Day Two, Cebada Gago: the bulls most feared

[mount_oregano]

Bulls from the Cebada Gago Ranch have a bad reputation: big, strong, and bad-tempered.

They've always struck me as self-confident, too. That quality shone in today's run. Despite the crowds, the bulls ran fast, only 2 minutes 35 seconds. Runners got plenty of chances to run just ahead of the horns — briefly, because any bull can outrun any human easily, but running in that spot is the pinnacle experience of an encierro.

One runner got gored in the gluteus in Estafeta Street, apparently not seriously.

Fighting bulls are raised without human contact because they are smart and would quickly learn so much about humans that no bullfighter could control one in the ring. The bulls at the encierro sometimes get upset by all the commotion and even afraid, and when they're afraid, they attack.

But the Cebada Gago bulls never seemed to feel threatened, even though I saw one runner actually hitting one of them. Perhaps that idiot felt brave. The bull seemed to consider him an annoyance too petty to be worth even a glance in reproach, let alone an attack. The idiot was lucky.

In addition to sites I mentioned Monday and Tuesday, here are some good URLs about the Fiestas de San Fermín.

A special section at the website of El País, Spain's leading newspaper:
http://www.elpais.com/especial/san-fermin/

Cuatro television's coverage:
http://www.cuatro.com/sanfermines/
Direct link to a slow-motion video, with background music, of today's run:
http://www.cuatro.com/sanfermines/videos/segundo-encierro-camara-lenta/20090708ctoultpro_5/

A fun site hosted by Kukuxumusu, a cartoon-based business, in English (mostly):
http://sanfermin.com/index.php/en/sf09

— Sue Burke