After this weekend’s stunning “super Saturday” of Olympic triumphs searches for the stars of the Games went through the roof. Team GB’s three Gold medals for heptathlete Jessica Ennis, long jumper Greg Rutherford and distance runner Mo Farah caused huge spikes in online searches.

Although Farah and Rutherford both saw over 10-fold increases in searches it was poster girl Jessica Ennis who became the most searched for athlete of the week. On Saturday 1% of all online searches in the UK were for Jessica Ennis and across the last week 1 in every 750 searches conducted in the UK contained her name.  This made Ennis four times as popular online as fellow medal winner Mo Farah and six times as popular as Usain Bolt.

Diver Tom Daley was the second most searched for athlete of the week caused by the controversy over Twitter. 10% of searches for Tom Daley last week also included the word ‘twitter’ after a teenager was arrested for sending abuse to the athlete over the social network.

Inspiring a generation

One of the slogans of London 2012 has been “inspire a generation” with an aim to encourage more young people to take up sport. The good news is that the message seems to be coming through loud and clear to the UK population. Since the start of the Olympics visits to bike and cycle shops have increased by 13% following the success of Team GB in the velodrome and visits to gym websites are also up 10%.

Looking at the breakdown of visits to Gym & Fitness Club websites in the last four weeks compared to the same time period a year ago, you can see that the age group that has seen the biggest increase in visits is the 18-24 year old demographic.

18-24 year olds in the UK are now 4% more likely to visit a gym website than they were a year ago – a fitting tribute to the efforts of Lord Coe and all of the athletes that have tried to inspire a generation.

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