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View Full Version : man gets gored in annual running of bulls in spain


West.F1
2003.07.14, 10:34 AM
couldn't help but laugh on this one. OUCH!!

http://www.msnbc.com/news/938543.asp?0cv=CB10


There's gotta be an easier way to prove one's manhood:D

Mondo
2003.07.14, 11:04 AM
Way to go bulls!
Don't you love it when the lesser species gets the upper hand?

PAULANGELO
2003.07.14, 11:59 AM
I think in this case, it's questionable on who the lesser species is!

Ken Mifune
2003.07.14, 09:27 PM
I vaguely remember seeing footage of a bull fight with animal rights activists sitting cross legged in the ring.
I think they now take a less painful approach to protesting.

Mondo
2003.07.15, 02:18 PM
A day in the life of a Pamplona bull

July 15 2003 at 02:03PM



By Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck
Independant Online News

Pamplona, Spain - Fugitivo panted hard. With blood streaming down his legs, he stuck his tongue out and stared at the red cape as thousands watched the final seconds of his four-year-old life.

Fugitivo, a gray 505kg fighting bull, once lived on the Cebada Gago ranch in southern Spain, but was noticed for his impressive horns. That lured the scouts who picked the bulls for this year's San Fermin festival, the annual fiesta that has attracted millions since Ernest Hemingway chronicled it in the 1920s.

"We chose bulls from the most prestigious ranches, with the best horns," said Jesus Cia, one of the men responsible for picking the 60 bulls and men who fight them.

With that, Fugitivo began an inexorable journey toward his ultimate fate: becoming a bowl of wine-seasoned stew, served up at night in Pamplona's restaurants.

As if to make up for that indignity, a bull's final 24 hours are filled with ritual.

By 6.00pm on the day before the fight, a thousand pairs of eyes inspected Fugitivo and five fellow bulls that would die the next day through a narrow viewing slot in the brick wall of their corral in Pamplona.

Children, too young to watch the bull fight, craned their necks and drew in the smell of manure.

At 8.00pm, Felipe Barrera, the 30-year-old Cebada Gago ranch foreman, fed them their last meal: cold water, straw and grain.

"You can't help but get attached to them," Barrera said. "And you hope they'll do you proud in the ring."

At nightfall, Fugitivo followed the other bulls to a corral, and the following morning he made the traditional bull run through Pamplona's old quarter, barreling over slick cobblestones toward the bullring, cheered by crowds and slapped on the rump by audacious runners. The run ends in the bullfighting arena, where he is put into a dark pen before his afternoon fight.

Fugitivo has not been given food or water since the day before to keep him feisty. Minutes before his fight, Fugitivo thrashed as men jabbed a prong with the ranch's colors into his neck and dealt shocks to his rump to make him angry.

The rest passed in 20 minutes. Fugitivo ran into the bright sunshine in the arena, charging at toreros and their pink capes. But his resolve weakened as picadors on horseback jabbed hard at his strong neck. Blood darkened his sides.

In the final act of the fight, the matador's red cape did not rouse him. He stood unmoving as the matador shook it, shouting. When the bull finally made a slow charge, the matador's sword sliced between his shoulderblades. Aides to the matador dizzied him with their capes, and in the end Fugitivo buckled to the sand to weak applause.

Barrera, who stood in the shade outside the arena at the end of the evening, had expected more fight.

"In the end, a bull is like a melon," he said. "You have to try it to know if it's good or rotten."

Fight or no fight, from the moment a bull is dragged from the ring, the business of selling the body begins.

Once a bull is bled and gutted, its head and hoofs are cut off and its skin removed.

In the butcher shops and supermarkets of Pamplona, the meat sells for between from €4 to €8 per kilogram, depending on the cut. Some will end up in Pamplona's beef stew.

Since mad cow disease rattled Europe's meat industry several years ago, bulls undergo days of laboratory tests, delaying the sale by up to three days.

While the San Fermin bulls used to be butchered immediately outside the bullring, the bulls are now merely bled here. They are then taken to a slaughterhouse, where veterinarians extract brain tissue samples and check for mad cow.

"It was more dignified when we used to cut the bulls up here," said Txema Larragueta, an usher at the arena, watching as a forklift hoisted a sagging animal and eased it into a refrigerated truck. "I preferred it that way. The bulls kept their dignity."

- Sapa-AP

jeffrey
2003.07.15, 06:41 PM
i bet at least one of the eleven bulls this year will be a lamborgini!