A sports fan was reunited with a lost Games ticket thanks to a remarkable act of Olympic spirit and the power of Twitter.

Mike Boag, 33, was devastated when he set off from his home in Hackney for the Olympic stadium and discovered his £300 ticket for the athletics was missing.

He frantically combed his house but his efforts were in vain and in desperation he turned on his computer and typed “lost Olympic ticket” into a search engine.

To his surprise the first result that came up was a link to the tweet: “So has anyone in the Farringdon area lost an Olympic Games ticket? Found one this morning.”

The risk consultant had dropped his ticket six hours earlier near Farringdon station, where it was picked up by Cameron Montgomery.

Mr Montgomery, 29, made it his mission to track down its owner. After asking at the station and then trying and failing through Facebook and Linked In, graphic designer Mr Montgomery turned to Twitter and wrote his “found a ticket” tweet.

The message was retweeted dozens of times until the thread was spotted by a frantic Mr Boag hours later.

One email and 10 minutes later the pair met and Mr Boag, a Canadian, was reunited with his ticket in time to get to the venue.

Today he said the experience had restored his faith in humanity: “I was massively thankful he thought to put it on Twitter. Someone could have just used the ticket to get in themselves, though they would have had to sit with my friends.

“For him to take the time to try to reunite me with my ticket, it is brilliant that people do that.”

Mr Montgomery, who was rewarded with a bottle of champagne, said the experience had made him feel “warm and fuzzy inside”.

He added: “I am always losing things, so the shoe was on the other foot for a change. If it happened to you, you would always want someone to do the same thing.”

Mr Montgomery, who is originally from Australia but now lives in Crouch End, added: “I thought it was in the spirit of the Olympics. I thought I would do the right thing.”

Mr Boag was able to enjoy the first night of athletics in the Olympic stadium and said it was “unbelievable”: “We were quite close to the front so the atmosphere was amazing. There was so much going on.