Figure Skating Talk Dominated Twitter in the Run-Up to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games

The 2018 Winter Olympic Games are under way in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Twitter is feeling the Olympic spirit.

The social network unveiled more than 100 hashtag-triggered emojis for the Games, which are available in English, French, Korean, Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

And tweets containing countries’ three-letter team codes or the hashtags for their national Olympic committee will trigger flag emojis for every team.

Jay Bavishi, Twitter’s partner manager for the International Olympic Committee and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, said in a blog post that the five countries with the most tweets about the Olympic Games since December were:

1. Japan
2. U.S.
3. Korea
4. Thailand
5. Canada

The most mentioned and most anticipated Olympic sports were:

1. Figure skating
2. Ice hockey
3. Speed skating
4. Bobsled
5. Curling

And the most mentioned athletes were:

1. Yuzuru Hanyu, figure skating, Japan
2. Maame Biney, speed skating, U.S.
3. Satoko Miyahara, figure skating, Japan
4. Lindsey Vonn, skiing, U.S.
5. Kaori Sakamoto, figure skating, Japan

SPOILER ALERT: The Opening Ceremony took place in Pyeongchang Friday morning, but there is a 14-hour time difference between South Korea and the Eastern Time Zone in the U.S., and NBC will present the Opening Ceremony at 8 p.m. ET Friday. If you want to be surprised, read no further.

Bavishi also shared some of the best tweets from the Opening Ceremony in a Twitter Moment:

David Cohen

David Cohen is editor of Adweek's Social Pro Daily.