Yarnold Scores Gold for @TeamGB

Friday, 14 February 2014

After nine days of Olympic action, @TeamGB tonight celebrated its first gold medal of the Games as Lizzie Yarnold (@TheYarnold) triumphed in the women’s skeleton event.

Tweets about her victory peaked at 6,280 Tweets per minute at 5.32pm GMT - by far the highest spike of Games-related tweets today, and the fourth-highest spike seen in the Games so far.

Over the past 24 hours she has been mentioned more than 55,000 times on Twitter, and her victory on the ice led to a huge spike in her Twitter followers. When the Games began she had around 2,500 followers on Twitter, and after her victory that number shot up to more than 20,000 — an 8x increase, and 106x her normal daily follower growth.

Ahead of the big race Yarnold Tweeted this message to her fans:

And after her incredible victory, fellow athletes, fans and even brands flocked to Twitter to congratulate Yarnold:

 The most retweeted image about her victory came from @TeamGB:

Yarnold’s spike on followers echoed that of Jenny Jones (@JennyJonesSnow), who won a bronze medal last week. She has also seen her follower numbers skyrocket, from 6,700 at the start of the games to more than 65,000 — a phenomenal 10x increase. 

 You can keep up to date with the 48 members of @TeamGB from this list, including snowboarder @zoegillings, skier Chemmy Alcott (@ChemmySki) and curler @EveMuirhead.

Another useful resource is this list from @BBCSport, which features Tweets from Olympians past and present, teams and media, all tweeting insightful content from Sochi.