Bolt takes gold in Olympics social media race

His blistering pace and larger-than-life antics made him the king of the track in London, and bolstered his claims to be a "living legend."

Now figures released by Twitter and Facebook have confirmed that Usain Bolt was the most talked about athlete at the Olympics, edging out swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time.

On Twitter, Bolt's two individual gold medal-winning sprints each generated more discussion than any other moment of Olympic competition.

According to figures released by Andrew Fitzgerald, Twitter's editorial programming manager, Bolt's victory in the 200-meter sprint was the most discussed moment of competition, inspiring a flurry of more than 80,000 tweets per minute,