Posted on 07/07/2002 11:27:24 AM PDT by Asmodeus
PAMPLONA, Spain (AP) - About 2,000 people joined in the world's most famous running of the bulls on Sunday, making a perilous dash through the narrow streets of Pamplona while being chased by charging bulls.
Three people, including a 19-year-old American girl and a 20-year-old Australian, were hospitalized after being gored during the early morning run through the narrow cobblestone streets of Pamplona's old quarter.
The unusually high number on the course slowed the run to some seven and a half minutes, more than twice the normal time, giving the bulls more time to be distracted and increasing the danger.
Jose Maria Perez, a 32-year-old Spaniard, was the most seriously hurt, with an injury in his thigh. Australian Luke Versace and an American identified as Elinzey Sain, 19, from Kansas, both got hit in their left knees at the end of the run.
Three others received treatment for cuts and bruises from falling.
Six bulls, which weight more than 1,000 pounds each, left the corral and began their 900 yard run at 8 a.m. The course ends in a bullring where the bulls were to face matadors in the afternoon.
As the bulls looked to attack anything that came within sight, the runners and the people overlooking the run from the balconies, screamed in panic as runners raced and scrambled to safety.
More than 1,000 people, mostly men wearing white pants and red kerchiefs, normally take part in the daily runs but this number shoots up on weekend days during the festival.
"I never run so fast in my life. It's really scary when you see the horns of the bulls nearly touching you," said 28-year-old Craig Barry from Port Lincoln, Australia, who had slept two hours in a park before the run after drinking all night with friends.
"People have told me it was not dangerous, but it is... At one stage I had the bull very close to me and at that moment I thought God will decide if I live or die," said a jubilant Bemin Jackson, a graphic artist from Puerto Rico. "It's the biggest rush of your life."
The fiesta, famed for its all-night street parties, dates back hundreds of years but gained world fame from Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises."
Tens of thousands from all over the world have been pouring into Pamplona for the annual festival ever since.
An estimated 1 million people have packed the streets since Saturday to sing, dance and watch the running of the bulls this year, according to the city hall.
Overcrowding has made the runs extremely dangerous over the last years. Since record keeping began in 1924, 13 runners have been killed and more than 200 injured by the bulls. The last to die was an American, Matthew Tassio of Illinois, in 1995.
Friday, 5 July, 2002, 20:09 GMT 21:09 UK
At least a dozen young activists from various European countries and the United States said they wanted to draw attention to the suffering of the bulls during the animals' three-minute charge through the old city.
Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards and foreign tourists gather every year in Pamplona for the San Fermin Festival - the town's world-famous running of the bulls fiesta.
One woman sporting nothing but a pair of plastic horns said she felt uncomfortable stripping off, but that her suffering was nothing compared to that of the bulls, which are eventually slaughtered in the Pamplona bull ring.
The campaigners said they would make their nude protest an annual event.
Centuries old
San Fermin is a 400-year-old bullfight extravaganza that was immortalised in Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises.
Crowds jam the city's central square for the traditional firework display that starts a week of round-the-clock drinking, partying and a morning run with half a dozen fighting bulls.
Only a few hundred of the bravest gather in the old quarter each morning pursued by six stampeding bulls. The fighting bulls are killed by matadors each afternoon.
The bulls usually injure several people each day. Since the start of the last century, 13 runners have been gored fatally or trampled to death.
The running of the bulls dates back to 1591 when its purpose was to move the bulls into the arena.
What a shame for her.
That's what I figured, a bunch of goofs who don't live there with no jobs, too much time on their hands, keeping busy going other places and telling people there what to do. What part of "MYOFB" don't they understand?
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