LONDON — When Usain Bolt won the 200 meters, the Twitter world went nuts — so much so that the Jamaican speedster generated another kind of Olympic record. “Record alert!” Twitter said in a tweet. “(at)usainbolt sets a new Olympic Games conversation record with over 80,000 TPM for his 200m victory.” TPM is Twitterspeak for tweets per minute. Bolt, who became the only man with two Olympic titles in the 200, has never been shy about his skills. His Twitter profile says he is “The most naturally gifted athlete the world has ever seen.” Attendance record Wembley Stadium has set a record for attendance at a women's Olympic soccer game. The crowd for Japan-United States game Thursday night was announced at 80,203, besting the 76,481 who watched the gold medal game in Atlanta in 1996. The record crowd saw a whale of a game, with the Americans beating Japan 2-1 for the gold. Happiness explained After her team won gold, US women's soccer coach Pia Sundhage tried to describe the feeling. “It's happiness,” the native of Sweden said. “It's hard to explain in English and it's hard to explain in Swedish, anyway. Just the fact that you're standing in the middle of something huge.” Rockin' the boat The water may be frigid and the weather far from Mediterranean, but yachts are cruising to London for exclusive Olympics VIP parties. Nearly a dozen super yachts have come to berths in Canary Wharf and nearby Royal Victoria Docks — the biggest being the Octopus, a 413-foot vessel owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the 10th-largest private yacht in the world. The yacht has two helipads, jet skis and room for a 50-member crew. Expect to see paparazzi shots of celebrities, athletics, dignitaries and maybe even royals climbing on board for the invitation-only events. “It's going to be a big party, no doubt,” says Benjamin Sutton, director of communications for MGMT Yachts and Concierge. Olympic weather The weather in London and Rio de Janeiro couldn't be more different, so why are Brazilian officials visiting Britain's weather agency? That's because every Summer Olympics needs good forecasting no matter which country is host. Rio has the 2016 Games. Marcia dos Santos Seabra from Brazil's National Institute of Meteorology has been observing the Met Office operation at London's Olympic sites and says she's been “very impressed.” Games officials depend heavily on good weather forecasts. Andy Murray's gold medal win against Roger Federer, for example, went ahead on Wimbledon's Centre Court with the roof off after the Met Office forecast a dry spell after a morning of rain. Sticking it in Talk about a gutsy performance. Manteo Mitchell was running the first leg of the 4x400-meter relay preliminaries Thursday when he heard and felt a pop in his left leg. The American knew it was bad. Tests later showed how bad: a broken fibula. But he never stopped running and his effort helped the US tie for first and advance to the next round. “I figured it's what almost any person would've done in that situation,” Mitchell told the AP. Yorkshire gold If Yorkshire were a country, and not a county, it would be riding high on the Olympic medal table. With boxer Nicola Adams' victory Thursday, the northern English region can claim six gold medal winners, as well as a handful of silver and bronze medalists. That's more hardware than Spain, population 47 million, and South Africa, population 50 million. Former British sports minister Richard Caborn has said he'll urge the British Olympic Association to hold an Olympic victory parade in Yorkshire, rather than London, because the county has contributed so much to the nation's success. When ‘lizards wrestle' Most British fans can usually pick up on the sports they're watching at the London Games pretty quickly — even if they'd never seen it before. With wrestling, not so much. The two differing disciplines, Greco-Roman and freestyle, the multitude of moves and a scoring system that rarely makes sense can leave newcomers shaking their heads. On the train to the ExCel Centre Thursday morning, the conductor shared a story over the loudspeaker that illustrated just how confused some of the locals are. “There was (a) woman on here yesterday who said she was going to see ‘Gecko-Roman' wrestling,” the conductor said. “I assumed that was two lizards fighting.” — Agencies
