PORTUGUESE BULLFIGHTING

The World’s Most Extreme Sport

I am a sports fan. I have been all my life. In college I was hard-nosed enough to play cornerback at 165 pounds. That meant standing alone against power sweeps, looking at200-plus pounds of pulling guard thundering full speed at me, a fullback in the same weight range right behind him, and a running back in the 180-plus range right behind them. I was supposed to fight my way through the guard and fullback to stuff the running back. Yet despite the gross improbability of that scenario, I took out at least one of them more times than I can now recall (due, no doubt, to the aftereffects of those collisions).

Not only was I tough and courageous in my prime, I know what those attributes look like. I have often seen them displayed by others, especially during Olympic Games, which invariably generate examples of individual grit that fill me with pride at being an aging part of the species that produces such heroics. In addition, I have seen more than my share of the reckless abandon that used to drive me to stand in front of power sweeps clinging to the ridiculous notion that I should somehow be able to stop them. Any of the “extreme” sports shows on cable TV regularly illustrate that testosterone-driven insanity.

Yes, courage and reckless abandon are two states of mind I thought I knew a lot about….I could not have been more convinced of it….then I saw Portuguese bullfighting. Portuguese bullfighting is to “normal” courage and reckless abandon what all-night raves are to English tea parties. This is no exaggeration. Never in my life as a sports nut have I witnessed anything as exciting, as thrilling, and as heart-stoppingly heroic as Portuguese bullfighting. (Which, by the way, is to classic bullfighting what all-night raves are to English tea parties.) Forget Olympic glory, football macho, boxing, rugby, rodeo…hell, forget dueling with Uzzis at ten feet! Fagettabout’em! Those are for wimps who would not, for any amount of money, set foot in a Portuguese bullring if they knew what would happen to them. It makes the duel seem inviting. You doubt me? Let’s go take a look.




* * * * *

We’re in Portugal. It’s the summer fighting season, and we’re going to a corrida. We take our evening meal in the late afternoon because, unlike classic bullfights, these are often held in the cooler temperatures of summer evenings. Not always, but often. We walk from the restaurant to the arena. No tailgate parties here. Hardly any tailgates. Just the usual swarm of people on foot, streaming like ants toward a colony’s main entrance, pulsing with the kind of excitement that precedes any big sporting event anywhere in the world. We wend our way with everyone else, then a bit of pushing and jostling as we get closer to the ticket window. Feels just like home except we can’t understand a word.

The town doesn’t matter. Once we’re inside the plaza de toros the rest of the world will cease to exist. And with a 7:00 pm start time, ticket buying is simplified. No debate about paying the extra charge to sit in the shade. By 7:00 pm the sun will be lower than the top of the arena’s high western wall, so there will be no sun side or shade side. That means tickets costs are differentiated only by how close we sit to the arena floor.

There are fifty rows from the box seats abutting the floor up to the top row. They are divided into groups of ten, so we opt for row twenty-one, the first of the middle group of ten. Not too expensive, not too cheap, our seats provide a terrific view, as do all 10,000 seats in the arena. Because all bullrings are round, every view is excellent, and high seats are nearly as good as low ones. And because the action of a bullfight continually flows all over the ring, we can be assured of seeing plenty of close-up action.

Classic bullfighting is seen in Spain and many other Spanish speaking countries, most notably Mexico. Only Portugal and southern France deviate from the classic style, each in their own unique ways. But the same terminology is used for all corridos. The opening pageant is called a paseo, and here is where a major difference between classic and Portuguese becomes evident. In classic paseos, the crowd’s loudest response comes when the men on foot—the matadors and banderilleros—enter the ring and walk around it, the matadors in their tight traje de luces ("suit of lights"), as their spangled, beaded, and braided fighting costumes are called. While those men might appear to be pompous jerks for wearing such tight clothes—especially the pants, which so blatantly emphasize their cods—it is done for good reason: they can't leave anything on themselves—not the slightest ripple of fabric—loose for a bull's horns to hook onto as they go tearing past.

In Portugal the paseo begins the same as in classic corridos. From one of the two opposite-facing main gates (torils) that enter into the ring (one for bulls, one for fighters) comes a half-dozen heavily blinkered horses with heavy padding covering their bodies. The men riding them—picadoros—carry long, bladed lances called varas. As in classic fights, the picadoros will shove a vara’s serrated blade into the bull’s withers to weaken and anger him. They proceed around the ring's outer edge, horses at a slow canter, riders acknowledging the crowd's polite cheering and whistling (their version of applause).

After them come the next participants, who cause the entire crowd to erupt with a thundering ovation of shouts and shrill whistling. That ovation is for the six horse-and-rider teams that are the stars of the show. With their suit-of-light-clad riders waving and beaming at the crowd, those beautifully groomed horses prance sideways around the ring in a movement called carioca, keeping their faces to the crowd and their rumps to center-ring as they make their way around its edge. And as the horses prance, the riders stand up in their stirrups, causing you to realize….no reins! They guide the horses with pressure from their knees. How long does it take to train them to do that?

After the horses, a dozen young men enter on foot. They wear tight, matador-type costumes, the same as novilleros, or beginning matadors, in classic bullfighting. As with novilleros, their costumes are the same—same gold color, same styling—more a uniform than a costume. However, these young men are about as far from being novilleros as it is possible to get, as we will soon see. Meanwhile, judging by the roaring and whistles they elicit from the crowd, we can feel safe assuming they are something like banderilleros, the men in classic bullfighting who run past charging bulls to stick bladed darts into the same withers the picadoros later attack. But they are not banderilleros, either.

They are something else entirely.



* * * * *

When the paseo finishes and the ring is cleared for the appearance of the first bull, we are vibrating with anticipation. That is the pageant’s purpose, to focus all attention on what is about to happen. In football terms, if we have not arrived at the arena with our “game face” on, the opening procession does it for us—we are now locked and loaded.

The first bull blasts out of his toril like a shadow from hell, black head held high, sniffing the air, looking wildly side-to-side, trying to get its bearings in a drastically new environment. Unlike classic bulls, this one's horns are cut off three inches from the tips. Instead of the sharp natural points that would tear into a body—human or horse—like a scythe, these are covered by small knobs of tan felt. They can easily break the bones of any human or horse they hit at any degree of speed, but penetration is highly unlikely.

The arena floor is a circle fifty-five yards across, covered by packed sand with a reddish-orange tint that glows in the fading twilight. That color is common to bullrings around the world because it easily absorbs the taint of spilled blood, which is inevitable even in Portugal. However, the bull doesn’t know that—not yet. He makes a quick turn around the floor to get a feel for it, then stops near his entry point, sides heaving just a bit, a tad out of breath, thoroughly perplexed. But not for long. As soon as he fully stops, the gate opposite the bull-gate opens and a matador-on-horseback enters the ring.

Applause and whistles explode as a white horse with black mane and tail appears. It rears onto its hind legs as its rider lifts both hands high to acknowledge the crowd, then both settle into the work at hand. The horse comes down onto all fours and focuses on the bull, at the other side of the ring and gazing intently at this new element in its unfolding drama. The bull paws at the ground in front of himself, flicking sand up onto his back.

The horse breaks into a carioca to its left, moving athwart the bull, his face locked onto the squatter, bulkier animal. The bull instinctively moves in the opposite direction, trying to keep the horse and rider from closing any distance on him. Suddenly the horse breaks directly toward the bull and the bull reacts, following another instinct to move straight at the running horse. The horse breaks again, this time to its right, allowing the bull to take up the chase directly behind it. But that is as close as the bull can get.

The white horse has done this often enough to know just how fast he has to run along the barrera, the five-foot-high wooden wall lining the ring. It protects the event's other participants, who usually mill around on foot within the ten-foot-wide safety zone between the barrera and the eight-foot stone wall that is at the bottom of the arena itself. They were concentric circles, the two walls flanking the safety zone, and the white horse skimmed along the outermost barrera like a wind-up toy running on a track.

One lap around, the bull in frantic pursuit, so close, so very close, reaching and thrusting with his padded horn tips, desperately trying to snag them on his prey's soft, exposed buttocks. But no matter how hard he tries, no matter how fast he runs, he can’t quite catch the white horse running a couple of strides ahead. Two laps around…three…. Suddenly the horse hits an afterburner and flies away from the tiring bull, which can only pull up short in baffled surprise. Sides heaving, tongue lolling, saliva drooling, the bull backs his rump against the inner wall (another instinctive move) as the horse situates himself and his rider at the opposite side of the ring. Round one is over.

* * * * *



The horse stills himself so the matador can stand up again in the stirrups, lifting a pair of two-foot-long banderillas, each the thickness of pool cues, one in each hand. One end of each banderilla has a three-inch steel blade with sharp, jagged serrations cut into both edges; the other end has a colorful spray of three-inch paper tassels. Holding each banderilla by its tassel end, the matador brandishes them overhead for the crowd to see.

They roar and whistle wildly: “Ole'! Ole'! Ole'!"

The matador drops back into his saddle holding the two banderillas in his hands. Now we understand why he and his mates guide their mounts with knee pressure rather than reins. But, clearly, that animal does not need guidance from its rider. It knows.

A hush of anticipation settles over the crowd. They, too, know. Then the bull moves, cutting a small, tentative arc to its right, gauging its opponent’s response. The horse quickly follows suit, cutting to its right, keeping aligned exactly opposite the bull across the ring. In fact, both rumps practically touch the inner wall. The crowd tenses….

The horse's front hooves beat out a steady tattoo on the sand, tapping up and down in a nervous, prancing movement as he searches out whatever he is looking for. Whatever that is, whatever kind of opening he is seeking, he finally finds it and takes off like a shot straight across the ring—straight at the startled bull!

Unlike the first time, when the horse baited the bull into chasing him around the ring to tire him out, this time he doesn’t break left or right. He continues dead ahead like a runaway freight train, straight at the bull, who doesn’t stay startled for long. Instincts take over yet again as he retaliates, bolting straight at the horse, zero to thirty m.p.h. in only a few menacing strides. In two seconds—three at most—it seems too late to avoid a collision, yet neither animal shows the slightest inclination to turn away. The bull seems bound to shear that daring horse's front legs off and turn them into bloody stumps, about where they attach to his body. We can only brace ourselves for the inevitable impact.

Suddenly, when only five or six yards separates the two charging beasts, the horse breaks its straight-on stride and he gives the bull a head fake! As in basketball or football or hockey or soccer, he zigs when his opponent thinks he will zag. He pulls his forelegs together and plants them to his left, outwardly appearing to be moving in that direction. Naturally, the bull veers with him. But as soon as the horse's front hooves are planted in the sand, he pops them back to his right, back to his original line of momentum.

While the horse does that, the bull completely swallows the head fake and goes thundering past horse and rider, only inches from the horse's left flank. It’s like watching a narrowly averted train wreck—and it isn't over. As the bull goes tearing alongside, the matador leans over in his saddle, down to where the bull is, and jams both banderillas into the hump of muscle atop his forelegs. Each three-inch jagged blade bites into the muscle and holds, leaving the two-foot-long wooden darts above them to swirl and sway with every movement from then on. Meanwhile, the colored paper streamers on the ends contrast with the bull's black hide like candy canes against a dark Christmas stocking.

Everyone in the arena cuts loose with those shrill whistles and a booming roar of approval. "Ole'! Ole'! Ole'!" This now includes you and me, shouting at full volume.

* * * * *

Before we go further, something must be said about basic bull intelligence: it isn’t much. If classic matadors can sweep a cape in front of a bull's face for twenty minutes or more and it can't figure out that behind the cape is not where the action is, we should not be surprised to learn that the same animals can be successfully head-faked by horses — apparently a vastly superior intelligence. This is amplified upon when the horse gets in front of the bull again and leads it on another fruitless two-lap chase around the ring.

We have seen this before. The horse suddenly sprints away to square off with the bull from the opposite side of the ring. The matador stands up in his stirrups to brandish another pair of banderillas. The crowd is duly appreciative, then the familiar hush falls so the horse can undistractedly choose his moment to bolt toward the bull. The bull reacts as before, launching himself in an all-out counterattack. Once again at the last possible split-second the horse breaks away by applying another head-fake, except this time he fakes to his right and cuts back left! He’s ambihoofstrous!

Seeing this brings two questions to mind: First, how can anyone train any animal to do something that risks limb—and therefore life—at every pass? And second, does the horse run the show, or does the matador on his back? One must assume that—like good running backs in football — the horse needs the freedom to make his moves on his own. He needs the ability to change course if the bull is leaning one way or the other. But to answer this definitively might be like walking into the kitchen at a gourmet restaurant, forever spoiling the marvels beyond the façade. It is better left as a magical mystery.

However it works between horse and matador, they never screw up. It is a clean fight as the matador puts six—count 'em, six—pairs of banderillas in the top of the bull's withers. When all twelve are placed, sticking up or dangling down his flanks in various directions, they look like stiff, tan-colored dreadlocks. It is a masterful performance.

As the matador waves to the crowd and accepts its thunderous accolades, again including ours, the bull stands at the opposite side of the ring, sides heaving, really tired now, rivulets of blood dribbling down his flanks from the inserted banderillas, probably wondering what would come next in this horrible place he’s been brought to, so utterly different from the placid green pastures where he’s spent every previous day of his life.

Sure enough, out comes a picador riding his padded horse, carrying his vara. The exhausted bull's instincts take over again, compelling him to try once more to catch and gore a tormentor. And this time—lo and behold!—it works! He connects! But his delight is badly misplaced. The picador’s job is to let the bull catch his tank-like horse and begin trying to gore it. All the bull hits is thick padding, so the horse doesn’t get hurt, and the picador is able to jam his long lance's serrated tip deep into the bull's withers, vigorously sawing at his muscles to further weaken and further disable him as he fruitlessly rips and tears at the horse he is trying so hard to gore. This part is by far the least fun to watch.

* * * * *

Because we have focused on the picador doing his gruesome work, we have not noticed that eight of the dozen young men in the gold-colored, novilleros-style uniforms have hand-vaulted over the wooden restraining wall and are now spread out in the ring on the opposite side of the bull. One of the eight wears a cap made of dark green felt with a wide band of red material ringing its base, the part that goes around his head. From that base it extends up about a foot, built like a triangle and pointed at the tip. It looks like a dark green, red-trimmed dunce cap, or something Santa's elves might wear.

These are the forcados, the unique addition to Portuguese bullfighting that moves it well beyond the bravado of classic. The crowd notices them and begins to whistle and shout approval as they move into position. The one wearing the cap takes the lead while the others line up behind him, single-file. All but one is in his late teens or early twenties, and that odd-man-out is in his middle-thirties. He is the last one in the line.

Once the forcados are set, the boy wearing the cap lifts it off his head with both hands, holding it aloft as the crowd cheers lustily. He then places it back on his head, tucks it tight, folds the floppy top down so it dangles beside his head, turns to face the bull, and starts walking toward it with what appears to be eager anticipation.

While all that plays out, the bull stands over against the far wall with his butt pressed up against the wood, hanging his head down near the sand, wheezing for breath, his shredded withers now spilling blood down both front flanks with every thumping heartbeat. He’s had more than enough and seems to know it, but the poor beast is still subject to his instincts, which are phenomenally territorial. This is the whole point.

The forcado wearing the cap of honor walks proudly to the center of the ring, chest out, chin up, hands on hips, strutting the way classic matadors do. As he moves to the center of the ring, his seven "teammates" stayed lined up in a straight row behind him, gradually spacing themselves until they reach approximately ten-foot intervals.

When the bull notices this new threat invading his space he bellows and takes a few staggering steps to his left. The boy in the middle slightly adjusts his position to keep himself squarely in front of the bull, but each successive boy behind him has to adjust proportionally more; the farther away from the center, the more the shift to the side.

When the bull settles into what looks like his final defensive position against the wall, the boys line themselves up for their final time. Then the one in front begins a ritual that is three centuries old. He locks his hands on his hips, elbows turned out, the way a drum major would prepare to lead a parade. He thrusts his chin up and out, like Mussolini on a balcony, before taking an exaggerated step (what kids call a "giant" step) forward and stamping his foot down hard, simultaneously shouting, "Hey!" at the bull. It is the same shout martial artists use when breaking boards or bricks—a sharp, gutteral “Hey!”

The bull is now quivering a bit, frightened and in a kind of shock, so he doesn’t react to that first step and shout. The boy confidently takes another, with his teammates scuffling forward behind him, careful to keep their relative distances intact. Still refusing to take offense, the bull holds to his position. The boy maintains his proud, erect posture, hands on hips, as he takes another step and shouts again. That does it. He finally moves beyond the bull’s point of no return. And despite everything the bull must be feeling at that moment, instinct takes over and he bolts forward, right at the crazy forcado wearing the green cap, who makes no move to get away from the charging beast—no move at all!

Like everyone else in the arena, we are riveted by the incredible drama unfolding before us. The instant the bull reacts, the impossibly brave, impossibly foolish boy plants his feet and holds still, keeping his hands solidly on his hips, unmoving, unwavering. If you have ever played American football for even one down, as I have, you are especially mesmerized. You cannot believe what you are watching. The boy waits...and waits…for what seems like an eternity but in reality is only two or three seconds, if that.

Now the die is cast irrevocably. The bull is maybe ten feet away, leaving the boy no chance to avoid being trampled. Finally, at that last grinding second, his steel nerves crack. He takes a step back…just one, but you notice that while it is done quickly, it is done carefully, as if there is some purpose to it. The bull thunders ahead, undeterred by the movement. Unlike the horse, the boy is not trying to fake him out. He stays on the same line as the charging bull, he has simply taken one small step backward….

As he does that, the teammates lined up behind him do the same thing, working hard to maintain their ten-foot intervals as they move with the flow of the bull’s charge. And the math for that charge is this: the half-ton animal going thirty miles an hour at that barely moving boy is equivalent to a small truck careening toward a parked bicycle. It is not even a contest. And then, when the bull is only a few feet away from his target, no more than five or six, the boy in the cap takes one final backward step...and jumps up!

Your first thought is that the boy has finally come to his senses and is trying to avoid the bull by jumping over it. You’re wrong. Indeed, he does jump straight up, but only a foot or so, keeping directly in the bull’s path. Then it becomes clear he only wants to rise high enough to leave his hips between the bull’s blunted but still staple-like horns.

If he misses that jump left or right, he might lose a precious private part. Luckily, he doesn’t miss. He lands dead-center on the bull's charging head, his hipbones between the blunted horns as the thudding force of the impact bends him in half at his pelvis, his slightly-spread thighs banging against the bull’s face while his upper body slams down along the top of its thick neck.

In that terrifying split second—and it is absolutely no more than that—the boy must accomplish two critical tasks: first, because a successful "catch" (as it is called) will leave his head near the banderillas dangling from the bull's withers, he must try to avoid getting his face slashed or an eye gouged out by any exposed blades, which is as much a matter of luck as avoidance technique. Even more important—face injury or not—is that he must reach his arms around the bull's neck to lock his hands beneath it in a death grip.

Once he has carried out his all-important tasks (and the green cap has gone flying from the impact), the second boy in line must perform his own crucial job with an equally negligible margin for error. The bull's reaction to having the first boy locked around his neck is always to lift his head with a sharp tossing motion to flip his antagonist up-and-over, behind himself. If unimpeded, the flip causes one or both of the boy's shoulders to dislocate, thereby dislodging him from his grip. Consequently, the second boy has to anticipate the move and intercept the first boy's legs as they start lifting up and over.

Rather than step back, the second boy must stand his ground with his arms spread wide, like a football linebacker, needing to encompass all possible positions the front boy's legs might take. Then he leans into the charging bull to lock down on the front boy's uplifting legs, keeping them from flipping up any higher than horizontal. If the picadors have done a skillful job of cutting the muscles and tendons inside the bull's withers, the worn-down beast won’t be strong enough to flip both boys onto his back.

That is the case this time. Once the first two boys are secure in their grip on the berserk animal's head, the remaining six forcados are responsible for slowing its speed down to nothing in the few seconds it will need to reach the wooden barrera opposite. If they fail, the boy on the horns and the boy around his legs will be smashed like insects against the wall. If the bull can, it will run right through that wall, which it cannot see in any case with two forcados draped across its eyes. So the remaining six have no choice—they must stop the bull's maniacal charge, and quickly, or all of them could be squashed.

As daringly as the first two boys have met their fate, five of the remaining six show equal aplomb as one-by-one they pile onto the bull's head and neck, holding tight and digging their feet into the sand to arrest its momentum. Meanwhile, the last fellow in the line—the mid-thirties one—is always the oldest in any group of forcados, a seasoned veteran of several years "up front.” He coolly sidesteps the approaching mayhem to allow the bull and its catchers to rush past at rapidly diminishing speed. Then he deftly reaches out and grabs the bull's tail, digging his heels in from the opposite direction, working every bit as hard to stop the bull's forward progress as the boys on the other end.

At the same time, he twists the tail as hard as he can, which is the final key to a successful catch. All animals with tails become afraid and disoriented when their tails are twisted, so a bull will quickly stop charging if its tail is wrenched that way. If everything goes right, that occurs no more than a few feet from the wall, which is the case this time. The bull stops moving, the seven boys hanging on its head hold it still for several seconds while they chant their "team cheer," then they all let go at once—except the one twisting the tail—and scurry to safety by vaulting over the five-foot-high barrera. The lead boy goes by way of the mid-ring to retrieve the green cap, so he is the last to vault the wall.

The final act of the drama is that the older guy lets go of the tail and runs flat-out to scramble over the wall, too, leaving the stunned, exhausted bull suddenly alone in the ring, not knowing whether to crap or go blind. Meanwhile, the crowd erupts again at the successful catch, the boys take several well-deserved bows from inside the safety zone, and a group of ten steers is let into the ring. They’ve been trained to enter the ring, make one loop around its outer perimeter, and then go right back out the gate they just entered.

No doubt overjoyed at finally seeing his own kind appear in the hellhole, the bull eagerly falls in with them and follows them out of the ring. Outside the arena he will be loaded into a van and hauled to a local butcher shop, where he will be killed and dressed out for consumption the following day. Such is the life of any fighting bull—classic or Portuguese—a one-way ticket to oblivion no matter how courageously they perform.

* * * * *

Things have now gotten good and started. Before the night is over there will be five more fights exactly like that one. In principle, everything is the same each time. In practice, things do go wrong. Horses make mistakes, such as turning the wrong way and being hit broadside by a pursuing bull, which spills both horse and matador onto the sand and requires some frantic recovery techniques. Sometimes the lead forcado (that dubious “honor” is rotated among their members) fails to properly execute his "catch." Whenever that happens, what the bull does to them is…. And what they have to do in response is….

Well, to try describing it would risk trivializing it, which I refuse to do.

I simply cannot express how profoundly deep is my respect for the forcados. The matadors and horses are spectacular, no doubt, but those boys…. My eyes always mist over when I consider the incredible bravery and toughness they routinely exhibit in the many bullrings scattered throughout Portugal. Of the countless things I could say these words about—“You really should see this for yourself”—the aftermath of a Portuguese bull catcher missing his catch would head my personal list. I am not exaggerating.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about those boys is how “normal” they are. They are not trained to high levels of skill in gymnasiums or weight rooms, the way our young athletes are. No! They are ordinary boys doing a most extraordinary task that requires no special physical attribute beyond a heart filled with more raw courage than most football teams taken together. On my best day ever, I could not have approached what they do.

Wait, I’m wrong. The most amazing thing about those boys is that they all come from Portugal’s best families. They have everything to live for in every conceivable way, yet each year produces a new crop eager to crawl over each other to be chosen to stand in front of those potentially deadly bulls. Which leads to one final unfathomable question….

Why don’t the Portuguese rule the world?

THE END