How Chad Le Clos’ dad became an online phenomenon

The raw emotion shown by Olympic swimmer Chad Le Clos’ father in the wake of his son’s victory in the 200 metre butterfly endeared him to the media and people around the world.

As his interview with BBC sports presenter Claire Balding went viral though, the South African also became a social media phenomenon.

That video only has 17 000-odd views, but the post of the interview on sports site Deadspin has over 26 00 likes on Facebook and has been viewed nearly 276 000 times.

The younger Le Clos has a couple of his own memes:

The number of Twitter followers he had also skyrocketed, going from less than 10 000 followers to over 43 000.

But Bert’s doing quite well for himself too, having briefly trended globally:

He also has a couple of Facebook fan pages, and some have suggested a Bert Le Clos ringtone:

Is it possible to have a Bert Le Clos ringtone? “He’s a beautiful boy…Look at him”

— Graham Booth (@RomfordReject) August 2, 2012

Another tweeter suggested that he had inspired a new figure of speech:

New Olympic word: Chad-dad (verb).: to effusively and effervescently praise the performance of another. Eg, I chad-dadded about your swim

— Craig Morris (@grasscraig) August 2, 2012