South Africans among top (and most popular) Grindr users at Rio Olympics

Could one of our best ever Olympic performances have been boosted by South Africans getting it on via gay dating apps?

According to Grindr, South Africans were among its top users during the Olympic Games in Rio, where it tracked a whopping 14 million messages during the two-week-long event.

South Africans were also among the most active Grind users; coming in at number four for the most daily messages sent per guy (227).

And we sure are a visual nation: When it comes to most daily images sent per user, we came in second place (91).

Our countrymen like diversity, seeing as we also came in second place for “most countries contacted per guy” (8).

The top three countries we most preferred to connect with were Brazil, the USA and the UK (and 46 others).

To top it all off, South African men were a major hit at the Games (no surprise there).Our nation’s Grindr users were the fourth most popular, with each getting an average of 2,6 ” favourites” on their profile.

The stats, issued by Grindr, follow huge controversy over a Daily Beast article about the use of dating apps at the Games that inadvertently outed a number of gay Olympians.

In the piece, journalist Nico Hines included information on individual athletes that were used to identify them. The article was later removed and the site apologised for the lapse.

The record-breaking 55+ openly LGBT athletes at the Games were the largest number to ever take part in any modern Olympic Games. (Undoubtedly, there were many more LGBT participants we don’t know about, but some may not be out of the closet while others may have simply not been picked up by the media.)

South Africa stood out as the only African nation to boast two LGBT athletes, both of whom scored medal wins: Runner Caster Semenya (gold) and javelin thrower Sunette Viljoen (silver). We’re not aware of any openly LGBT South African male athletes who took part.