Last year, Wimbledon peaked on the Lycos 50 at #14. This year, with an exceptionally strong women's field, the tourney makes it all the way to #2 on the Lycos 50.
Wimbledon not only posted the highest rank ever for a tennis tournament, it came closer to unseating Dragonball (#1) than any other topic since the anime juggernaut started its current eight-week run in the top slot.
The power of Wimbledon this year can also be seen in the top athletes list. Eight of the current top ten athlete searches on Lycos are for tennis players, led of course by the injured Anna Kournikova (#22). The second most-searched athlete is Jennifer Capriati, and athletes five through nine are also female tennis players: Jelena Dokic, Justine Henin, Martina Hingis, Barbara Schett, and winner Venus Williams, in order.
The number ten athlete is a male tennis star, Andy Roddick. For those curious about the exceptions among the top athletes, they are the resilient hoopster Allen Iverson and the controversial English squash player Vicky Botwright, who we wrote about last week.
Wimbledon interest helped tennis (#43) make only its second-ever appearance on the Lycos 50.
CHERRY BOMB: Also finishing much higher than in 2000 were fireworks, which peaked at #16 last year but make it to #7 this year. The Fourth of July itself finishes at #21. In a demonstration of the fact that you can never underestimate the spelling ability of the American people, a number of folks asked for the forth of july.
BIG BROTHER: Season two of the United States version of Big Brother debuted this week and it propels the international reality sensation up to #3. Even that high ranking, however, has to be seen as very disappointing by fans of the show.
Last year, Big Brother debuted at #2 on the Lycos 50. But in July 2000, the show was only on in the U.S. -- this July, it is currently on the air in the U.K. and Australia as well, and it has been in the Lycos 50 for ten of the last 11 weeks because of those international versions.
It's difficult to tell how many searches are for each of the international Big Brothers; after all, a search for just big brother could refer to any of the three, and even a search for big brother 2 or big brother 2001 could be for the U.K. version. But it looks like the U.S.-based searches for Big Brother were only enough to boost the show from #18 to #3, whereas last year they put the show at #2 all by themselves.
INTERNAL AFFAIRS: The disappearance of Washington intern Chandra Levy (#37) finally makes the Lycos 50 this week. To get the ranking on this story we combined searches for Levy with searches for her lover, Congressman Gary Condit. Levy searches outnumbered Condit searches three to two.
Pardon a bit of editorializing, but your humble commentator believes the interest in this story is a bit overblown. Read this article by William Saletan that explains why this story says more about our need to pry into the private lives of politicians than it does about our need for justice.
BLOW OUR OWN HORN: We've been riding a wave of pride over being the only media outlet to correctly predict the hit status of The Fast and the Furious (#25), which topped the $100 million mark at the box office this week.
We can now add R&B singer Alicia Keys (#50) to our list of dead-on early warnings as well. We wrote about her on June 20, and this week she shocked the music industry (and even us) when her album, Songs in A Minor, debuted at #1 on the charts. She's one soul sister who doesn't need any more time to develop a following.
Here at Lycos we've got a whole page devoted to Keys with a free video download, an interview, and a ton of other goodies.
MISSING: Despite general interest in both the WWF (#9) and reality television, MTV's new series Tough Enough receives only a handful of searches. The series focuses on 13 contestants who live together and train to be wrestlers. One of each gender will win a WWF contract.
SHORT SUBJECTS: Pokemon (#19) is at its lowest point ever? After a week of moving backwards, Napster clone of the moment Morpheus (#13) rebounds to head back towards the top ten? With the Final Fantasy (#10) movie opening tomorrow, expect that term to strongly move up next week? D'oh! The Simpsons (#49) is close to dropping off the Lycos 50 for the first time in a year and a half.
NEW THIS WEEK: Fourth of July, Tour de France, Chandra Levy, tennis, Alicia Keys.
DROPOUTS: California lottery, NBA, James Bulger killers, Pearl Harbor, Playstation 2.
BIGGEST RISE: Fireworks, up 40 places to #7.
BIGGEST DROP: The Fast and the Furious, down 18 places to #25.
ONE YEAR AGO: Computer game Diablo II peaked at #5. It's running back up the Lycos 50 this year, thanks to the recent release of an expansion set called Lord of Destruction, and is now at #15.
TOMORROW: The first big star of the reconstituted WCW.
