The Tweet Olympics

More than ever, athletes have their fingers on their electronic devices. 300,000 tweets were sent during the Bejing Olympics. More than 400 million have been sent so far in London. So what is more obvious than including social networking in the roster of Olympic sports? Here are some Tweet categories and medal contenders.

SHORTEST TWEET

Gold: ZERO WORDS. Guy Adams, whose Twitter account was suspended after he gave out the email address of Gary Zenkel, chair of NBC Olympics.

Silver. ONE WORD. No contender as yet. I was looking for “DUH”, couldn’t find it. Lots of synonyms, though.

Bronze: FOUR WORDS. Thomas Towel for his “Really? This is it?” comment on China’s opening ceremony.

MOST REASSURING

Gold: “He puts his swimming trunks on one leg at a time.” (Lochte about Phelps being human)

Silver: “Olympics is when America learns about world geography.” (Rob Lanthan)

Bronze: “It was not created to be a tourist attraction.” (Sebastian Coe about the Olympic cauldron)

MOST ENDEARING

Gold: Kayaker Michael Tayler’s “I’m a lost child” tweet. He wanted to say “Hi Mom” but couldn’t locate her in the stands.

Silver: Zoe Smith’ “Hurts to move a bit today.” Good to know that she, too, puts her panties on one leg at a time.

Bronze: Kristie Alley’s “We seriously need to wear false eyelashes”.

Oops, my bad. I got into Hollywood’s Silly Starlet Twitter Olympics by mistake. So make that:

Bronze: Donovan Bailey’s “Big Ace when it counts,” assuming that “Ace” isn't code or a spelling mistake.

MOST DISCRIMINATING

Gold: SEXISM. The troll who branded weightlifter Zoe Smith a “bloke”.

Silver: AGEISM. Hope Solo who told NBC commentator Brandi Chastain to get with it. Apparently Brandi is so ten years ago.

Bronze: RACISM and SPECIES-ISM. Voula Papachristou on Africans and West Nile mosquitoes.  

Struck out: German rowers who won Gold and didn’t tweet anything about Greece or Italy or Spain, missing out on a medal in MERKELISM – dissing near-bankrupt states.

MOST PREOCCUPIED

Zoe Smith sweeps Gold, Silver, and Bronze for her preoccupation with food.

Gold: “Just ate a really big cookie.”

Silver: “I’m starving.”

Bronze: “Foaming at the mouth like having rabies” (on eating effervescent Vitamin Cs)

Runner up 1: “Been treated to a McDonald’s today.”

Runner up 2: “All our food is cooked for us for free”.

Runner up 3: “I still have a waistline.”

HISTORICAL TWEETS

Believe it or not, there were twitter-worthy Olympic comments before Twitter was invented. Check out David Wallechinsky’s Complete Book of the Olympics.

1920: “Double-shot running deer shooting” – competition won by Oscar Swahn. In tweet form: “Huh?”

1996: “Under five feet tall, smoking 50 cigarettes a day” - description of weight lifter Naim Suleymanoglu. In tweet form: “5-50 combo”

2009: “Seamless whole-body polyurethane suits banned”. In twitter form: “S-less ho-bo poly-u b-d”.

But when all is said and done, Twitter can’t beat gush. Did you know that Mark Tewksbury sells pep-talks for 7,500 and up (Globe & Mail, 31 July)?  So, writers take heart. More words are still more lucrative.