July 14, 2001
The Scotsman
Raging bulls
by Eamonn O'Neill

The runners get gored. The animals get killed. And the veterans get trampled by tourists. So what makes men like Aberdeen businessman Bruce Sinclair race bulls through the streets of Pamplona? Eamonn O’Neill visits Spain’s most notorious festival to find out


Listen, I was as scared this morning as I have ever been and trust me, I was pretty scared when I ran with the bulls for the first time 10 years ago!" An exhilarated Bruce Sinclair is talking to me outside the famous La Perla hotel in Pamplona. Over the last century the Basque town has become synonymous with the "running of the bulls", an annual festival which sees thousands squeezing through its narrow medieval streets pursued by a thundering black mass of hooves and horns.

"I was frightened when I first went into the street today because it’s been 12 months since my last run," says the 29-year-old from Aberdeen. "I didn’t know if I was physically capable of doing it. I love to run so much that I become a bit tense in case I’m not able to do it. But the atmosphere started to work its magic this morning and I soon got focused. Then I felt ready."

Bruce Sinclair is, by occupation, a financial adviser. A more considered occupation would be hard to find. So to discover that he’s also one of Pamplona’s best-known foreign bullrunners is something of a shock. It’s an activity which needs a degree of madness, the ability to walk into a situation where part of you knows you might not walk out again. Yet Bruce Sinclair has now completed a total of 55 runs.

Once is usually more than enough for most people. The TV pictures don’t convey the true terror. One rarely discussed phenomenon in the subculture of the runners’ world is the whispered term "big leak" - the spontaneous evacuation of the bladder minutes before the bulls’ arrival which has been known to curse many a would-be runner.

"For me, running with the bulls is simply a competition with myself," explains Bruce. He pauses and gives a sheepish grin. "There’s absolutely no rational explanation. I am well aware of that."

Many colourful myths surround the birth of what the Spanish call the Encierro. One of the most plausible - backed up by sepia-toned photographs - argues that it was the city’s butcher boys, who worked in shops along various parts of the route, who started the phenomenon. As the bulls were herded through the streets for the evening’s bullfights, the temptation to dart among the animals became too much. When the daredevils started doing it regularly during the annual Fiesta of San Fermin, the "running of the bulls" was born.

The rest of the world learned of Pamplona’s escapades from Ernest Hemingway’s novel

The Sun Also Rises. The American writer first attended the fiesta in the early 1920s and used it as a colourful backdrop for his post-Great War tale of lust, jealousy and betrayal. Hemingway himself never ran but watched the bulls storm past from the safety of his wrought-iron balcony at La Perla.

In later years, as his mental and physical health declined, Hemingway returned to the town hoping to rejuvenate himself, only to end up lionised by the hundreds of visitors and fans. In public he amiably signed autographs, posed for snaps and bought rounds of drinks, but privately he bemoaned the commercialisation of the fiesta - ruefully acknowledging his own unintentional role in its promotion. After his suicide in 1961, he was buried on the opening day of the fiesta, an event he’d planned to return to, but decided to miss because, as he said: "Spain is a place to live in, not f***ing die in."

For all his bitterness, Pamplona was grateful to Hemingway. A short street next to the arena bears his name and there’s a statue of him. The town council realised Hemingway knew as much about the running as most Spanish experts and they appreciated what the Nobel Prize winner had done for their coffers. Visitors flocked there in increasing numbers, most with copies of Hemingway’s old novel stuck in their backpacks.

In the 16th century the San Fermin fiesta allowed local peasants to drink and dance until they dropped while paying tribute to their local saint. No fiesta was complete without the bullfight in the Plaza del Toros - a bloody tradition dating back to Roman times. Today that potent blend of religious and pagan spectacle remains. Stand at the side of the road with tens of thousands of Pamplona residents and you will see stately religious processions pass by. Stagger to your feet at dawn, and it will be the bulls you see hurtling past, over and through the Bruce Sinclairs of this world.

Thirteen people have died since the bullrunning began. The last was a 22-year-old American tourist, Matthew Peter Tassio, who was gored in front of the town hall in 1995. I have run myself and feel ambivalent about it.

I tend to think there are better things worth risking my life for but I’d be a hypocrite not to admit it’s a powerful high. It is also politically incorrect, tasteless and stupid. Nevertheless, it attracts more people than any other single event in the entire country. And that’s without the local tourist board spending a single peseta on advertising.

It is eight o’clock on the opening morning of the running. A rocket bursts white in the blue sky above Pamplona: the signal that the bulls are out of their paddock and on their way up the stretch of route known as Santo Domingo. I’m waiting on the La Perla balcony where Hemingway once stood. From here I can look across the cobbled Calle Estafeta, the longest and best-known stretch of the 848-metre running route. Tourists and residents and old ladies in housecoats and curlers fill the balconies around me. Some balconies are rented out for as much as £75 per morning; I got mine through the kindness of Frank McGuinness. Like Bruce Sinclair, Frank has a sensible day job; he’s a doctor. Like Bruce and all the others who make the annual pilgrimage to Pamplona, he’s a substantial, sober character for 51 weeks of the year.

Maybe it’s the risk factor that attracts him. There’s also the madness of the fiesta itself: the constant beat of loud music; the North African watch sellers; the gypsies flogging rosemary for good luck; the sad-faced shoeshine men; the New Age travellers drinking stewed booze from a communal bucket; the fireworks that round off every evening with a force that makes the ancient ground shake. First thing in the morning people lie on benches, grass and kerbs with towels, T-shirts and strangers wrapped around them. Within hours, it all starts over again.

A second rocket explodes. That means the bulls are separated by an unusually lengthy - and dangerous - 20 seconds. Runners fan out beneath me. I watch two guys climb drainpipes methodically. A man dressed as Elvis, wig and all, sprints past. Another character appears with a video camera taped to a crash helmet.

Bright yellow sunlight slices the street. Then a strange calm descends. Before there’s time to appreciate it, screams filter down Estafeta. Runners lurch forward in packs, others skitter forward more chaotically as more runners chase them. Finally the bulls gallop into view. They look gigantic, easily dwarfing the runners. It’s the flipside of the bullfight, Bruce Sinclair argues: "The bullfight is cruel - I saw one and hated it - but the bullrun is a celebration of the bulls. They have every advantage of speed, strength and stamina. The bulls always injure or even kill people in the running, but they leave unscathed. I like that idea. The bull is king for a day." Sadly, though, however well the animals run, it’s all just a journey to the bullring.

A minute later, the bulls corner the route onto Estafeta Street. There are clearly too many people. The bulls look agitated. People start hitting one another as they run. Normally the bulls stampede down the route in a distinct herd, but not today. They seem angry, aware of who their antagonists are and of the fate that awaits them. They slip and fall in their haste, before rapidly making their way up Estafeta. Suddenly a young man is caught in the stomach by a horn. He falls to the deck and lies still. Other runners try to help him. He eventually stands up, in shock, unaware of his injuries. A puddle of blood is left behind. He’ll be stopped by medics who line the route and treated in hospital. Further down, out of view, the same bull goes for a young woman. Frozen in the face of the onrushing animal she’s gored through the thigh.

Within minutes the bulls have passed. They batter relentlessly towards the bullring. Inside the Plaza de Toros, local helpers with matador’s capes tempt the confused animals into the darkness of the tunnels. The runners fan out in the bullring to avoid them. Young cows are released to be "played" with and macho men try their hand but the main event of the bullring this morning is the foreign streaker who sprints across the sand with his shortcomings on display. The police are booed when he is caught and arrested.

"It was a disaster! The worst single day of running I’ve had in Pamplona!" Joe Distler, a fifty-something New Yorker, is a local legend. He’s been coming to Pamplona for over three decades. I caught up with him outside the Bar Txoco, the traditional post-run gathering spot, and asked him about the morning’s events. "There were so many people out there I had to laugh. I mean, for God’s sake, when the bulls appeared, I turned, sprinted and ran straight into a wall of people. A busload of Australians arrived to run this morning - it ended up being the Disneyland of Pamplona runs. These people had no concept of what they were doing. There’s a big difference between being out there in the street panicking and actually running with the bulls in a knowledgeable and respectful way."

A leading foreign runner, Distler respectfully observes the Basque tradition of acknowledging the power of the bulls. "The main quality a good bullrunner requires is intelligence," he tells me. "You must want to learn about bulls. You need to study the way the animals move. They are magnificent beasts. You must know how they react when they fall. Speed in a runner isn’t important but intelligent thinking is. You need to be totally and completely concentrated and mustn’t lose that focus for even a second."

When I speak to Bruce Sinclair he acknowledges the impact the charismatic Distler has had on his running career. "Joe would hate me for saying this but he is one of the greatest bullrunners of all time - he ranks easily alongside the best of the Basque runners. Joe kindly took me under his wing and taught me about the fraternity, camaraderie and non-competitive nature of the run. I owe him."

Bruce told me that he’d left his partner, Leanne, and two-year-old daughter, Anna, behind in Aberdeen for the fiesta. Another addition to the family is due in October. "Leanne has been here a few times - and, yes, she enjoyed it. But she still worries. She also accepts that I did this before we got together. It’s more or less part of who I am. I really, really enjoy it. I run, I survive, I am on a high. What can I say? It’s also selfish - I am a father - and there’s no excuse. I wouldn’t encourage my wife or daughter to do it but I wouldn’t try and stop them either."

Bruce usually wears a Celtic FC shirt when he runs but this morning he wore the shirt of the England national football team. It turns out he’s doubling for Dougray Scott, star of Mission: Impossible II and rumoured contender to play the next James Bond. Scott is starring in a British movie about a man who has renounced his hooligan past: one scene features a flashback to wilder days in Pamplona. Bruce has had a camera strapped to his back for a BBC TV science documentary on the human "flight or fight" syndrome. "A psychologist pal told me I was a ‘counter-phobic’, meaning I love doing things which terrify me because of the sense of relief I feel at the end. Interesting, but I’m not sure," says Sinclair. "I’ll be back, though," he muses, "it’s one of those endless challenges."

The next day’s newspaper headlines will read "One centimetre from the heart" and tell of the terrible injuries to the man I saw being gored. He barely survived. Another article names the woman gored in the thigh as Jennifer Smith from New Jersey. Her wound was a horrifying

30 centimetres long. The medical teams who saved them are profiled: a local doctor tells me that in Pamplona, bullrunners like Bruce Sinclair are referred to cynically as "The Organ Donors".

I wonder whether it’s really all worth it, or if it’s just a selfish aspect of the human character, the need to throw everything on the line for a high. "The hardest thing about bullrunning in Pamplona is getting out of bed in the morning," says Bruce. "Honestly. There are a million and one reasons to pull the covers over your head and stay put - and just one to get out."

And what is that?

He stares at me, before putting his head in his hands and shaking with laughter. Then he looks up, somewhat shamefaced: "Oh God, I wish I could tell you, but sometimes I’m not even sure myself."

"It’s more or less part of who I am. I really, really enjoy it. I run, I survive, I am on a high. What can I say?"