Team GB’s historic double medal win in the Canoe Slalom event has led to a spike in interest in the sport. The websites of the British Canoe Union, GB Canoeing, Canoe England and Go Canoeing had already seen an increase in traffic since the start of the Olympics, but witnessed a huge surge of activity after Tim Baillie and Etienne Stott scooped gold in the C2 class and Richard Hounslow and David Florence took silver.
The average number of daily visits across the four sites is around 2,230, but following the C2 final, which resulted in Great Britain’s first Olympic gold in Canoe Slalom, that number shot up to 7,790 – a 3.5-fold increase.
The website that saw the biggest increase was GB Canoeing, which leapt from an average of around 500 visits a day to 2,000 at the start of the Games and nearly 4,000 after Team GB’s double podium finish. Canoe England’s website also fared well with the number of daily visits doubling from around 750 to 1,500 at the start of the Games and then hitting a peak of more than 2,100 visits.
The BCU website saw traffic increase from around 900 visits a day to a peak of 1,467 and traffic on the Go Canoeing website doubled.