Fighting bulls wounded three thrill-seekers in the final bull-run of Spain's San Fermin festival on Thursday, lifting the overall tally to more than 40 injured, including an Australian.
The half-tonne beasts sped through cobbled streets of the northern city of Pamplona on the eighth and last daily bull-run of a festival expected to have drawn more than a million tourists.
The six bulls and six steers charged 846.6 metres from a pen to the bullring in a quick two minutes 20 seconds, organisers said.
Thousands of daredevils in white clothes and red bandanas packed around the animals on every bull-run of the festival, many dicing with danger by running just ahead of the bulls' horns.
In the final run, three people tumbled and were hospitalised: a 21-year-old Frenchman with a shoulder injury, and two local Pamplona residents aged 43 and 54 with cuts and bruises to their heads.
A total of 43 people received hospital care for injuries suffered during the eight bull runs, including four skewered by the bull's horns, according to the regional government of Navarra of which Pamplona is capital.
That compares to 37 injuries during last year's festival, including nine due to gorings -- a potentially lethal injury.
"The bull runs were very calm if you take into account the high risk that they involve," the regional government of Navarra's health minister, Marta Vera Janin, told a news conference.
In the most serious injury this year, a bull's horn sliced a 20-centimetre (eight-inch) deep wound into the side of 40-year-old Pamplona resident Mikel Sabate on Tuesday, piercing his diaphragm but missing vital organs.
He remains in hospital after undergoing a three-hour operation but his life is not in danger.
"When you are gored, you feel as if you have been stabbed, like a truck has run over you. My back was covered in blood, but those are the risks of the bull run," Sabate told reporters from his hospital bed after undergoing surgery.
A bull's horn skewered another 41-year-old Spaniard in the arm on the same day.
A 25-year-old Australian man was gored in his right thigh on July 8 after he taunted a bull by jumping and flapping his arms behind it in the bullring. When the bull turned, he tumbled in the sand and was attacked.
He also remains in hospital but is expected to be released on Friday.
A 23-year-old Frenchman was gored on July 9, but less seriously.
Despite the danger many runners, like 55-year-old Ramon Gutierrez who lives in the eastern city of Salamanca, keeps coming back.
"I have come for the past 30 years. It is like a poison that gets into your body. It is all about overcoming your fears," he said after Thursday's race.
Every year 200-300 participants in the run are injured, around three per cent seriously. Most are hurt after falling but some are trampled or gored by the bulls despite increased safety measures.
The last death occurred two years ago when a bull gored a 27-year-old Spaniard to death, piercing his neck, heart and lungs with its horns in front of hordes of tourists.
The festival features concerts, folk dancing, religious processions and round-the-clock street drinking in addition to the early morning bull runs and evening bull fights.
The partying officially ends at midnight when thousands gather in the square in front of city hall to hold candles and sing a mournful song lamenting the end of the festivities called "Pobre de Mi" or "Poor Me".
Nobel prize-winning novelist Ernest Hemingway made the San Fermin famous around the world with The Sun Also Rises, a novel based on his first visit to Pamplona in 1923.
Festival turnout figures are not yet available but before the start of the event Pamplona officials predicted the city of some 200,000 residents would at least match last year's figure of 1.5 million people and a hotel occupancy rate of over 90 per cent.
AFP
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