Usain Bolt’s successful defense of his 200m title, his second gold following his 100m victory at the London Olympics, led to so much discussion on Twitter that it set a new record during the Games, with a heady 80,000 tweets per minute flurry during his win.

The news was broken by the official Twitter account shortly after Bolt’s outstanding performance.

Record alert! @usainbolt sets a new Olympic Games conversation record with over 80,000 TPM for his 200m victory. #Olympics

— Twitter (@twitter) August 9, 2012

Bolt paid respect to his fans – and himself – on Twitter, too.

Thanks to all my real fans and people who believe in me. I am now a living legend that’s for sure. — Usain St. Leo Bolt (@usainbolt) August 10, 2012

Note that this is a tweets per minute peak, and for the Olympics only. Twitter’s all-time tweets per second (TPS) sporting record is still held by July’s Euro 2012 final, which peaked at 15,358, and that was a long way short of the all-time high of 25,088 TPS, held by a TV screening of Castle In The Sky in Japan back in December of last year. Eight months later, we’re still scratching our heads over that one.

(Image credit: Ververidis Vasilis / Shutterstock.com.)