Today on Twitter

Sunday, 5 August 2012

It’s been called the greatest night in British athletics history. Maybe even the greatest night in British sport. And Twitter brought UK sports fans closer to it than ever before.

Three gold medals in athletics in less than one hour inside the Olympic Stadium, on top of the earlier golds for @TeamGB at the Eton Dorney rowing lake. And each time, the golden athletes took to Twitter afterwards to thank their followers.

“Thanks to everyone at home and everyone on Twitter,” said long jumper Greg Rutherford (@GregJRutherford) on BBC1 immediately after winning. And soon after he checked Twitter to thank his followers there too.

He was also bowled over by the number of new followers he’d picked up - a phenomenon we’ve seen whenever British athletes have succeeded in these Games.

Jess Ennis (@J_Ennis), gold medalist in the heptathlon, is the most-followed British sportswoman and was “blown away” by the support on Twitter.

While Mo Farah (@mo_farah), perhaps not able to find the words himself to sum up his 10,000 metre gold, preferred to retweet someone else’s summary, in this case the @PostOffice’s amazing special edition gold stamp produced in his honour:

Tweets from pundits and Olympians were an amazing accompaniment to last night’s action.

Chris Hoy (@chrishoy), a hero from a previous day and now an emotional observer, tried to find the right words but admitted he couldn’t.

And two former British gold medallists from the 2000 Games, and now BBC pundits, Jonathan Edwards (@JDE66) and Denise Lewis (@RealDeniseLewis), were equally awestruck.

Denise took her own snap for posterity.

Today the action just keeps going. As well as the globally huge 100m men’s final, from a UK point of view eyes are going to be on Wimbledon where Andy Murray (@andy_murray) competes in the finals of the men’s singles and mixed doubles with Laura Robson (@LauraRobson5).

And, as the most-followed British account on Twitter (@Coldplay) said, everyone is behind them.

Here’s who to watch over the next 24 hours to keep close to the action: