In Washington I managed to catch a few minutes of OLN - the Outdoor Lifestyle Network (i.e. hunting, fishing, etc). Amongst the bloodletting I found what is possibly my new favourite sport - Freestyle Bullfighting. Here the hosts explain the upcoming action, in true Wild West style - anything advertised as the "roughest game of tag you've ever seen" gets your attention. As soon as I found out that it's a 'bloodless bullfight', my conscience was appeased, and it was game on.
The basic premise of Freestyle Bullfighting is the 'matador' (I never learned what they called themselves), runs about with the bull, with no weapons, and tries to get as close as he can without getting skewered. Judges score each bout (which usually lasts about 40 seconds), on various factors, adding on points for tricks, jumps, and the ability of the bullfighter to tease the steer into a rage without becoming splattered around the arena.
As you can see, it's not entirely bloodless. The bull always ends up trotting away, but often the bullfighter has to be helped (or carried) off. The 'Mexican fighting bulls' take no prisoners, and as the men try to get close to them, one wrong move and this happens. "A very dangerous game of cat and mouse" is how the commentators described it, going on to produce such beauties as "That's a slobbernocker hit!", "That'll sure brick yer trailer hitch!", and my favourite, used to describe the photo above - "Oh! He just got flipped like a cheese omelette!"
It seems one of the rising stars of Freestyle Bullfighting is Dusty Tuckness. The fighters' only protection is a fairly substantial suit of body armour and the ubiquitous cowboy hat. Tuckness was in the lead after the first round, and had been drawn against 'Lolly Pop'. To keep things fair, the bulls are allocated randomly, as some are reasonably docile - so the fighters waste precious time running around them to get them going - and some are psychotic and the fighters waste precious time running away from them. It seems the fighters prefer this, as they can do more flashy moves if the bull is keyed up.
Twenty seconds into his bout, Tuckess becomes even more of a rising star in Freestlye Bullfighting. He tried a risky jump over the bull's head from the side, and Lolly Pop lifted his horns and catapulted Tuckness into orbit. They breed them tough where he came from though, and he flipped off his hat and ran back at the bull, jinking and feignting to regain some points. "How did he get up from that?" asked the commentators, incredulously. "You've got to give credit to the bull."
Even more brilliantly, it's not just mano-a-toro, as each bullfighter has help in the form of a large padded barrel. He can roll this around and use it for protection (which they get points for, even if it seems a little scaredy - not that I would say that to their faces, of course). They also use the barrel as a springboard to jump over the bull and gain more elevation. Even better than that, the barrel has a man inside - the barrel man - and every now and again he pops his head out of the top, and feet out of the bottom, and scampers along to the fighter to offer help. They apparently don't mind being rolled at the bull, but woe betide the fighter who gets the barrel end on to the horns, exposing the rump inside to a painful goring. "You've got to protect your barrel man."
This is how it's supposed to be done. One of the later competitors wound up winning the event courtesy of this jump. Toby Inman ran full tilt at the charging bull, and leapt over the head, landing on his feet as the bemused bull pelted onwards, wondering where the foolish creature asking to be skewered had gone. The crowd went beserk, and as the bull was led away to a quiet paddock somewhere, the victor flung his hat into the crowd and took their praise. "That's textbook!" proclaimed the pundits "and I didn't think he could read that well!"
