Feb 15
Micro-Blogging Olympic Athletes
Published by Amybeth (@researchgoddess) at 7:00 am under Social,Twitter
Olympic athletes are tweeting from Vancouver, sharing first-person accounts of what it’s like to be on a world stage as a competitor. I think it’s a good indication of the impact of social media and micro-blogging on instant access to world events.
For those of you who are like me and enjoy watching world-class athletes compete and put multiple injuries, failures, and successes, and years and countless hours of training to the test – here is a collection of many Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Athletes who are on Twitter: Winter Olympic Athletes on Twitter. These Tweeps are broken out by their respective Olympic events, and you can take a look at the tweets coming from each sport’s athletes collectively. (You’ll also notice that there are various other professional sports categories in the left menu)
I think this is a fantastic way to get a personal experience of the Olympics through the eyes of the athletes who are actually competing. It’s one thing to attend an event; it’s an entirely different experience to actually compete. I don’t think this has ever been possible before – estimations are that over 1/3 of the US Olympic team in Vancouver is on Twitter. Even during the Beijing Games in 2008, Twitter was still relatively unknown except by early adopters, and thus much of the limited buzz came from spectators. This will present an entirely new way to experience the Olympics. For example:
- On Saturday, Ryan Bedford, US Olympic speedskater, tweeted: “Great day on the ice this morning! Off to cheer on @ChadHedrick! He is a big reason why I’m here today, he’s the best teammate ever! GO CHAD”
- Scotty Lago, US Olympic snowboarder, shared: “Me and @louievito and @gregbretzz are moving over to a house closer to cypress [one of the outdoor venues], I’m going to miss all the hott Russians though.” (lol)
- Kristi Leskinen, US Olympic freestyle skier, lamented: “Olympic tape delays are already killing me! It’s far too easy to stumble upon results online. Guess I don’t need to finish watching moguls..” (guess they share the same frustrations as the casual observer!)
- Ben Kilner, British Olympic snowboarder, after training: “just back home from practice. Halfpipe kinda lost it’s shape due to the rainy weather but managed to get on ok”
- Jeremy Teela, US Olympic biathlete, after competing: “9th place today… Not podium but ok start to the games.”
- Chandra Crawford, Canadian Olympic cross country skiier, in response to the first Canadian gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau: “YEAH ALEX! The nordic crew is so stoked for you!!”
Other collective lists to check out:
- Twitter’s verified list of Olympians (not broken out by sport)
- Sportsin140.com’s Olympians on Twitter Google doc (current and former summer & winter Olympic athletes)
- AssociatedContent.com is following Olympic athletes (looks like it’s manually updating…)
- Hashtags: #vancouver2010, #Olympics, #van2010
- Official Vancouver2010 Twitter account: @2010Tweets
Amybeth, Amazing Post. Thanks for this info. Social Media is playing an vital role, and the best part is – Real Time Info. one can actually get to know what these athletes are going through – Joy, excitement, Success etc. Thanks to Micro- Blogging.