Dillon Vibes wrote for us during the Olympic Trials, July 1-10, 2016. We asked Dillon to join the team from the University of Oregon’s journalism class on track & field journalism, to write about social media happenings!
Ashton Eaton and Harry Marra, photo by PhotoRun.net
Talking Social at #RIO2016 on August 13th from @AshtonEaton to @KKenNakamura
by Dillon Vibes
I personally choose Twitter as my go to social media avenue for the most complete and well rounded coverage of the Olympics. Here are some notable moments and observations on Twitter posts from day two of the Olympics.
Brianne Theisen-Eaton shared this tweet from her husband Ashton, thanking him for being her biggest fan. His tweet, an exclamation of his love for Canada as the country that produced his wife, was in response to controversy that occurred yesterday after he was spotted wearing a Canada hat while cheering on his wife. Certain Twitter users deemed this act as “un-American” and called him a traitor as shown in this tweet and this tweet. Ashton spent all day today tweeting and re-tweeting things about Brianne who would eventually take bronze in the heptathlon.
Oregon Track Club Elite runner Patrick Casey, who yesterday sent out this tweet that addressed that controversy in a light-hearted manner, continued to be comedic on Twitter today stating that he would bet his life savings of $123 on Mo Farah winning and pointing out the “strategy” of Nike Oregon Project runner Galen Rupp tripping Farah during the 10k in this tweet. Casey, who was hurt most of this season and was never in contention to compete at the Olympics, is very entertaining on Twitter.
Both USATF and Flotrack, while mostly a source for consistent results and coverage, also took part in posting entertaining material like this poll that Flotrack created giving fans a choice between “Mo Farah” or “The Field” in who would win the 10k or this tweet from Athletics Australia that USATF re-tweeted that depicted a scene from the popular Youtube video “The Rap Battle Parody.”
However, Ken Nakamura continued to be the most informative account to follow for track stats. He provides both accurate results from competition and comparison to previous records, winning times, qualifying standards etc. The information he puts out is useful in putting today’s times and distances into historic perspective. This tweet and this tweet are examples of that.
However, the only complete wrap up of day two of track and field that I could find was this article from Spikes. It isn’t a completely inclusive wrap up of the day, but it is the most complete that I have found so far.
The NBC Olympics Twitter page did tweet about track and field a little bit but seemed to be much more focused on swimming. This could be because it was Michael Phelps’ last day competing for Team USA or that there were four medal opportunities for U.S. swimmers. Anything that NBC did tweet out about track and field generally wasn’t that informative or analytical.
Aside from Twitter, I rely on updates sent directly to my phone from various news sources for Olympic coverage. I subscribe to NBC, CBS, Fox, the New York Times, AP and BBC. The only track and field related update I received from any of these news sources today was one from AP about Elaine Thompson winning the 100m. The rest sent me updates about overall medal counts and swimming, but nothing track related.
