American among 3 people gored at tense running of the bulls in Spain
A tense fifth bull run at Pamplona's San Fermín Festival on Monday left three people gored, including one American, and three others with bruises, the Navarra regional government said.
It was the first run with gorings in the festival so far this year. There are three more daily runs before the festival ends Thursday.
The regional government said a 25-year-old runner from Sunrise, Florida, was gored in the calf in the bullring. The other two gored were Spaniards, one in the ring and one on the street. None was in serious condition.
Earlier festival organizers had said erroneously that the foreigner gored in the ring was Australian.
Three other runners, all Spaniards, were treated for injuries sustained in falls during the run.
Television images showed one bull repeatedly tossing and butting one runner against the wooden barriers on the edge of the ring and then goring another in the back of the leg.
Scotch Snider, a 50-year-old from Austin, Texas, was among the tens of thousands at the annual festival, CBS News' Ian Lee reported.
"Hell yes, I was afraid, man," Snider said. "There's a lot of fear coursing through my blood but now I feel relieved and I'm going to get drunk."
Don Story, a teacher from the U.S., said he had a simple goal while running with the bulls.
"We are just hoping to do a good job and not be one of those dumb foreigners that messes it up," he said.
The spectacle lasted just over three minutes as hundreds of runners, mostly men, ran frantically ahead and alongside six fighting bulls as they charged through the cobblestone streets of this northern city. The run finishes at Pamplona's bullring, where later in the day the bulls are killed by professional bullfighters.
Last week, at the first bull run, six people were injured. They included a 30-year-old American man who fractured his left arm and a 16-year-old Spanish girl who lost part of a finger in the bullring.
Animal rights activists say it's the bulls that are threatened, and they want to leave this tradition in the past, Lee reports.
"They are stabbed over and over again for 20 minutes until they are dead and it's incredibly cruel and painful for the bulls that go through this process," said Chelsea Monroe, PETA senior digital campaigns officer.
Tens of thousands of visitors come to the Pamplona festival, which was featured in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises." The adrenaline rush of the morning bull run is followed by partying throughout the day and night.
Eight people were gored in 2019, the last festival before a two-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixteen people have died in Pamplona's bull runs since 1910, with the last death in 2009.