There’s a new champion in the books, and not just in the Women’s World Cup, either. During Japan’s win-for-the-ages performance against a valiant United States squad, the tweets were flying at a record pace. Such use of the social media platform is to be expected nowadays, nevertheless, the sheer number of posts per second is almost as surprising as Japan’s World Cup title.

According to reports in the Associated Press, Twitter indicated that, during the game, tweets were coming in at 7,196 per second. If you expand that out to 120 minutes, the final game’s duration, the amount is an even more staggering 51,811,200 tweets. Furthermore, the 120 minute tally does not include halftime, the penalty session, or the subsequent celebratory tweets during the trophy presentation. Needless to say, Twitter’s total is undoubtedly larger than 51 million.

The record-breaking tweet total for the Women’s World Cup Final broke the previous record established during the most recent Japanese New Year celebration, which was 6,939 per second. Clearly, the choice of social media communication in Japan is obvious. Oddly enough, the newly-established record was almost broken the same day during the Brazil/Paraguay match in the Copa America Cup. Twitter’s data reports that there were 7,166 tweets per second, which is good enough for second place.

While the numbers point to Twitter’s popularity in Japan, they also point to just how popular soccer — not just men’s, either — is across the globe. Coupled with the fact that the Women’s World Cup Final had no competition in terms of viewing in the United States, sports-wise, the plate was set for recording-breaking Twitter numbers. The drama of both matches also contributed to these substantial numbers, no doubt.

As for the Women’s final, it was indeed good drama, even if you were rooting for the United States (which explains why Alex Morgan’s brilliant goal is leading this post). Every time the United States would take the lead, their defense would falter and the Japanese would make them pay, pushing the Final into a precarious penalty shootout to decide which country would take home the World Cup trophy.

Where the United States faltered, the Japanese prevailed. Quite simply, the U.S. made a complete gaffe of the penalty shootout portion, giving the Japanese the opportunity they needed:

From here, the Twitter eruption continued with images and video, much of it coming from the infamous Jose3030. And then, there’s this simple truth:

As indicated, TwitPic got a workout as well. Some of the finds:

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Can we expect something similar in the 2012 Olympics? Will the women’s gold medal match be able to post similar numbers? What about the men’s? Granted, it’s far to early to tell much of anything concerning the Olympics yet, but if you add teams with countries that active social media users, add a touch of human interest and who knows how many tweets will pop up. 7000-plus is not out of the realm of possibility. Not by a long shot.