Pamplona bull-running winds up with 50 injured

PAMPLONA, Spain - Agence France-Presse

Participants run in front of Miura’s bulls during the last bull run of the San Fermin Festival in Pamplona. Five people were seriously injured. AFP photo

Spain’s Pamplona bull-running fiesta wrapped up today with another five seriously injured, including an Australian woman who was gored, after nine days that landed a total of 50 daredevils in hospital.

Nearly half of those were seriously hurt on July 13 when the run in the northern Spanish town resulted in a bloody human pile-up that got trampled by the half-tonne bulls, sending 23 revelers to hospital.

As on each of the last eight mornings, a firework set off Sunday’s mad dash through Pamplona’s cobbled streets of six bulls and six steers as well as hundreds of thrill-seekers, many dressed in traditional white with a red neckerchief.

The animals will be killed by matadors in the final bullfight of the nine-day San Fermin festival.

The early morning bull runs are the highlight of the fiesta, which was immortalized in Ernest Hemingway’s classic 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises” and now draws hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.

The regional government said five runners were hospitalized yesterday including a 23-year-old Australian woman with a gore wound.

During the run on July 12 run, bulls gored three men including a 20-year-old American.

Each year, hundreds of people are treated by medics and the Red Cross at the scene for cuts and scrapes without being hospitalised. Fifteen people have been killed in the bull runs since records began in 1911. The most recent death was four years ago when a bull gored a 27-year-old Spaniard in the neck, heart and lungs.