Celebrating Olympic accomplishments

The past few days have been full of captivating, historic Olympics moments. As records are shattered and dreams achieved, the world has turned to Twitter to come together in celebration. Last night, we saw the biggest spike of the day in Olympics-related conversation during the US prime-time broadcast of Michael Phelps winning the 4x200 freestyle relay, which earned him a record-breaking 19th medal.

Phelps also can claim the record for the most Tweets about an athlete so far during the games. The silver medal in the Twitter-mentions contest goes to Tom Daley (@TomDaley1994) and Ryan Lochte (@RyanLochte) earns the bronze.

Even Olympians come to Twitter to revel in their teammates’ successes. Matt Grevers, who won a gold medal yesterday, found a unique way of congratulating his roommate Nathan Adrian on bringing back his own gold:

McKayla Maroney, a member of yesterday’s gold medal-winning “Fab Five” women’s gymnastics team, Tweeted (and apparently screamed) her enthusiasm for the men’s team in their event today:

After Rebecca Soni broke the world record en route to qualifying for the 200m breaststroke, her teammate Jessica Hardy sent a heartfelt message:

In the midst of a race of his own, President Obama took a moment to tweet out his congratulations to Michael Phelps. (Whenever he personally writes a Tweet, he signs it with “-bo”.)

And thanks to new cameras installed by LOCOG, you can now see pictures of the athletes as they’re in the process of these incredible feats. The photos are taken from incredible vantage points, and are shared on Twitter:

• @L2012BballCam - over the basketball hoop
• @L2012GymCam - looking down onto the rhythmic gymnastics mat
• @L2012TableCam - looking down onto the table tennis table
• @L2012StadiumCam - on the Olympic Stadium roof, looking down onto the track
• @L2012MatCam - looking down onto the judo/wrestling mat
• @L2012PoolCam - underwater in the aquatics center

You can find moments and behind-the-scenes views like these as they happen at Twitter.com/#Olympics.

Posted by Andrew Fitzgerald, Manager, Editorial Programming (@magicandrew)