Running With the Bulls, Pamplona Style

It’s when the sound of the rocket is heard that the fear really kicks in. Standing at the end of a long street you have less than two minutes to contemplate what you are about to do. Your mouth is bone dry, despite the copious amounts of alcohol consumed to quell the nerves, your head is spinning, your heart thumping and your stomach tied up in cramps.
All around you people are on a knife edge, their hollow eyes searching anxiously back up the street, their legs moving rapidly on the spot. Some are shouting, others remain deathly silent. A total stranger from the city of Pamplona first hugs me, and then kisses me so hard on both cheeks that his stubbly mouth leaves a temporary imprint on my face. “Suerte,” he says. “Good luck.”
You can smell them before you see them. It’s not just the odour of a wild animal, intent on destruction before it meets its own, pathetic end later in the day. It is the smell of death, cascading down the street like the ongoing rush of a tidal wave.
The waiting has been torture as the seconds became minutes and the minutes had seemed like hours but now, as the first group of panic-stricken people run past and hurl themselves to the sides of the street and comparative safety, it is time.
“Hold,” commands an American, who has been here many times before. “Hold,” he repeats, as I look pleadingly at him to release me. “Hold,” he says a third time, as the sight of a large steer hurtles past. “Go, go, go,” he shouts, as he pushes me into the path of six angry bulls. The next few seconds would determine whether the Bulls from Pamplona would choose to look kindly upon me, or decide to hand out a random maiming, or even death, from their razor-sharp horns.
Was all this really worth it, just to keep a promise made to a dying man?

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It was Ian Wooldridge’s fault. The great, and now sadly late sports writer had been badgering me for the past five years to go running with the Bulls, just as he had done in previous years on 23 separate occasions. The man simply adored the San Fermin Fiesta, and especially the bull running, which remains the focal point of the famous, eight-day festival held every July and immortalised by Ernest Hemingway’s “Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises.”
Over the years I had enjoyed and endured a number of adventures that had more than their fair share of danger. Whether it was fighting Roy Jones junior, the then world light-heavyweight boxing champion, who broke my nose and sent me into a week-long haze of concussion, or hurtling down the Cresta Run, the famous toboggan course in St Moritz, at speeds in excess of 85 mph, or competing in a professional wrestling bout, or playing rugby league for Wigan against St Helens, I had experienced fear before, and the post-exhilaration that results from the joyous release of adrenalin.
This, more than anything else, was the topic of conversation whenever I met Wooldridge, and a question always followed. “When are you going to run with the bulls?” he’d ask. I told him, one day, I would. Then his cancer and decline became obvious. “Are you going to run with the bulls?” he asked me at the start of this year. This time, under the circumstances, my answer was different. “I’ll do it this year,” I said. It wasn’t a statement. It was a promise. And, after he passed away, I asked his wife, Sarah, and one of his sons, Max, if I could run in Ian’s honour. It was with their blessing that I arrived in Pamplona.
The San Fermin festival dates back to the 12th century after the Catholic Bishop of Pamplona, San Fermin, was beheaded, which is the reason why fiesta-goers wear a bright red scarf around their necks during the fiesta. The running of the bulls began in the 14th century and, sporadically, continued into the 20th century when it became, suddenly,  the focus of greater participation.
It was Hemingway who brought the Sanfermines to a global audience after he first came to Pamplona in July, 1923. The atmosphere in the city and, particularly, the gratuitous contest between man, bull and death made such an impression on him that he chose the fiesta as the backdrop to his first successful novel, “Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises,” published three years later. “Papa” returned to the festival eight times more, his last visit being in 1959, five years after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two before his suicide in Idaho, on the eve of San Fermin.
From the 1960’s onwards people have come from all corners of the globe to run with the bulls as the numbers have swelled to today’s record numbers. George Plimpton, the American participatory writer, and my personal literary hero, was one. A particular runner has emerged, too, known as the “Divinos.” To these men the fiesta only means the running of the bulls, or the “Encierro.” They train like professional athletes, their goal is to achieve the perfect bull run, and they have become famous in Navarra, the region in north-east Spain where Pamplona is situated, for doing so.
Not of all the divinos have been locals, either. Matt Carney, an Irish-American, became one of the most feted of the lot during the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s until his death from cancer. He was the man who, famously, threw red wine into Hemingway’s face. Papa’s “crime” to Carney was that he had talked so much about the “Encierro,” but had never actually run himself.
Carney’s protege is an American called Joe Distler, a retired English lecturer and bar owner from New York, who has been running for 40 years in Pamplona. Distler owns an apartment known as “The Museum,” because of its devotion to the “Encierro.” Its walls are adorned with old photographs of Carney, Distler and others running with the bulls. In his time Distler has taken a horn in his buttocks, has suffered from broken ribs, arms, had his teeth knocked out, and undergone a hip replacement, but he is one of the lucky ones.
Fourteen others had not been so fortunate. The council of Pamplona provides, if you really want to know, a full and horrific description of the deaths over the years resulting from the “Encierro.” Take Casimiro Heredia, a 37-year-old from Pamplona who was killed in 1947, as an example. “The Urquijo bull had become separated from the herd and sliced through the man’s stomach, liver and lung. He died almost immediately,” reads the description. Take Jose Antonio Sanchez, who met the same fate in 1980, after being impaled on the bull’s horns and dragged down the street.
Distler was nearby when Matthew Tassio, a 22-year-old American student, was killed in 1995. “He was knocked to the ground by other people and then broke the cardinal rule,” Distler recalled. “Instead of staying down he tried to rise to his feet. He didn’t even see the bull coming. The bull gored him in the back and, without breaking its stride, carried on down the street. Tassio stood up, staggered a few yards, and fell. He never got up again.”
Even the greatest have succumbed to the death wish of the bulls. Fermin Etxeberria was a friend of Ian Wooldridge’s and a veteran of more than 350 “Encierros,” but this failed to prevent him dying from a head wound resulting from a collision with a bull in 2003. In over 40 years of running this had been his first, and last, mishap. Over two hundred more had been seriously injured, as well, in the past 80 years.
So why do people do it? “It’s a drug,” explained Peter “Kiwi” Wilson, another “Encierro” veteran from New Zealand. “Many times you believe you won’t return to Pamplona, and then it starts to build up again in your mind. By May and June you can’t get it out of your thoughts. You need to be mad, drunk or both to do it. I’ve seen some horrible sights over the years but it’s never stopped me. You are fuelled with the most potent gasoline of all – alcohol and adrenaline. With that inside you, you believe you can do anything.”
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There is a paragraph in an advisory booklet for people intending to run with the bulls. Under the heading that reads “Most dangerous sections of the run,” there is one, short and stark description which says the following: “All of them.”  
The bull run begins each morning at precisely 8.00 a.m in Pamplona old town. A rocket signals that the gate of the corrals have been opened and then a second rocket informs that the four pairs of steers followed by the six bulls have entered an uphill street named Santo Domingo. The bulls can weigh over 100 stone (1400 lbs), but can still run 100 metres in just six seconds. It wouldn’t matter if it were Carl Lewis in his prime, and with a head start. The bulls would eventually catch him. With their larger hind legs, running uphill presents no problem to the beasts.
The run moves into Ayuntamiento Square and on to a short street called Mercaderes, before taking a sharp right turn into a street named Estafeta. Here people can be crushed by bulls who, at speed and carrying such weights, crash into the corner. Estafeta is a long and narrow street of some 450 metres before the bulls, chased by many herders, turn towards the entrance of the bullring where, some ten hours’ later, they will be required to pit their wits against the matador. In total the length of the route is just 825 metres, but it is 825 metres of potential hell.
I watched a run the day before. Although some 2,000 people assembled along the route, many less actually attempted to sprint alongside the bulls. The majority run behind, way out in front, leap to the relative sanctity of the sides or climb over the fencing that lines the course. Of those who fell to the floor almost all came as the result of pushing and colliding with others, resulting in hundreds of minor injuries. One man, however, was tossed by a bull. Bob Kiely, an American from Florida, flew up into the air and landed behind the bull on his back in the street. TV footage later revealed that it had been the bull’s head that had done the damage, and that its horns were a matter of inches either side of Kiely’s back. “San Fermin was watching over me today,” said a bruised Kiely afterwards over breakfast.
It was in front of the statue of the patron saint of Navarra - San Fermin – that I said a prayer the following morning after a sleepless night. I’m not a religious man but Joe Distler, 65 years old but still in good shape, had insisted I should follow the tradition and have a quiet word with the saint before running, just as the sherpas tell you to attend the “pujah” ceremony at Everest base camp. If it was good enough for “Encierro” regular Distler, it was good enough for me.
Besides, there was extra reason for caution this day. It had already been a brutal Sanfermines, with 23 injured from the previous three runs. The night before my run I discovered I would be up against the “Jandillas,” a particularly notorious herd of bulls who, historically, took no prisoners. In one of the many bars of Pamplona I was introduced to Julio Madina, arguably the most famous of all current runners, especially in Spain. Bald, with earrings, he was known as the “maestro of maestros,” and when he heard I would be running against the jandillas he hugged me. A couple of years ago a jandilla had gored Madina in seven places, each time twisting his horn once inside Madina’s body. The Spaniard recovered and was back for more. Even the great Matt Carney had been hooked by a jandilla.
“Don’t ever let a jandilla catch your eye,” warned Kiwi Wilson. “If one of those turns and fixes its dreadful eyes on you, it’s like staring at a Great White shark. If they catch you they’re rarely subtle. If you don’t know your blood group I’d find out before the morning. The hospital may need to know.”
The majority of the runners had gathered in Ayuntamiento Square before making their way to their favoured spots. Many were heavily influenced by alcohol, and most in good spirits, happily ignorant of what was to follow. With thirty minutes before the sound of the first rocket Distler took me away to the relative calm of the top of a nearby hill. Dressed in the traditional clothing of San Fermin, white shirt, white trousers, red scarf and red belt, which my American friend told me to tuck inside my pocket to avoid it being grabbed by other runners, I noticed how the aficionados had all gathered here to stretch and jog in preparation, but were deathly quiet and serious. Not for them were the happy celebrations of the main square. They knew what could happen shortly. “Remember, you’re not running against the bulls, but with them,” Distler reminded me. “They’re wonderful, awesome creatures, and you never beat them. Whatever happens next is down to them. You don’t have too much of a say in it.”
I had been fortified by the best part of a pint glass of Pacharan, a local, 28% proof, aniseed spirit. It is not the type of drink normally imbibed at 7.30 in the morning, but the situation required drastic measures, and the measure of Pacharan consumed was indeed drastic. Five minutes before the sound of the first rocket I said goodbye to Joe, who had stopped talking and seemed alone with some horrible memories etched over his troubled face. I was going to make my way down to the top of Estefeta and we agreed to meet up afterwards at a bar nearby called Txoko to celebrate. “Suerte,” he said, as he hugged me.
“I’ll see you in Txoko,” I replied, as if I was about to enter the tunnel in the Great Escape. “See you in Piccadilly after the war!”
I made my way up Estefeta and got talking to an excited American who, on his 40th run, promised to place his large frame in the way of other runners to block them and provide a clearer run for me. I already knew much about the jandilla bulls this morning because they had been both pictured and even named in the morning newspaper. Now I was about to meet them. I looked down at my trousers. At a time such as this, was it really a good idea to be wearing white?
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“Go, go, go,” shouted the American and I darted from the right hand side of Estefeta into the centre right of the street, a copy of The Mail on Sunday rolled up in my fist to, as tradition depicted, fend off the bulls. It was only the newspaper and I wished, fleetingly, I had both colour supplements, a property section and a couple of CD’s as well rolled up to provide extra strength to my defence shield.
Two steers shot past my left hand side before I found myself sprinting wildly and desperately in front of two bulls, just a few metres behind and slightly to my left. People were flying over each other in front of me as I attempted to look both ahead for bodies and behind for bulls. A black bull sailed past within touching distance while a brown bull called “Ruidoso,” its horns pointing menacingly, fast approached. It is amazing how much can enter your mind in such little time when under duress. Those horns were glinting in the early morning sunshine like a bayonet fixed to a rifle, thick at their base, but spiralling up into a weapon of death so sharp that I could see from close quarter how easily they could lacerate just about anything that fell in their way.  Worse, with such a bulk of a body behind them, those horns were large enough to pick a human up almost nonchalantly, bury themselves deep inside a torso, and continue heading towards the bullring, the human intact and on a journey to hell.
I had no idea how fast I was running, but it felt as if I was breaking all records. Athletes do not need steroids to run faster at next year’s Olympics. They need simply to be chased by a jandilla, seemingly fat and shorter than a human, but so very much faster in speed. They were grunting, and they were gasping, and they were snorting as, pace by pace, they edged closer to my back.  I had covered more than 60 metres, a good run by “Encierro” standards, when I tripped over a body just as the road began its turn towards the bullring and fell crashing to the ground. Believing the danger had passed I committed the cardinal sin of beginning to rise to my feet, only to be hurled back down by a steer following the bulls that, fortuitously, brushed against my left leg. A few inches closer and the damage would have been a great deal more. As it was all I contracted was a cut knee, scraped hands and tears to my dirtied trousers.
I jogged down towards the bullring just as the last bull turned and began to trample over an unfortunate, who rolled up into a foetal position and took a couple of minor gores. People screamed and tried to climb over the fencing, exposing their backsides to potential gores from the now rampant bull. I remembered some pre-run advice, hit the deck and rolled under the bottom slat of the fence and to safety just as the herders moved in and directed the bull into the ring. I had managed to run with the bulls and, better still, I had emerged bloodied but in one piece.
Just 24 hours’ later during the very next “Encierro” people were not so fortunate. The bulls separated, the run took six minutes, instead of its usual two and a half, and in this time seven runners were gored severely and 13 hospitalized. I had indeed been lucky, which is why the drinks flowed freely at Txoko at 8.15 on the morning of my run, Distler, myself and others hugged in appreciation of fear, adrenalin and life, and I raised a glass of Pacharan to an old, departed friend.
A long-held promise had finally been delivered.