This is the seventh time we have compiled such a list, and with 2019 bringing yet another bumper crop of new IOC members - 11 in all, meaning that no fewer than 43 of the current 105-strong membership have been inducted in the past four years - there is, once again, plenty of change. 

Three of the newcomers are particularly accomplished Tweeters and have duly taken their place in our Top Twenty ranking, two of them in the top five.

In ascending order, Italy’s Giovanni Malagò, President of the Italian Olympic Committee and one of the key strategists behind the winning 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic bid from Milan/Cortina d’Ampezzo, enters the ranking in 13th spot.

We can expect to hear plenty more from him as the Olympic circus returns to its European heartland in the middle years of the coming decade after its three-Games Asian sojourn from 2018 to 2022.

A new Asian member, Erick Thohir from Indonesia, crashes into the listing at number four.

Thohir is, in reality, a global citizen, however, and is well-known in Europe as a former President of Inter Milan football club.

He is currently a director of Oxford United, from English football’s third tier.

"It’s kind of fun to do the impossible," asserts his Twitter profile.

Not even Thohir can match the Twitter following of another new IOC member, Costa Rica’s Laura Chinchilla, who enters our chart in second place.

Chinchilla is a former President of her Central American country.

Like Thohir, her curriculum vitae includes a United States college education, in her case at Washington’s Georgetown University.

Chinchilla has been unable to dislodge Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani from the number one spot, though she is close enough to suggest that she can be a strong candidate for the summit in future years.

Qatar’s young Emir - not yet 40, but an IOC member for 17 years already - can thus celebrate his second year at the head of the list.

For the purposes of this exercise, we monitor two accounts - @TameemAlthani, much the more popular, and @TheSheikhTamim.

The presence of the newcomers has meant that some of the more established IOC Tweeters have inevitably slid lower down the table.

The 2017 champ, Argentina’s Gerardo Werthein, now lies seventh, while Paris 2024’s Tony Estanguet has dropped this year from second to fifth.

In the circumstances, IOC Athletes’ Commission chair Kirsty Coventry from Zimbabwe has done well to hold on to third spot, reflecting the high profile that athletes’ concerns have taken in 2019.

*Based on readings taken on December 20.

Among those to have dropped out of the Top Twenty is India’s Nita Ambani.

I must admit, the complexities of Indian Twitter are a bit of a mystery to me; the account @ambaninitaa that I noted last year had been labelled unofficial, now seems to have disappeared.

While several accounts in variants of Mrs Ambani’s name remain, I could find none with the blue tick imprimatur.

Though social media grows ever more controversial and carries obvious risks for public figures, the popularity of IOC members’ Twitter accounts continues to increase.

Last year, Germany’s Britta Heidemann secured 20th spot in our table with a follower count of 3,125; the bar for a Top Twenty ranking has now risen sharply to nearly 5,000.

Seven IOC members now command a following of 100,000 or more, the equivalent of a good-sized town; this compares with five in 2018.

Just over half of the 35 Olympic International Federations registered growth of between five and 15 per cent in the respective follower counts of their monitored accounts in 2019.

But there were a few much stronger performances, with seven increasing followers at a rate of over 20 per cent, compared with eight in 2018.

Several of the strongest performers from 2018 remained among the fastest-growing accounts this year, with handball, fourth last time, registering comfortably the fastest growth of all.

Badminton came in second for the second year running, while table tennis dipped from third to fourth and skating from first to fifth.

Volleyball surged up the growth rankings to third, while aquatics, possibly reflecting an intriguing year for swimming competitions, was also among the fastest-growing IF Twitter accounts at just over 20 per cent.