Sprinter Usain Bolt Inspires Latest Internet Meme

The summer of Bolting follows a winter of Tebowing

Prince Harry did it in March. Katie Couric did it in May and the U.S. women's gymnastics team did it this week as the meme spread its tentacles through the internet.

Usain Bolt, Jamaica's showman sprinter, has turned his signature celebratory move—a deep lean to one side, one arm extended, the other bent with pointer fingers aimed slightly skyward—into the latest viral pose.

While it had already adorned T-shirts and other merchandise before Bolt's London debut, the pose has exploded and been copied in all the requisite ways since he arrived at the Games.

Bolt copycats include a sash-wearing bachelorette party, a bar patron, a small child, and a woman who struck her lucky pose on a beach, earning a re-tweet from Bolt himself.

The Bolt comes on the heels of another Olympics-inspired internet trend that emerged after London Mayor Boris Johnson got stuck on a zipline during, what was supposed to be a rapid entrance into an Olympic park.

"Get me a ladder," he pleaded, still holding on to two small British flags as he awaited assistance.

The comic event spawned a number of photo-shopped images that placed the helmet-wearing mayor dangling above the jaws of a great white shark and descending into a Batman scene.

This summer's Johnson photos and "Bolt" imitations follow a winter of "Tebowing"—football star Tim Tebow's drop to one knee—which spawned tumblr and Twitter accounts and even led to the suspension of a group of Long Island high schoolers, who apparently blocked hallway traffic with their spontaneous acts of devotion.

It also follows planking's internet run, which had Facebook walls filled with images of face-down friends attemtping the stiff-bodied position in strange, and sometimes daring locations.

Bolt's set to run his most anticipated race on Sunday, which is sure to add fuel to the fire.

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