Gruesome scene: Two Australians among those gored during running of the bulls festival at Spain’s San Fermin festival
“THERE was no time to react”. An Australian man has detailed the terrifying moment a 500kg bull charged at him during the annual Running of the Bulls in Spain.
AN AUSTRALIAN man has detailed the painful moment a 500-plus kilogram bull charged at him during the annual Running of the Bulls in Spain.
Sydney’s Nicholas Kordahi was in the northern city of Pamplona when he captured the footage of the gargantuan bull and the moment he was “stabbed with a horn”.
“I was waiting for the bull to come out, then next minute the crowd just bursts and runs all around me,” he told Triple M’s The Grill Team this morning.
“Then the bull was just charging at me, staring me down, there was no time to react. Just this bull, and me.
“I wasn’t expecting it, the bull disappeared, I was completely caught off guard. They don’t warn you when the bulls come out. I just tried to run as hard as I can.”
The Australian escaped serious injury, but complained of a sore ankle and chest.
In the footage, he can be heard saying, “all right, that hurt”.
Mr Kordahi described the experience in Pamplona as “the most adrenalin-fuelling, scary moments I have ever done in my life.
“Me and my friends were shaking”.
Meanwhile, another two Australians and a Spaniard have been gored in the final and longest bull run of this year’s San Fermin festival as it wound up in Spain’s northern city of Pamplona.
A 24-year-old Australian man was gored in the right thigh while a 26-year-old Australian was gored three times, the regional government of Navarra said in a statement.
A 21-year-old Spaniard from Navarra was also gored three times, it added.
Another four people were hospitalised on Monday for other injuries picked up as runners dressed in traditional white clothing and red scarfs tripped over each other and fell as they opened a path for the six-half tonne fighting bulls and six steers.
A 595kg bull named “Olivito” that slipped and became separated from the pack turned around to face the runners and repeatedly charged one young man, lifting him in the air and pinning him against a wall.
The man managed to escape but the bull quickly caught up with him, goring him again as he tried desperately to pass to the other side of a wooden fence that separates runners from spectators.
A bull that separates from the pack presents one of the greatest dangers in the bull-runs, leaving the huge animal disoriented and more likely to charge runners.
Monday’s run was the longest of the eight in this year’s festival and the bulls from the Miura ranch in Seville in southern Spain took four minutes and 47 seconds to tear along a winding 848.6m course from their holding pen to Pamplona’s bullring.
In all, 42 people have been hospitalised after taking part in the bull runs at this year’s festival, including seven for gorings.
The morning bull runs are the highlight of the nine-day festival which dates back to the Middle Ages and was immortalised in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
The festival also features bullfights, with the animals from the morning runs facing off matadors in the ring in evening, concerts, nightly fireworks, religious processions and a vibrant night life. Fifteen people have died from gorings since records started in 1911, most recently in 2009 when a 27-year-old Spanish man was gored in the neck, heart and lungs.
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