Bull runners narrowly avoid being gored at San Fermin Festival

Thousands of thrill-seekers avoided being gored during the latest bull run of Pamplona’s San Fermin Festival, officials said, revising an early report saying two men had been stabbed by horns.

Officials in the Spanish city corrected the preliminary report by Pamplona’s hospital to state that a man was scratched by a horn, not pierced.

After the run through narrow streets ended on Saturday morning, another man suffered a laceration when a wild cow was set loose in the city’s bullring for individuals to test their evasion techniques, according to the update.

A total of seven men – six Spaniards and one Frenchman – required hospital treatment but none of them had been seriously hurt.

While no-one was gored, there were several close calls.

Several runners were stomped or bowled over by the six bulls and the six tame oxen that help guide them along the 875-metre course through Pamplona’s old quarter.

There were no gorings on the first two days of this year’s festival either. Saturday’s bull run was the third of eight scheduled and took two-and-a-half minutes.

Thousands of runners, most wearing the traditional white T-shirt and trousers with a red sash and neckerchief, scampered to avoid the charging animals.

Only expert runners can sprint for short stretches right in front of the horns of a bull before jumping out of the way at the last moment.

The incredibly popular festival, which was made known to the English-speaking world through Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, draws tens of thousands of visitors from around the world.

Eight people were gored in 2019, the last festival before a two-year hiatus due to the Covid pandemic. Sixteen people have died in Pamplona’s bull runs since 1910, with the last death in 2009.

Saturday’s bull run was the third of eight scheduled this year.

The six bulls that run each morning are killed in bullfights by professional bullfighters later in the day.