An author who co-wrote a book called ‘How to Survive the Running of the Bulls’ was badly gored by a bull this morning at Pamplona’s San Fermín festival.
A Spanish man was also gored in the encierro (“running of the bulls”), where participants called “mozos” run through the Spanish town’s streets wearing white outfits and red scarves, pursued by the bulls.
Bill Hillmann (32), from Chicago is believed to have tripped and fallen. A pursuing bull then gored him in his right thigh, according to the festival’s website sanfermin.com.
A 35-year-old Spanish man from Valencia was gored in the chest and taken to hospital in a semi-conscious state, officials said. It is also believed that two other men are in a serious condition in hospital, the regional government said.
All the injured participants were men. Very few women take part in the event.
Today’s run was the third in the week-long San Fermín festival, depicted in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel ‘The Sun Also Rises’.
The daily bull run starts at 8 a.m. (7 a.m. Irish time) and usually lasts around three to five minutes.
It ends at the Pamplona bullring, where the bulls are corralled before reappearing in the evening bullfight, when they are killed.