Mumbai: Scripting its best-ever Olympic performance, India won seven medals – one gold, two silver, and four bronze – at Tokyo 2020. If there were, however, a ‘loudest country engaging in Olympic-related banter on Facebook’ category, ranked by the number of people talking about it, the country would have won another gold!

According to data shared by Facebook reflecting trends on Facebook and Instagram between July 23 and August 8, India outshone countries like the United States and Brazil, emerging as the loudest country in the world to engage about the Games on the two websites. 

Neeraj Chopra - the first track and field athlete to win an Olympic gold medal for India in the ‘Men’s Javelin Throw’ category - was the second-most mentioned athlete on Facebook and led the same spot on Instagram, globally. Interestingly, track and field was also the most mentioned sport over the course of the Games globally. Maximum conversations around the Games happened on 7 August when Chopra and Team USA won gold in the ‘Men’s Javelin Throw’ and ‘Men’s Basketball’ categories.

On Instagram, Neeraj Chopra (+2870814), PV Sindhu (+702778), and MC Mary Kom (+270104) were the biggest winners gaining the maximum number of followers since the start of the Olympics this year. Registering maximum increase in following by 1900 per cent on a global level, Chopra became the second most followed athlete over the course of the Games. His Instagram following stands at 2.6 million currently.

Other Interesting Global Trend

Tai Tzu Ying’s Facebook post thanking everyone for their support generated maximum interactions (1.3 million) during the course of the Games. 

On Instagram, Brazil’s skateboarding athlete Rayssa Leal drove maximum interactions at 18.44 million. With 11 million views, the video depicting her skateboarding journey became the most-viewed video.

Overall, athletes gained more than 75 million followers on Instagram, driving over 410 million interactions and posting over 3000,000 stories, globally.