This is a cowbell post
Need more cowbell? The German figure skating team is on it.
Ice dancer Alexander Gazsi lugged an oversize cowbell to Sochi so he could ring it during the team skating competition, a new event at which teams gather rink-side to watch. Before and after a German team member skates, Gazsi waves the bell using a somewhat crouched, front-to-back maneuver that he has perfected for maximum gong. "It's hard because it's heavy. I have a little pain from it," he said after his short program with Nelli Zhiganshina.
While he was on the ice, his teammate Daniel Wende rang the bell. Gazsi wasn't impressed. "I will ring it now because he was not that good," he said.
The bell isn't a toy or souvenir. In southern Germany, where the pair trains in Oberstdorf, the rural custom is to send cows up to pastures in the mountains during the summer, Gazsi explained. The herbs there are different from the lower elevations, thus producing a different quality of milk. When the cows return, they are ceremonially decorated with the giant bells.
Gazsi hauled the bell to Friday's opening ceremony, where the German teammates from other sports fawned over it. "Everybody knows the bell," he said. "A lot of the winter athletes are from the South because that's where the mountains are." (x)
Raise your hand if you miss the bell