Twitter King

For the third year in a row, Gamin-Sharp’s CEO Jonathan Vaughters has won the cycling news readers vote for best non-rider on twitter. He crushed it — nobody was even close.

With 5404 votes, (38.4% of all entries) he more than doubled the vote of the second place challenge Inner Ring. Irish cycling humbug and anti-doping crusader Paul Kimmage took third place, once again proving that humor beats muckraking on twitter.

Kimmage better watch his back because Brian Holm in fourth place should easily knock Kimmage out of third by next year. The Omega Pharma boss man is hilarious in his own right and if he steps up this game, Kimmage is off the podium. He’s in for a rough ride on twitter, that’s all we’re saying.

Vaughters is so dominant that it’s worth looking at the other team managers and front men for the WorldTour squads based in the US.

But first, a quick look back. The Argyle genius has about 77,000 twitter followers but that’s still roughly 30,000 short of former RadioShack Director Johan Bruyneel. The Belgian — once one of the most powerful men in cycling — still has 105,000 followers despite the shocking revelations of doping on his US Postal squad during the reign of Lance Armstrong.

However, compare Vaughters’ number to BMC’s Jim Ochowicz who finds himself way off the back with a puny 8,851. Sure, his rider Tejay Van Garderen beat the Garmin boys in the Tour of California and US Pro Cycling Challenge but Ochowicz loses big time to Vaughters on twitter. Clearly he needs to work on his net persona and Twisted Spoke is happy to lend our considerable comedic talents to help him draw a larger audience.

Now that Bruyneel is, as he says “done” with cycling, it’s up to DS Luca Guercilera at the newly formed Trek Racing team to make his mark. Right now he’s sitting at 2,127 twitter followers and he’s got plenty of ground to make up. The Italian perhaps lacks the linguistic skills in English to create his own “voice” but then again, look at Bruyneel. If the Brothers Schleck can put together some decent results this year, then that will give Luca G a bump in his numbers.

We expect Vaughters will take the twitter title again in 2014 but keep an eye on Holm. The Dane is dangerous.

By |2019-02-03T15:56:10-08:00December 22nd, 2013|Uncategorized|0 Comments

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