Cottingham School's delight as sprint legend Usain Bolt shares their post with the world

Cottingham C of E Primary school were absolutely thrilled to have one of their tweets retweeted by Jamaican sprinting legend Usain Bolt.

The school were taking part in the Corby, Oundle and Thrapston school athletics tournament at Rockingham Triangle on Tuesday (June 7).

To celebrate the 2022 Commonwealth Games, all schools represented a country. Cottingham School represented Jamaica.

On the day, the school tweeted a picture of two of their students holding a Jamaican flag. In the tweet they tagged Commonwealth Sport, PDET (Peterborough Diocese Education Trust), and eight-time Olympic gold medalist, Usain St. Leo Bolt.

The tweet was captioned: ‘Representing Jamaica today! @thecgf @usainbolt @PDET_MAT’.

Within two hours, the retired Jamaican sprinter had unexpectedly responded. He quote tweeted the schools post with the caption: ‘Awww’ along with two emojis, the folded hands emoji, and the Jamaican flag emoji.

Usain Bolt has 4.8 million followers on twitter.

Ashley Scott, headteacher at Cottingham C of E Primary School, said: “I tagged Usain Bolt in our tweet not really expecting a reply, so needless to say, we are absolutely thrilled by his response.

“Sport is a very important part of the curriculum here at Cottingham School, and the children did extremely well in the athletics tournament.

“Usain’s retweet was certainly the icing on the cake, and a great end to a great day.”

Out of 11 schools, Cottingham's Year 5/6 team finished third and the Year 3/4 team came fifth.