The air is stifling hot, with a heavy, metallic smell that sticks in the throat and stings the eyes. In his foundry with smoke-blackened walls, Alois Huguenin uses an enormous ladle to pour molten bronze at 1,250 degrees Celsius (2,282 degrees Fahrenheit) into a metal frame. For three generations, the century-old traditional foundry in La Chaux-de-Fonds in northwestern Switzerland -- the cradle of the country’s famous watchmaking industry -- has been crafting the bells used at the Olympic Games.
The bells are rung for a range of disciplines including athletics, track cycling, mountain biking and boxing. Almost half a century after his grandfather made the first bell for the Moscow Olympics in 1980, Huguenin was preparing the bells for the upcoming Paris Games. “If all goes well, one Olympic bell is three hours of work,” the 30-year-old, equipped with an apron, gloves and a protective screen, told AFP recently.
Huguenin said he had already delivered 38 bells for Paris, at the request of the Games’ official timekeeper Omega, which has its chronometric testing laboratory around 30 kilometers away in Biel. “The bell is used to indicate to the athletes, as well as to the spectators, when the last lap has started,” said Alain Zobrist, who heads OmegaTime and is in charge of chronometry within the wider Swatch Group. It tells the athletes “they must give it their all to reach the finish line as quickly as possible”, he told AFP.
Recalling that Omega has been timekeep.