Twitter and sending their first ever Tweet.

And today we are delighted to welcome to Twitter one of Team GB's gold medal heroes from the Velodrome, Jason Kenny (@JasonKenny107). The gold medalist and world record holder was encouraged to join by friend and Team GB BMX star Liam Phillips (@liamPHILLIPS65), who is competing today (and good luck to him - doing well at the time of writing!) Here’s Jason’s first ever Tweet:


He’s already picked up over 21,000 followers, including the great Sir Chris Hoy (@chrishoy). Here’s the welcome message Sir Chris sent to his GB cycling team mate:


Ahead of the Games, we also saw @TeamGB sporting director (and England World Cup-winning coach) Sir Clive Woodward (@CliveWoodward) join Twitter, along with Olympic gold medalist and now BBC expert Denise Lewis (@RealDeniseLewis). And during the Games, Olympic swimming great @IanThorpe started an account (egged on by his co-presenter @GaryLineker), and already has over 85,000 followers. You can follow them all to get closer than ever to the Games.

Check out this awesome picture of the BMX track that was tweeted earlier today:


During the Games, we've seen several athletes heading to @BTLondonLive in London’s Hyde Park to show off their medals. Sir Chris Hoy was there yesterday, and while his fans snapped pictures of him, he took one of them from his vantage point on stage. What a view.


Hyde Park also became a London 2012 venue this week, and the open water swimming took place in the Serpentine today. Team GB swimmer Keri-anne Payne (@KeriannePayne) was a big medal hope and received some great good luck messages from her team-mates before the event.


Sadly there was no medal for Keri-anne. BBC Presenter @ClareBalding1 posted this behind-the-scenes shot of her moments after she came out of the water:


Here at Twitter we have been consistently impressed by the humility and graciousness of athletes during the Games. This series of Tweets from GB decathlete Daniel Awde @GBDawde was particularly touching:






Tonight, attention will return to the Olympic Stadium and @usainbolt vs @YohanBlake part II, this time in the 200m. Their accounts will be worth monitoring later.

If it was a race on Twitter, then Usain would be in the lead with follower numbers swelling by the day:



We can't wait to see if he can match this success on the track. Over to you, self-declared 'most naturally gifted athlete the world has ever seen ...'


--Lewis Wiltshire, @LewisWiltshire

Posted by @ at 8:44 AM