Seven people had to be hospitalised after a run-in with the raging bovine at the annual Running of the Bulls festival in Pamplona, Spain – which attracts brave, or foolish, thrillseekers who scramble along the narrow, cobbled streets and try to avoid the bulls’ sharp horns.
A British man was among several people injured at this morning’s Running of the Bulls festival in Pamplona.
The injured Welshman has been named locally as Brian Hoskins.
He is said to have suffered a ‘rib trauma’ injury.
Today’s San Fermines run was the fourth of this year’s event and ended with seven people being taken to hospital.
One was a 60-year-old man from Wales, local officials confirmed.
They said he was from Cardiff and had suffered a trauma injury which they were still ‘evaluating’ this morning.
The incident which led to him being taken to hospital took place in the bullring at the end of the half-mile course.
He has not been fully named and has only been identified by his initials – B.H.
The nine-day festival – known in Spain as San Fermin – kicked off last Thursday at midday with the traditional ‘chupinazo’.
Revellers wearing traditional red and white were quickly soaked in sangria as the event got underway.
The eight morning runs, called encierros in Spanish, form the highlight of the festival.
Most revellers party all day – and often all night – with many getting little sleep and sometimes none at all before watching the 8am encierros behind the safety of wooden barriers.
Sixteen people have been killed at the annual festival, which finishes on July 14 and was made famous by 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel ‘The Sun Also Rises’, since records began in 1910.
The most recent death was in 2009 when 27-year-old Daniel Jimeno, from Madrid, was gored in the neck by a bull called Capuchino.
Several foreigners, from Australians to Americans through to Brits and Irish, are normally among the injured.
The only person gored at this year’s festival so far has been a 48-year-old man from the eastern Spanish province of Castellon.
Officials were unable to confirm today whether the hurt Brit was the same man trampled by a pair of fighting bulls at the festival nearly 20 years ago.
Reports in July 2005 named Brian Hoskins, then described as a 42-year-old loft conversion businessman from Cardiff, as the person hurt at San Fermin with his Hampshire-based brother George, then 52.
