Yammer & Sickle: Sochi Cheerleaders, Knitting Atop the Slope, Germany's Cowbell

Cheerleaders, Card Tricks and Mascot Mania

Elena Kasyanova cheering during a women's hockey game. Jim Chairusmi/The Wall Street Journal

It's not exactly the Ohio State University marching band. But Sochi made a run at providing some entertainment during breaks in the women's hockey game between the U.S. and Finland.

About a dozen "Sochi cheerleaders" bounced around in the stands every few minutes to spur on fans. Though neutral, the women could easily have been mistaken for supporting Team Finland given their blue pop-poms almost identical in hue to the Finnish team jerseys. The cheerleaders gamely posed for pictures with passing fans throughout the game.

Also well-liked, if not awe-inspiring, was a magician who came out after the first period to perform a card trick. He asked the announcer to pick a card. After several (intentionally) incorrect guesses as to which card she chose, he pulled the appropriate spade from his mouth, drawing a good-natured cheer from the crowd.

By far the biggest hit was a slightly smaller version of the massive bear, car and rabbit that took center stage at the opening ceremony. The Olympic mascots got swarmed by a Justin Bieber-style mob after they made an appearance following the second period. A crew of volunteers eventually had to push the bear through the masses so it could retreat.

—Sharon Terlep

Some Slopestyle Knitting

When viewers turn on the NBC broadcast of the men's snowboard slopestyle finals Saturday night, they might see an odd site at the top of the course: a man knitting a scarf.

That man is Antti Koskinen, Finland coach, and at Saturday's competition he was busily working cream-colored yarn with green needles.

The scarf is something others on the Finnish team will add to before handing it off to Finland's Summer Olympic team going to Rio de Janeiro in 2016. What they will do with a giant scarf in South America is unclear.

The idea for Koskinen to work on the scarf at the starting gate was that of Finnish snowboarder Roope Tonteri, who finished 11th Saturday.

"I think that it looks really weird, so it's kind of funny," Tonteri said. "Everybody just thinks, 'What's he doing?'"

Tonteri noted that his coach is a slow knitter, but that beats the alternative: Tonteri doesn't knit at all.

—Rachel Bachman

Cowbell Envy

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.

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German ice dancer Alexander Gazsi (left) and his cowbell. Associated Press

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."

—Pia Catton