(photos by Maurice Berho)
April 30, 2016
April 29, 2016
April 23, 2016
What is a portagayola?
A portagayola is when a matador decides to meet the bull in a kneeling position as soon as it let out of the corrals and into the ring. It is usually done to get the crowd excited if the crowd hasn't had much to cheer about that day.
Or a matador might perform the move if he feels the need to prove his bravery to the crowd or the judge.
It is an exciting yet risky move since the bull can do any number of things once the he enters the ring and at times things don't always go the way the matador has planned.
Portagayola en Sevilla
(photo by Maurice Berho)
Manuel Esbribano performed this portagayola with a Miura bull on April 17th, 2016.
Miura bulls are historically very unpredictable and very dangerous. To be able to pull off a portagayola with one of them is nothing less than heroic.
April 17, 2016
TOP BULL: Jared Allen's H4WW Air Time earns 47 points (PBR)
Jared Allen's H4WW Air Time bucks off Joseph McConnel in 2.08 seconds earning a bull score of 47 points in Round 2 of the 2014 Last Cowboy Standing in Las Vegas.
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I know I said I wasn't going to post much rodeo stuff here but I saw this ride from 2014 on the bull named Air Time and I just had to share.
Check out the strength of these bulls, Air Time almost flips completely over after bucking off Joseph McConnel.
April 16, 2016
En el tentadero
Un tentadero, the testing of calves for bravery.
By testing female calves for bravery a rancher will have a better idea of how their brothers might perform in the plaza de toros. These tests take place in small bullrings on the ranch itself.
April 15, 2016
Cobradiezmos on the ranch, before and after his day in Sevilla
Already back on the ranch only a day after the indulto.
April 14, 2016
Indulto en Sevilla!!
Yesterday, April 13th, 2016, the bull "Cobradiezmos" from the Victorino Martin ranch was given a pardon in the Plaza de Toros de Sevilla for it's exceptional strength and nobility.
The torero Manuel Escribano gave an excellent performance with Cobradiezmos and it was a day that will go down in the history books of el mundo taurino.
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Cobradiezmos, un toro bravo para contarselo a los nietos
(torear.blogspot.com 4-14-16)
Me acerqué con unos amigos a comer al Donald a Sevilla, unas gambitas, su inmejorable ensaladilla y de "postre" un Rodaballo a la plancha que paró los relojes de toda Sevilla, nos enteramos que era festivo en la capital hispalense y que a la tarde había toros en la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla, seis toros seis de la ganadería de D. Victorino Martín, y tras tomar un refrigerio, en vaso ancho, en El Cairo nos sentamos en el senado maestrante sin saber que la tarde estaba destinada a la historia de la Tauromaquia por culpa de un señor Toro de nombre Cobradiezmos, toro de la ganadería de D. Victorino Martín que fue indultado la tarde del 13 de abril de 2016 pese a recibir únicamente dos varas, pero como eso no es culpa suya sino del sistematizado expolio institucional del primer tercio, nos quedaremos sin saber que hubiera ocurrido en una tercera vara, teniendo en cuenta que escarbó antes de arrancarse al segundo puyazo los que nos aventuramos a creer que hubiera seguido demostrando su bravura jamás podremos demostralo,apretó en las dos varas en un castigo muy bien medido por su pica "Chicharito", se desplazó con fijeza y prontitud en banderillas y desarrolló toda su casta, bravura y nobleza en la tela roja de Manuel Escribano durante el tercio de muerte, ni un sólo pero ni un sólo matiz, los pelos como escarpias, si me piden mi opinión yo no lo hubiera indultado porque creo que el Toro de indulto debe protagonizar al menos un tercio de varas como el de Mulillero, pero me conformaba con que todos los indultos a futuro fueran como el de Cobradiezmos.
Notable borrón en la trayectoria de Victorino Martín hijo, que ha embarcado a morir en la plaza, un toro destinado a cubrir vacas, aunque como dicen mas de un ganadero, lo importante de un semental no es su bravura sino la de sus hijos, es por tanto a su padre Jaquetón y a su madre Cobradiezmas, ambos dos del guarismo 9, a quienes hay que ponerles en Las Tiesas un chalet con vistas al Tajo en para que vivan juntos toda su vida y nos dejen una larga lista de hermanos y hermanas de Cobradiezmos.
Como lunar de la tarde, el extraño hecho que Felix, mayoral de la ganadería, no saliese de la plaza a hombros, cómo lo tenía cerca se lo pedí que bajara al ruedo, pero un señor a su lado me dijo que debían pedirlo los toreros, hecho que no ocurrió.
The torero Manuel Escribano gave an excellent performance with Cobradiezmos and it was a day that will go down in the history books of el mundo taurino.
--------------------
Cobradiezmos, un toro bravo para contarselo a los nietos
(torear.blogspot.com 4-14-16)
Me acerqué con unos amigos a comer al Donald a Sevilla, unas gambitas, su inmejorable ensaladilla y de "postre" un Rodaballo a la plancha que paró los relojes de toda Sevilla, nos enteramos que era festivo en la capital hispalense y que a la tarde había toros en la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla, seis toros seis de la ganadería de D. Victorino Martín, y tras tomar un refrigerio, en vaso ancho, en El Cairo nos sentamos en el senado maestrante sin saber que la tarde estaba destinada a la historia de la Tauromaquia por culpa de un señor Toro de nombre Cobradiezmos, toro de la ganadería de D. Victorino Martín que fue indultado la tarde del 13 de abril de 2016 pese a recibir únicamente dos varas, pero como eso no es culpa suya sino del sistematizado expolio institucional del primer tercio, nos quedaremos sin saber que hubiera ocurrido en una tercera vara, teniendo en cuenta que escarbó antes de arrancarse al segundo puyazo los que nos aventuramos a creer que hubiera seguido demostrando su bravura jamás podremos demostralo,apretó en las dos varas en un castigo muy bien medido por su pica "Chicharito", se desplazó con fijeza y prontitud en banderillas y desarrolló toda su casta, bravura y nobleza en la tela roja de Manuel Escribano durante el tercio de muerte, ni un sólo pero ni un sólo matiz, los pelos como escarpias, si me piden mi opinión yo no lo hubiera indultado porque creo que el Toro de indulto debe protagonizar al menos un tercio de varas como el de Mulillero, pero me conformaba con que todos los indultos a futuro fueran como el de Cobradiezmos.
Notable borrón en la trayectoria de Victorino Martín hijo, que ha embarcado a morir en la plaza, un toro destinado a cubrir vacas, aunque como dicen mas de un ganadero, lo importante de un semental no es su bravura sino la de sus hijos, es por tanto a su padre Jaquetón y a su madre Cobradiezmas, ambos dos del guarismo 9, a quienes hay que ponerles en Las Tiesas un chalet con vistas al Tajo en para que vivan juntos toda su vida y nos dejen una larga lista de hermanos y hermanas de Cobradiezmos.
Como lunar de la tarde, el extraño hecho que Felix, mayoral de la ganadería, no saliese de la plaza a hombros, cómo lo tenía cerca se lo pedí que bajara al ruedo, pero un señor a su lado me dijo que debían pedirlo los toreros, hecho que no ocurrió.
--------------------
April 11, 2016
On Sacrifice in Toreo
The bullfight may be the last relic of the ancient world. In this discussion, our antiquities scholar discusses the role of religion, catharsis, and redemption in the corrida.
(by Dr. Allen Josephs true.ink)
Death Counts
Death has meaning. In fact, death is what gives life meaning. That’s the story of the corrida: death gives life meaning. But there’s something beyond that. There’s something that has to do with the sacrifice itself. With the dispensing of the death. With being the high priest. You know the matadors are really the only high priests from the Pagan days that we have left.
Why do you kill the thing that you love? If I had the answer to that question, I would tell you. I don’t have it. Nobody has it. But the story is there in the sacrifice of every single god. All the early religions have a sacrificial god. When Jesus of Nazareth is put on the cross and sacrificed, that’s a historic example of a sacrifice that had been occurring for thousands of years.
But there’s something bad in human nature that calls for sacrifice too. And it’s something that I’ve spent my entire career trying to figure out. I don’t even know how extraordinary it would be if we could figure out the essential enigma of human nature, which is our tendency to kill the thing that we love. Maybe it’s because we feel guilty about killing. We make up stories and sacrifice—that is, we sacrifice the killing and make it into a ritual in order to purify ourselves. That makes a lot of sense. And that is where the corrida or bullfight comes in.
I Don't Like the Term Bullfighting
It’s not really a proper term. Toreo—can we call it toreo? Toreo is what the Spaniards created instead of the modern novel. It’s a spectacle and it is theater. In fact, it’s a lot like Greek tragedy except that it’s pre-Greek tragedy because in Greek tragedy the sacrifice of an animal is no longer there. The sacrifice has been moved to a representational level, but in Spain they kept the sacrifice. And not only did they keep the sacrifice, but they honed in on the sacrifice. And they made the bull sacrifice, which was in its own way a revivification of the sacrifice of the bull god from antiquity.
Bulls were worshipped in all civilizations from India to Portugal, and especially in Spain. Because of the back and forth between the Christians and the Muslims for hundreds of years, in the so-called middle ages, you had huge areas in the middle of Spain and even into the south of Spain that were uncivilized. There were woods, they were wild, and there were wild bulls growing there. These were the descendants of the aurochs, the larger, woolly-mammoth looking bulls from the ancient world, and they were not wiped out.
Now, the last of the aurochs died out in Poland in the 1600s, but the survivors of the aurochs lived on in Spain. And the Spanish fighting bull is a descendant of those. The result is the bullfight, and it is more more dangerous than virtually anything that anybody would ever choose to do. It’s an intensity, a vehemence, a ringing the life out of things to the highest degree.
There’s no peer. The bull ring is real. It’s not make believe. You actually have to kill the bull or the bull has to kill you. It’s about reality. Real blood. Real bulls. Real death.
When the taurine world discovers the new kid who is going to be the savior of bullfighting they actually refer to him as the savior and the messiah.
That’s actual language. It’s a religious construct. It’s the placing on a pedestal of a child who can redeem the rest of us. He is seen as a redeemer.
What greater glory is there for the family but to offer up their son as hero. And victim. What is it John, 3:16? For god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That’s what the Spanish family is doing. They’re nurturing the sacrifice of their son. Not on a conscious level, but surely they know what can happen.
The Anglo Saxon mind doesn’t conceive of family the way the Hispanic mind does. They operate on completely different levels. For the Spaniard family, for the Mexican family, family is everything.
It all goes back to sacrifice, and the most important part of the worship. Think about the story of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac is the greatest sacrifice of all. God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and Abraham says, ‘Okay.’ And then at the last minute they find the scapegoat—the ram—in the thickets, and they sacrifice the animal instead.
A lot of anthropologists think that the sacrifice of animals was in lieu of the sacrifice of humans. In the beginning there was human sacrifice, and somewhere along the line this human sacrifice evolved into animal sacrifice. But the animal sacrifice was important, and it’s part of the same story that’s been told for a very long time. In the legend of Mithras, he kills the white bull of heaven, and Gilgamesh kills the white bull of heaven in two separate myths.
When they kill those bulls, those sacred bulls, the bulls’ blood turns into wine. And the bulls’ testicles give us all the grains of the earth. Now that’s a story about where the gifts come from. It’s a story about our communion with nature. And ultimately it’s the story of communion at the Mass or in the Christian church. It’s the same blood, it’s the same bread, it’s the same body, it’s the same story. We do it over and over again.
I’m not trying to offend anyone here. But in the same way that transubstantiation is the body of Christ when the matador kills the bull, he is reenacting that first sacrifice of the divine animal which gave us all the gifts of nature. By virtue of being a ritual, it is a recapitulation.
The corrida has a lot of catharsis.
In fact, the bull ring may be the only place in the Western World and in the 21st century where you can actually have a collective catharsis. When you get a great matador with a great animal and they share that timeless immortality, that feeling stays with you for the rest of your life when you understand it and know how to watch it. When you get 20,000 people in a bull ring all shouting ‘ole!’ at the same time, everybody is together, everyone is ecstatic.
That doesn’t happen very often. It happens in some religious circumstances that are usually called primitive or backward or reactionary and usually given bad labels by supercilious people who don’t seem to understand them or the human need and craving for them, which the bullfight supplies better than anything.
When the matador goes into the ring, he is all of us, we’re all in him. Another way is to look at the matador as a kind of reincarnation of those mythic heros: Gilgamesh or Mithras who managed to conquer the secrets of nature, the gifts of nature, the bounty of nature from nature. And he deals with fear and death and he provides meat, he becomes the cultural hero. He is our savior.
We become part of the cultural hero and we participate however vicariously with him in this struggle with nature and death. It’s the oldest story we have. We are going into this incredibly romantic theater of the bull ring to watch the oldest story ever told, again and again and again in a ritual. And as in all rituals, which are enactments of myths.
But in the bull ring, the blood is real. We want the great matador to bring the animal in closer and closer and closer, to dominate him more and more. To put himself in more danger, in effect. It’s playing with death. And why do we play with death? Because when the matador kills the bull, we overcome death. We, like our cultural hero, survive—albeit vicariously survive. There’s a repetitive ritual quality to it that’s unavoidable. Maybe it’s not easily explained or understood, but it’s there.
The detractors of the corrida are not, of course, going to be willing to agree with what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, that we need the corrida because the real purpose of the corrida is a kind of salvation. That through the exemplar that is the matador, we learn how to live. Every story that is told in every religious feature that I know of, is recapitulated one way or another, in the corrida. It is a religious experience for those of us that understand it that way.
Why celebrate death? That’s not the question. The question is the opposite. The question is why not celebrate death? Which is what we do. In our society, we don’t celebrate death, we act like it’s not there. We don’t live with death. Spaniards understand that if you don’t live with death, you’re not living properly. Life is based on death. All life lives on killing.
Everything eats everything else. That’s the way nature is. And we don’t admit it. We don’t want to deal with death because we prefer not to. By celebrating death you understand death. If you don’t understand death, you don’t understand life.
--------------------
https://true.ink/story/on-sacrifice-in-toreo/
(by Dr. Allen Josephs true.ink)
Death Counts
Death has meaning. In fact, death is what gives life meaning. That’s the story of the corrida: death gives life meaning. But there’s something beyond that. There’s something that has to do with the sacrifice itself. With the dispensing of the death. With being the high priest. You know the matadors are really the only high priests from the Pagan days that we have left.
Why do you kill the thing that you love? If I had the answer to that question, I would tell you. I don’t have it. Nobody has it. But the story is there in the sacrifice of every single god. All the early religions have a sacrificial god. When Jesus of Nazareth is put on the cross and sacrificed, that’s a historic example of a sacrifice that had been occurring for thousands of years.
But there’s something bad in human nature that calls for sacrifice too. And it’s something that I’ve spent my entire career trying to figure out. I don’t even know how extraordinary it would be if we could figure out the essential enigma of human nature, which is our tendency to kill the thing that we love. Maybe it’s because we feel guilty about killing. We make up stories and sacrifice—that is, we sacrifice the killing and make it into a ritual in order to purify ourselves. That makes a lot of sense. And that is where the corrida or bullfight comes in.
I Don't Like the Term Bullfighting
It’s not really a proper term. Toreo—can we call it toreo? Toreo is what the Spaniards created instead of the modern novel. It’s a spectacle and it is theater. In fact, it’s a lot like Greek tragedy except that it’s pre-Greek tragedy because in Greek tragedy the sacrifice of an animal is no longer there. The sacrifice has been moved to a representational level, but in Spain they kept the sacrifice. And not only did they keep the sacrifice, but they honed in on the sacrifice. And they made the bull sacrifice, which was in its own way a revivification of the sacrifice of the bull god from antiquity.
Bulls were worshipped in all civilizations from India to Portugal, and especially in Spain. Because of the back and forth between the Christians and the Muslims for hundreds of years, in the so-called middle ages, you had huge areas in the middle of Spain and even into the south of Spain that were uncivilized. There were woods, they were wild, and there were wild bulls growing there. These were the descendants of the aurochs, the larger, woolly-mammoth looking bulls from the ancient world, and they were not wiped out.
Now, the last of the aurochs died out in Poland in the 1600s, but the survivors of the aurochs lived on in Spain. And the Spanish fighting bull is a descendant of those. The result is the bullfight, and it is more more dangerous than virtually anything that anybody would ever choose to do. It’s an intensity, a vehemence, a ringing the life out of things to the highest degree.
There’s no peer. The bull ring is real. It’s not make believe. You actually have to kill the bull or the bull has to kill you. It’s about reality. Real blood. Real bulls. Real death.
When the taurine world discovers the new kid who is going to be the savior of bullfighting they actually refer to him as the savior and the messiah.
That’s actual language. It’s a religious construct. It’s the placing on a pedestal of a child who can redeem the rest of us. He is seen as a redeemer.
What greater glory is there for the family but to offer up their son as hero. And victim. What is it John, 3:16? For god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That’s what the Spanish family is doing. They’re nurturing the sacrifice of their son. Not on a conscious level, but surely they know what can happen.
The Anglo Saxon mind doesn’t conceive of family the way the Hispanic mind does. They operate on completely different levels. For the Spaniard family, for the Mexican family, family is everything.
It all goes back to sacrifice, and the most important part of the worship. Think about the story of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac is the greatest sacrifice of all. God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and Abraham says, ‘Okay.’ And then at the last minute they find the scapegoat—the ram—in the thickets, and they sacrifice the animal instead.
A lot of anthropologists think that the sacrifice of animals was in lieu of the sacrifice of humans. In the beginning there was human sacrifice, and somewhere along the line this human sacrifice evolved into animal sacrifice. But the animal sacrifice was important, and it’s part of the same story that’s been told for a very long time. In the legend of Mithras, he kills the white bull of heaven, and Gilgamesh kills the white bull of heaven in two separate myths.
When they kill those bulls, those sacred bulls, the bulls’ blood turns into wine. And the bulls’ testicles give us all the grains of the earth. Now that’s a story about where the gifts come from. It’s a story about our communion with nature. And ultimately it’s the story of communion at the Mass or in the Christian church. It’s the same blood, it’s the same bread, it’s the same body, it’s the same story. We do it over and over again.
I’m not trying to offend anyone here. But in the same way that transubstantiation is the body of Christ when the matador kills the bull, he is reenacting that first sacrifice of the divine animal which gave us all the gifts of nature. By virtue of being a ritual, it is a recapitulation.
The corrida has a lot of catharsis.
In fact, the bull ring may be the only place in the Western World and in the 21st century where you can actually have a collective catharsis. When you get a great matador with a great animal and they share that timeless immortality, that feeling stays with you for the rest of your life when you understand it and know how to watch it. When you get 20,000 people in a bull ring all shouting ‘ole!’ at the same time, everybody is together, everyone is ecstatic.
That doesn’t happen very often. It happens in some religious circumstances that are usually called primitive or backward or reactionary and usually given bad labels by supercilious people who don’t seem to understand them or the human need and craving for them, which the bullfight supplies better than anything.
When the matador goes into the ring, he is all of us, we’re all in him. Another way is to look at the matador as a kind of reincarnation of those mythic heros: Gilgamesh or Mithras who managed to conquer the secrets of nature, the gifts of nature, the bounty of nature from nature. And he deals with fear and death and he provides meat, he becomes the cultural hero. He is our savior.
We become part of the cultural hero and we participate however vicariously with him in this struggle with nature and death. It’s the oldest story we have. We are going into this incredibly romantic theater of the bull ring to watch the oldest story ever told, again and again and again in a ritual. And as in all rituals, which are enactments of myths.
But in the bull ring, the blood is real. We want the great matador to bring the animal in closer and closer and closer, to dominate him more and more. To put himself in more danger, in effect. It’s playing with death. And why do we play with death? Because when the matador kills the bull, we overcome death. We, like our cultural hero, survive—albeit vicariously survive. There’s a repetitive ritual quality to it that’s unavoidable. Maybe it’s not easily explained or understood, but it’s there.
The detractors of the corrida are not, of course, going to be willing to agree with what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, that we need the corrida because the real purpose of the corrida is a kind of salvation. That through the exemplar that is the matador, we learn how to live. Every story that is told in every religious feature that I know of, is recapitulated one way or another, in the corrida. It is a religious experience for those of us that understand it that way.
Why celebrate death? That’s not the question. The question is the opposite. The question is why not celebrate death? Which is what we do. In our society, we don’t celebrate death, we act like it’s not there. We don’t live with death. Spaniards understand that if you don’t live with death, you’re not living properly. Life is based on death. All life lives on killing.
Everything eats everything else. That’s the way nature is. And we don’t admit it. We don’t want to deal with death because we prefer not to. By celebrating death you understand death. If you don’t understand death, you don’t understand life.
--------------------
https://true.ink/story/on-sacrifice-in-toreo/
April 10, 2016
El Juli in Arles, March 27th, 2016
(photo by Elsa Vielzeuf)
Interesting photo showing how close to the action the crowd is at this ancient Roman coliseum in Arles France.
April 9, 2016
PBR helps write next chapter of Helldorado Days history
I don't follow rodeo very much, I might only watch a couple events a year. (They never show the bulls enough for my liking, I'm always more interested in the bulls than the cowboys.) So I won't be post very much about rodeo on this blog. Maybe only an article or two that stand out.
But I thought I would post this since I did find "Helldorado Days" interesting. Las Vegas is only a 5 hour drive from me so since it is basically in my back yard, so to speak, this article caught my eye.
(by Keith Ryan Cartwright pbr.com 3-25-16)
Hoover Dam is all of 30 miles southeast of Las Vegas.
More than 1,000 heroic men – 100 of whom lost their lives – spent five years building the concrete arch-gravity dam. Construction began in 1931 – the same year Las Vegas legalized gambling – and lasted until 1935, coinciding with the Great Depression. It is believed that between 10,000-20,000 men descended upon Boulder City, Nevada, hoping for work.
Those who were hired and those who hoped they would soon be needed took up residence in the small town that was otherwise the home of only 5,000 people.
However, because of strict policies forbidding drinking, gambling and other vices, many of those men spent their rare days off in nearby Las Vegas, which featured only a fraction of the trademark glitz and glamour the PBR experiences today when it hosts its annual Last Cowboy Standing.
Nevertheless, the presence of thousands of workers and sightseers helped Vegas avoid the pitfalls the Depression would have otherwise created.
As legend would have it, in 1934 or 1935, depending upon who you believe, the City of Las Vegas founded Helldorado Days with the help of promoter Clyde Zerby as an opportunity to celebrate the men building Boulder Dam – it was only later renamed after President Herbert Hoover – combined with the Western heritage of the city’s earliest years.
Zerby is said to have skipped town in ’34 and the city teamed with Elks Lodge #1468 in 1935, to produce the first official or, as some folks see it, the second Helldorado Days.
“It’s now over 80 years old,” said Jim Buell, longtime sponsorship chairman and past general chairman of Helldorado Days, which is now the longest-running civic event in the history of the city.
Just it as grew despite the Depression era, Helldorado Days survived World War II.
For years, the men who built the dam would return for the event, which has always been held in the month of May to coincide with the city’s birthday.
“The heydays of Helldorado Days, I think it’s fair to say, were the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,” Buell said. “By the 1980s the character of the city changed.
“During that time Helldorado Days was absolutely the event of the year. Virtually everybody in town was involved with it in one way or another.”
Casinos workers and school children alike would dress in Western attire.
There were three parades and the likes of Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Larry Hagman, Doug McClure and others served as grand marshals, while the ‘80s drew entertainers like George Strait, Alabama, Hank Williams Jr. and PBR favorite Moe Brandy.
Helldorado Days also featured a rodeo that saw legends as big as Larry Mahan, Roy Cooper, Tuff Hedeman and Joe Beaver competing in front of sold out crowds.
This year, PBR living legends J.B. Mauney, Guilherme Marchi, Silvano Alves and Mike Lee will be among the all-time great bull riders to etch their names in the folklore and longstanding traditions of Helldorado Days, which has partnered with the PBR to host its final Major of the 2016 first half, Last Cowboy Standing.
Unfortunately, as the turn of the century approached and gaming became the city’s primary business, Buell said the city felt more influence from California and it quickly grew apart from its roots as an old Western cowboy town.
Participation began to wane in the 1990s.
In 2005, the Las Vegas Centennial brought back one of the three parades and in 2009 they also brought back a PRCA-sanctioned rodeo, which the local Elks Lodge has produced.
“It’s a really important event for the City of Las Vegas, the Mayor and the council people,” said Esther Carter, who produces the annual parade and is a city employee who works on special events.
Buell added, “The purpose is to focus on our tradition as a Western town. Today you wouldn’t think of Las Vegas as a Western town although it certainly is.”
It’s precisely why they’ve partnered with the PBR, which is increasing its presence in Las Vegas, home of the now-expanded PBR Built Ford Tough World Finals.
“As the leading Western sport, PBR feels a responsibility to help revive an iconic western event in Las Vegas,” said Sean Gleason, CEO of PBR. “The inimitable adrenaline-pumping energy and excitement of bucking bulls on the Vegas strip will rank with the very best entertainment experience the city has to offer.”
The pairing is a means for Helldorado Days and Las Vegas to reconnect with the city’s Western heritage.
“(The PBR’s commitment) makes Helldorado Days bigger and better,” said Buell. “Given the marketing power of an organization like the PBR, it should go nowhere but up again.”
Carter added, “It’s been a great partnership between the city and Elks and now we’ve got another great partner in the PBR.”
That comes at a critical time.
With the rodeo facing the prospect of losing its previous home after seven years, Helldorado Days, which has always been held in the downtown area, will move locations this year to be part of the PBR Fan Zone in “the Las Vegas Village” outside the MGM Grand Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.
The village -- the site of a range of fun activities for all ages – will also feature daily Bullfighters Only performances, and then the main event – PBR’s Last Cowboy Standing.
“A PBR Major, paired with a rodeo, and a giant festival, on the Vegas strip: Now that’s a destination event,” Gleason observed.
--------------------
http://www.pbr.com/en/news/features/other-features/2016/3/pbr-helps-write-next-chapter-of-helldorado-days-history.aspx
April 8, 2016
Nueva iluminación para el ruedo de Las Ventas
(las-ventas.com 4-8-16)
Ayer concluyeron los trabajos de revisión y mejora del alumbrado del ruedo de Las Ventas, gracias a los cuales se han doblado los niveles medios lumínicos y se ha mejorado la uniformidad de los mismos en el coso de la Plaza de Madrid.
A lo largo de una semana se han sustituido 74 lámparas, lo que ha permitido pasar de unos niveles lumínicos medios de 629 lux a otros finales de 1.389 lux, que a partir de ahora iluminarán el ruedo, mejorando la visibilidad para los espectadores y la seguridad para los lidiadores.
Durante los trabajos de acondicionamiento se ha procedido también a la reorientación de todos los focos, a la limpieza de todos los proyectores, incluidos los elementos ópticos (difusores y reflectores), y a la recuperación del rendimiento lumínico perdido por suciedad. Todo ello permitirá eliminar las zonas de sombra o de menor iluminación en el ruedo, al aumentar la uniformidad.
El nuevo equipo de iluminación está compuesto por lámparas de halogenuros metálicos, de 1.500 W. de potencia.
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http://www.las-ventas.com/noticia.asp?codigo=6916
April 7, 2016
April 3, 2016
April 2, 2016
A God of the Bullring Made Human
(by Geoffrey Gray nytimes.com 2-1-16)
It was not long after the first trumpets on Sunday that José Tomás found himself in familiar territory: inches from the vicious horns of a fighting bull, so close they nearly brushed up against the pink silk of his traje de luces, or suit of lights.
Careful not to twitch a muscle, which could have been a trigger for the bull to attack him, Tomás stood firm in this dangerous position and alone at the center of the Plaza México, the biggest bullring in the world. Tomás’s cultish followers are called Tomasistas, and the bullring was filled with more than 45,000 spectators, the largest draw for a matador in recent memory.
All of them were eager to witness the Great One before he decided to retire or before another horn wound ended his career for him.
Tomás, 40, was not like other matadors. He was the embodiment of mystery — in and out of the ring. For years, he has refused to give interviews or to appear on television. You had to see him live to see him at all, and he performed so infrequently, usually once or twice a year, that tickets sold out within hours.
His mastery, though, was not only in his marketing. Tomás’s performances were savage ballets, a blend of elegance, fearlessness, timing and sacrifice. He seemed determined to pass bulls ever closer to his body, pushing the boundaries of how close a man could get.
By overcoming death, Tomás represented a kind of immortality, and now here he was, swinging the red muleta behind his back, the red furls of the wool cloth slicing through air heavy with cigar smoke as the 1,150-pound Bellotero, his first bull of the afternoon, gazed at his tiny waist. Finally, Tomás made a pass, and the crowd exploded.
Ole!
Then another pass.
Ole!
Then he got too close. A horn caught the inside of Tomás’s leg. He crashed to the sand, and the crowd shrieked as the bull’s horns tore away at the back of his thighs.
As a teenager in a suburb of Madrid, where the bullfighting schools are perhaps the most competitive in Spain, Tomás struggled to attract attention from the bullring promoters, managers and financiers who bankroll young matadors. He moved to Mexico to attract attention and perfected a style of bullfighting so dangerous he has nearly been killed.
In 2010, Tomás had just finished an effortless natural, or left-handed pass, in Aguascalientes, Mexico, when a bull plunged his horn into Tomás’s thigh, punctured the femoral artery and drained much of the blood from his body. For a while, it was unclear whether Tomás would survive.
“When your mind has gotten used to the fact that you will die and then you don’t, life turns a different color,” said Antonio Barrera, a matador who sustained countless gorings and nearly bled to death as a teenager with an injury similar to the one Tomás sustained in Aguascalientes. In 2012, Barrera spoke in “Gored,” a coming documentary that captures his final bullfight, about how overcoming death had allowed him to perform with abandon.
“For me, the bull is like a god,” Barrera said. “The wild bull has a lot of values the human being admires: to be fierce, to be impetuous, to have a breed, to have self-esteem, to fight for what you want, to fight for your life. That’s why you consider him a god, and why in many cultures he has been considered a god.”
Bullfighting is more religion than sport, more sacrifice than killing, a ritual left from the ancient world. Among the pharaohs of Egypt, the wandering tribes of the Levant, the Greek and Cretan amphitheaters, the bulls of the ancient world were deities.
“In the eyes of these people, the bull had become a symbol of the all-powerful and the all-fertile,” Jack Randolph Conrad wrote in “The Horn and the Sword,’’ an anthropological history of the human-bull relationship. Bulls represented the spirit of immortality, Conrad wrote, and were worshiped in elaborate ways.
In ancient Egypt, women appeared naked in front of bulls to absorb their fertile powers, and Roman soldiers bathed in bull blood and feasted on bull testicles to obtain the immortal spirit. The bulls were sacrificed in elaborate rituals by taurine priests to bestow their godly powers to the public, and the modern bullfight can be viewed as a distant, commercialized relative of these ancient sacrifices.
“It all comes back to sacrifice,” Josephs said. “You know, the matadors are really the only high priests from the pagan days we have left.”
In the Plaza México on Sunday, as Tomás lay crumpled in the sand, helpers lured Bellotero away. But not for long. Only a few passes later, Tomás was on the ground again, as the bull hooked his horns underneath the jacket of Tomás’s suit and trampled him. Somehow, the horns missed him, and Tomás went on to register a remarkable performance. His derechazos, or right-hand passes, were long and smooth, and his left-hand passes were timed perfectly.
He then placed the sword cleanly, and earned an ear, or trophy, though the audience was clamoring for two ears, an honor akin to a triumph that would allow him to be carried from the plaza on shoulders.
"He gives me the entire range of emotions,” Pedro Pérez, a Tomasista, said as Tomás made his way back to the passageway around the ring, his face covered with dirt. “I don’t know if I want to be happy or sad, cheer or cry. You never know what will happen next.”
"He gives me the entire range of emotions,” Pedro Pérez, a Tomasista, said as Tomás made his way back to the passageway around the ring, his face covered with dirt. “I don’t know if I want to be happy or sad, cheer or cry. You never know what will happen next.”
Pérez had arrived early from Tlaxcala, another state, and had rarely seen the streets outside the bullring so packed. Vendors had set out their grills and paella pans, and restaurant tables were filled with aficionados wearing sombreros and ascots and feasting on specialties like shrimp tacos doused in cheese sauce and washing it all down with cold micheladas, beer cocktails laced with pepper flakes and spiked with clam juice.
Oddly, it was hard to find any animal rights activists, who have developed a presence in Mexico City, often shouting through their bullhorns that something as cruel as the bullfight should be abolished in places that still hold them: the south of France; Spain, outside of Barcelona; Portugal; Peru; Mexico; Colombia; Ecuador; Guatemala; and Venezuela.
The bullfight here, featuring Tomás and Joselito Adame, a Mexican matador, was the biggest of the winter season, if not the coming year. Before the gates opened, front-row seats were being resold on websites for nearly $8,000 each.
Bullfighting may have taken a financial beating in recent years — from protests, prohibitions, the struggles of the Spanish economy — but Tomás has been considered a kind of savior amid the dwindling spectacle, a lone figure who, through his bravery and art, can still inspire a new generation of enthusiasts.
But inside the stadium, as the sun fell and the house lights came on, Tomás struggled. His second bull lacked strength, and despite the engineering of some breathtaking passes, he missed and struggled with his sword, killing poorly.
And with his last bull, he never had a chance. Once the chute swung open and the animal emerged, the frustrated crowd whistled in protest. The bull, despite its speed, was too small, they felt. A substitute bull was called in. This bull was also small, and lacked strength, and Tomás had no choice but to kill it quickly and register his most disappointing performance in years.
Adame then seized the moment. With the final bull of the day, he executed all the tricks to win the laggard crowd over. He dropped to his knees, spun the capes like pinwheels and got so close he touched the horns with his fingers.
He even attempted a dangerous style of killing called recibiendo, placing the sword as the bull charged into him rather than jumping over the horns. The move capped a performance that lacked Tomás’s poetry but earned Adame a triumphant two ears for excitement. Adame, not Tomás, was carried through the streets as fans reached out to touch his hand, his suit of lights — any part of him. It was as if they were touching a saint.
Back at his hotel, Tomás emerged to have a late dinner with his handlers. He wore dark jeans, black shoes, a flamenco-style scarf. He was asked how he felt.
“What can one do?” he said in Spanish, shaking his head. He looked sullen and deflated and very much like a typical matador after a rough afternoon — no longer the mysterious god of the bulls so many people had come to see.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/sports/jose-tomas-matador-bullfighter.html?_r=0
April 1, 2016
Bloodless Sport
Every year, from January through March, a bullring on a remote South Texas ranch draws busloads of snowbirds to its no-kill fights.
(by Katy Vine texasmonthly.com 6-14)
Red Renk, a water-purifier salesman living near the border, hatched a bullish idea. He’d been obsessed with matadors ever since the age of fifteen, when he watched the Mexican bullfighter Pepe Luis Vázquez perform at a ring in Chihuahua City called La Esperanza. When Renk was in his twenties, he’d even decided to try the sport himself. He fought bulls for five years as an aspiring matador, until a thousand-pound beast’s horn punctured his upper leg and tore through his stomach, in 1967. Later, he watched his son David become the seventh American bullfighter to earn the title of matador, performing all over Mexico as “El Texano.”
“I call it the ballet of life, not the ballet of death,” the 77-year-old said on a sunny morning this past spring, in a voice hoarse from Marlboros. Behind a fence, a herd of 29 cows—and one four-year-old San Mateo breeding bull, who often participates in the events at Renk’s Santa Maria Bullring—grazed in a field dotted with magenta winecups. Though traditional bullfighting is practiced on the Mexican side of the border, it is illegal in the United States, and in Renk’s ring, the bullfighter’s kill is only symbolic: instead of driving a sword through the animal’s withers and into its heart, the matador reaches over the bull’s horns and plucks a flower affixed to the hide with Velcro and a little glue, an action that requires a close dance with the animal and thus drives crowds to their feet.
Everyone told him he was crazy to open a bullfighting ring so far from a metropolitan area, but those detractors hadn’t anticipated who would show up: the winter Texans. His first event, in 2001, packed the stands, exceeding his expectations, and while violence along the border has scared off some customers in the past couple of years, busloads of tourists still travel from nearby RV parks to his ring, which has a seating capacity of around one thousand (“depending on how wide their butts are”).
The tourists who make the journey and the local ranchers who keep box seats for the main season, from January through March, have witnessed shows by some of Mexico’s best matadors. Last February, for example, Renk brought in Cesar Castañeda, a world-class matador from Tijuana, and Isaac Leal Montalvo, a young matador from Monterrey. No matter their prominence, though, it’s the female bullfighters who make the strongest impression, Renk says. “You talk about a matador, they don’t know who the hell he is, but the ‘Mayan Princess’ . . .” he trails off, nodding knowingly.
Renk has watched his fights captivate fans, even though many don’t follow the sport. “The Spaniards—all Latin people—refer to the passion for bullfighting as el gusano, the worm, and it eats at you the rest of your life. El gusano never leaves you.”
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http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/bloodless-sport/
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