‘Ottawa’ The Most Popular Canadian Olympic Athletes on Twitter
Medals are the ultimate goal for every athlete in Rio, but Canadian Olympians are also growing their popularity on social media.
The latest analytics from Twitter Canada show interactions involving local athletes have shot through the roof since last week. Conversations come both from individual athletes sharing their experiences at the games and from the general public reaching out and engaging with them.
“This is by far the greatest level of interactions we’ve ever seen with athletes and the public,” said Twitter spokesman Christopher Doyle, noting even last year’s Pan Am Games in Toronto or the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi didn’t generate such levels of exchange.
Interactions are driven in part by how well athletes are doing. In less than a week since the games started, Toronto’s Penny Oleksiak has gained more than 10 times the number of followers – from 763 followers last Friday to 8849 by Thursday afternoon.
“She’s been the story of the games for Canada so far,” he said, noting every time she hits the pool, hundreds of supporters take to Twitter to congratulate her.
But it’s also about how well an athlete connects with their followers. Tennis star Eugenie Bouchard is out of the competition, but she’s still sharing photos from other competitions to her more than 700,000 followers. Kayaker Adam van Koeverden hasn’t stopped sharing his views about Rio, even though he has yet to compete.
“He’s like the ambassador of Canada at the games,” said Doyle.