Tweets of the year: The 20 best and most surreal social media posts of 2024

It has been estimated that around 500 million tweets are posted each day. It's a staggering amount, almost 58,000 every second, that tells a story of the magnitude of content being shared on the social media site.

It's a similar story over on Instagram. There, users publish 95 million photos and videos every day. Add the two platforms together, and you've got more than 217 billion social media posts made throughout the year.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it's time for our annual round-up of the weirdest and wildest posts of 2024 – we had 217 billion to chose from, and, after much deliberation, we've whittled them down to the best 20, the crème de la crème.

I'll admit it, we haven't trawled the lot. Such a task would have been Sisyphean, even if we only had to look at the cycling ones, but we're confident we've got the pick of the bunch.

There are contributions from some of the peloton's finest social media posters. We've got the likes of Alison Jackson and Magnus Cort, two riders with fierce race-winning kicks, and a fine eye for content.

We've also welcomed guests from outside of cycling, notably tennis star Novak Djokovic and F1 driver Carlos Sainz, both of whom can't resist sport on two wheels.

So strap in, get your scrolling thumb ready, and behold the Oscars of cycling social media.

The below 20 posts – the officially stamped best of the year – are in no particular order. Instead, we've presented them chronologically, to help replay the narrative of yet another wonderful, and often surreal, season of cycling. Here's to more of the same in 2025.

1. Before the racing had even begun this season, Specialized gave us a prom photo for the ages

2. The goats were back to tidy the cobbles at Paris-Roubaix this spring, and this time round, we got to see the inside of their mouths, thanks to EF

3. Sadly for Novak, the baseball cap-helmet combo never really caught on

4. We dedicated an entire edition of Tweets of the Week to the Giro d'Italia account admin in May. This was some of their finest work

5. What the fox?

6. We always look forward to Magnus Cort's hotel room reviews when he's racing, and after he took the leader's jersey at the Critérium du Dauphiné, we were treated to a very special one

7. I liked this video so much that I scouted out Vincent Leygonie at the Olympics in Paris and asked him about it. "I almost fell through the window," he told me of his stunt

8. You can trust Jack Carlin to see the funny side of a crash that ended his Olympic medal hopes in the keirin

9. Tweets of the Year would not be complete without Alison Jackson. This Instagram reel was viewed more than seven million times

10. "I cannot use bad luck today," said Demi Vollering when she joyfully took on SBS's croc challenge at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She went on to crash that day, lose the yellow jersey, and finish second overall by four seconds. The video now stands as a powerfully foreboding relic

11. The Vuelta a España's stage start inside a Carrefour supermarket was one of the biggest talking points from the race. Intermarché-Wanty, with a loyal supermarket partner of their own, were having none of it

12. It was the crossover we never knew we needed – double world champion Julian Alaphilippe in front of a branch of Greggs

13. In October, F1 driver Carlos Sainz revealed the secret nutrition that has been fuelling the world champion all year

14. You too can own a tiny phone like Matt Holmes for just £35 on Amazon

15. After an injury-stricken season, what better way for Wout van Aert to relax than dressing up as a squirrel and singing Blur on national television? Woo hoo!

16. Visma-Lease a Bike's Giro Aerohead II helmet was one of the biggest, and most polarising, stories of the year. In search of a Halloween costume, Honor Elliott made her own out of papier-mâché, sculpting it to scale

17. How many puns can you fit into one Instagram post? Quite a lot, if you have the nous of British Cycling's social media admin

18. This post never got the viral recognition it deserved, but we were big fans of Tom Pidcake here at Cycling Weekly

19. Paralympian Blaine Hunt knew he'd only have a few seconds to leave an impression when he met the King... so he showed him a stamp he made of his own face

20. And finally, we hand over to Elisa Longo Borghini to round out the year. The Italian is joining UAE Team ADQ next season, and decided to leave Lidl-Trek with a celebratory post of her time with the team. A compilation of her favourite wins, right? Wrong. Here's her biggest fails and falls