Internet has the hots for Olympic gymnast Alicia Sacramone

U.S. gymnast Alicia Sacramone at last night's Olympic competition. (Photo credit: US Presswire)

The eldest U.S. Olympic gymnast, Alicia Sacramone, may have taken most of the blame for Tuesday night's loss to China after two notable screw-ups.

Yet Sacramone has gained a legion of new fans, apparently not for her athletic talents but for her looks. Call it the Anna Kournikova effect.

The flexible athlete spent much of Tuesday's NBC broadcast in the spotlight, though not for the proudest reasons, and viewers took notice.

Immediately after the women's gymnastics competition, the phrase "Alicia Sacramone is hot" shot to No. 1 on Google's hot trends list. Hordes of web surfers scoured the depths of Google for information on and photos of the athlete. (Psst! Right over here.)

Facebook groups sprang up overnight for fans ogling the Olympian. One was created Wednesday morning around 10 a.m. and has already netted 400 members. Group creator Tyler Herrick, a student at the University of Maryland, wrote on the message board: "Dont worry fellas ill put some pictures of her up when i get home from work. So you can imagine whatever dream youve got going there." Later, he made good on his promise.

Existing Facebook groups saw increased activity as well. The Alicia Sacramone Fan Club has more than 5,300 members, gaining 1,000 recruits since Wednesday, and experienced a jolt of activity on its message board. A similar effect took place on her official fan page. And there's hope for those who may have written off gymnasts as potential mates after seeing the baby-faced Chinese competitors. The description for "Guys (or Gals) with the hots for Alicia Sacramone," a clear competitor to Herrick's Facebook group, reads: "SHE'S 20, so she's not jailbait!"

Outside the social networking realm, the Alicia Sacramone's Fan Site servers seem to be getting hit pretty hard. Pages were taking considerably longer to load Wednesday than they did Tuesday night when some of us were looking for pictures of ... uh, never mind.

-- Mark Milian

Comments

[joel]

she is pretty gorgeous...

[Patrick]

I think Alicia is very talented as well as very attractive, especially compared to some of the children in the competition! Seriously, there should be a lower age limit for competing in the olympics. Alicia's bit young for me though.

[Nick]

I said it to myself when I saw her perform the other night, wow, she is really beautiful. Who ever lands her will be a very lucky guy. She's a college student so she's obviously got brains and obviuosly very felxible, which is a bonus no matter how you look at it. Put all that together with a beautiful face and body and you have got the compete package.

[Tori]

I love gymnastics and I would love to do gymnastics in the olympics, but I am to lod 2 start now, so i can just dream on and hope my childeren in the futur will want to be in it. but i wouldn't force them. i would just bring it up. but that would be AWESOME!!! well...later!

[michelle]

mathematically, alicia did NOT cost the U.S. the gold!!!!!!!

when will the media & the public get a clue?

[David]

DAMN!!!! Hotness

[Clay]

I think she got robbed for the bronze. How is it that she was beaten by a girl who not only fell but fell out of bounds. I think the judges are on crack and it made me want to turn off the olympics immediately and stop watching. Someone needs to be held accountable.

[Joe]

No one will remember this girl in a week.
www.clownoftheday.com

[Sivester]

I don't think she is hot at all. She is just a "meh".

[RB]

Stop talking about my wife that way

[Harry]

I love how even though she screwed up , she still became more popular

[Don]

I agree that she was ROBBED!!!!!! She is so much hotter than that other gymnast and she did a better vault. How do you fall and still get a Bronze? Doesn't sound right to me!

[george]

uh...maybe you should have actually done the math Tori. US lost by 2.375 (188.9-186.525), both of Sacramone's falls were lost points of 1.6 (2.375-1.6=0.775). Factor in the skill points lost on her Beam routine and her out of bounds on the floor = she lost the gold for the US. - OR - at the very least, you can say she took away any chance the US had to win...twice! When you consider Nastia posted a 15.975 and Shawn a 16.175 on the beams to Alicia's 15.1, it's obvious she really hurt the team. So you mean to sayby following up in the 4th rotation, time for redemption moment, trailing by 1 point, and posting a 14.125 means you did not cost your team the Gold? Bet Alicia wishes you were a judge. They actually had a chance to recover from her first fall (thanks to Nastia), but the floor routine fall and OB made the next 2 routines from Shawn and Nastia not necessary to post great scores, they had no chance. And guess what? Nastia and Shawn take gold and silver in all around and Alicia does't even place in HER individual event. Go figure.

[george]

I meant Michelle, not Tori.

[Stuart Hannig]

She's not attractive at all. She looks like a mule, my brother Nathan Hannig looks better in a dress and believe me he's a cross dresser so I've seen him in quite a number of dresses and he looks better. He probably would get the gold unlike Alicia Sacramone.

[John]

Nastia Liukins facebook fan page (the one where you become fans of athletes) started at about 1,000 members the day before her all-around gold medal. When she won I watched the page and refreshed about every few seconds for about a minute. It grew at 5 people per second! Now it has grown from 1,000 to 58,029 members. Here comes the bandwagon jumpers!

[Mary Gennevive]

I think this is completely inappropriate for the LA Times, report real news!

[douchewatcher]

she definitely is the hottest of all the US team

[d00d]

Guess I'm not the only one who fell for her. It's those brown eyes. I'd say she's goddess materiel.

[truthspeaker]

LOL @ Mary Gennevive, this is an LA times BLOG, not front page news

[cody]

I think Mary Gennevive is just mad because this isn't about her. This IS a blog, no matter its affiliation.

[cory]

@ Mark Gennevive
>> I think this is completely inappropriate for the LA Times, report real news!

It isn't the real news, it's just a blog entry. Things like this are popular (obviously, based on the # of comments) and if this stuff makes them enough money to do reporting on real news.... whatever.

[Manny Ramirez]

I think she's very talented and pretty, but not one of the hottest gymnast of this Olympics..

[ray johnson]

alicia is soo gorgeous..... and always had a great smile thruogh every entire envent........
also when she was jacked.sorry sweety, i will give those bastards my wootang stlye & drunken drangon.

[Jake]

Shawn Johnson is way hotter