PAMPLONA, Spain – Thousands of thrill seekers avoided fatigue on Saturday during the San Fermín Festival bull run in Pamplona, officials said, revising an initial report for know that bull horns stabbed two men.
Spanish city officials have corrected a preliminary report from the Pamplona hospital stating that a man had a scratch on his buttock but was not stabbed by a horn.
After the morning run through the narrow streets was over, another man suffered an injury when a wild bull was left loose in the city’s bullring for individuals to test his escape movements. avoid them, according to the update.
A total of seven men – six Spaniards and one French – needed hospital treatment, according to authorities. None of the injuries appeared to be serious.
While it turned out that no one was skewered, the main event generated close calls for runners. Some large bulls have chosen to knock people aside in their path instead of running them with a potentially lethal horn.
Some runners have been tamed by half a dozen bulls and six bulls to help them ride along the 875-meter (956-yard) track through Pamplona’s old town.
During the first two days of this year’s festival, there was no activity. Saturday’s bull run was the third of eight scheduled runs and lasted 2 and a half minutes.
Thousands of joggers, most wearing traditional white shirts and long pants with scarves and red belts, fled the charging animals. Many are stacked on the narrow cobblestone streets of the course.
Only professional runners can sprint for the short periods right in front of a bull’s horn before jumping off the track at the final moment.
The collective adrenaline rush of the bull run was followed by general hedonism with people drinking, eating, attending concerts and partying late into the night.
The six bulls that run each morning are killed in bullfights by professional bullfighters at the end of the day. Pamplona’s bullring is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
Eight people died in 2019, the last festival before a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 16 people have died in Pamplona’s bull races since 1910, with the last dying in 2009.
The Pamplona Festival, known to the English-speaking world through Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, attracts tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world.
