The 62-year-old businessman increased his follower count by a further 57 per cent to 435,000 in 2017 to retain his crown, ahead of Qatar's Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

Indeed, insidethegames' latest annual review of the Olympic Twittersphere uncovered a decided link between future Olympic host-cities and IOC members whose respective followings on the social media platform increased most significantly in 2017.

Paris 2024 chairman Tony Estanguet boosted his follower numbers by more than 150 per cent in climbing from sixth to fourth in the rankings.

The former canoeing champion is now comfortably the top European Tweeter among IOC members.

In addition, IOC vice-president Anita DeFrantz, an ex-oarswoman from the United States, has burst into the top 20.

And, lower down the rankings, another Frenchman, former hurdler Guy Drut, took to Twitter in 2017, amassing 1,217 followers.

Besides DeFrantz - whose opening of a new Twitter account last August appears to have been motivated by publication of a new memoir, My Olympic Life, as well as Los Angeles' then imminent designation as host-city of the 2028 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games - there were two further new entrants to the top 20.

Sneaking in at number 20 is the Indian IOC member Nita Ambani.

In addition to the account we have included - @ambaninitaa, which is managed by her and her team - it seems relevant to mention that a fan site - @nitamambani - boasts 235,000 followers.

The highest new entry, though, was the Dominican Republic's Luís Mejía Oviedo, who became an IOC member only in September, but who has been on Twitter since 2013.

Not surprisingly, his election at the IOC Session in Lima on September 15 merited a few Tweets.

"The voting for the new IOC members is beginning at 11.51am with an electronic vote," he reported from Peru. "Eight of us have been nominated. We are in the process now."

Mejía’s account is pretty much exclusively in Spanish and it is worth underlining that IOC members' Twitter is far from an English-only zone.

Of the top six IOC Tweeters, half are from largely Spanish-speaking countries and only one - the United States' Angela Ruggiero - is from a country where English is the main language.

Geographical diversity is also a feature, with 19 countries represented in the top 20; only the US has two representatives.

Last year will also go down as the year in which the IOC achieved full gender equality on Twitter.

Not only is the Top 20 comprised of ten members of either sex, but the next six in the rankings are evenly divided three and three.

The new ranking of 35 Olympic International Federations (IFs) shows, meanwhile, that 2017 was a particularly good year on Twitter for United World Wrestling (UWW) and for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

UWW enjoyed the fastest growth-rate of any Olympic IF in surging from tenth equal to sixth in the rankings.

The IAAF held steady in fifth spot, but is coming up fast in cycling's slipstream, having managed near 80 per cent growth in follower numbers in what was a world championship year.

* Based on readings taken on December 23