Taurine torpor: bullfighting’s non-fatal French cousin fights for survival

Picasso and Hemingway believed folk sports like the course camarguaise were the height of European culture. Facing financial struggles, rowdy spectators and animal rights concerns, can its practitioners keep the custom alive?

In an arena in the southern French village of Raphèle-lès-Arles on a torpidly hot July afternoon, a young black bull paws the floor next to the exit door. Eight raseteurs – the white-clad runners whose job is to seize tokens fixed to the animal – yell to get its attention. This is an event dedicated to working out if these uncastrated juveniles have the nasty streak needed to become stars of course camarguaise, the non-fatal sport that is the cousin of bullfighting.

Much of the Camargue, the delta region at the terminus of the Rhône river, is crazy about anything with two horns, a nose-ring and a problem with the colour red. Lighter and more fleet-footed than its Iberian counterpart, with upright, lyre-shaped horns, the Camargue bull is lionised in the sports sections of local newspapers and commemorated with statues at the entrance to many villages.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Rsh7S80