Running of the bulls brings the rush of danger
July 7, 1996
Web posted at: 5:10 p.m. EDT (2110 GMT)PAMPLONA, Spain (CNN) -- The rocket fired Sunday, and three minutes of madness began: six bulls running pell-mell down narrow cobblestone streets, chasing thousands who had come to take part in Pamplona's annual running of the bulls. (987K QuickTime movie)
The run on the opening day of the Fiesta de San Fermin, made famous by novelist Ernest Hemingway in "The Sun Also Rises," was marred by six injuries -- two serious. One man, South African Robert Therwell, was rushed to a hospital after getting badly gored in the groin.
The bulls are set loose every day of the nine-day festival to run the 825 yards between their corral and Pamplona's bullfighting arena. Each year thousands come for the fiesta and many -- often after a night of drunken revelry -- risk life and limb to race the bulls.
"The adrenaline was something you never, ever experience, unbelievable," said Australian Jeff Connor after Sunday's run.
Pamplona Mayor Javier Chourrat acknowledged that beginners often pose as great a danger to experienced runners as to themselves.
"This is one of the small problems of the festival," Chourrat said. "Not everyone comes with the basic knowledge to run with a certain degree of safety."
Loudspeakers on the run site provide instructions in several languages, but the frenzied panic of the run often leaves little time to remember such instructions. A 22-year-old American was killed last year when he tried to stand after falling and was gored by a bull. He was the 13th fatality since 1924, and the first in 15 years.
The tradition of running the bulls began in 1591 when a handful of daredevils decided to run with bulls being transferred through the streets from the corral to the city's bullring. The fiesta has grown steadily since that time.
On Sunday, over Pamplona's rain-slick cobblestones, Hemingway would have recognized the scene he first saw 74 years ago.
"Then they came in sight," he wrote in a dispatch to the Toronto Star. "Eight bulls galloping along, full tilt, heavy set, black, glistening, sinister, their horns bare, tossing their heads."
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related story:
- The contest of the bulls - October 22, 1995
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