Professional bullfighter fights pain for profession
GINES from page 9
booking events as far in advance as
1999.
Watching him from the stands, his
girlfriend said Gines is a bom athlete
who loves his work despite the pun
ishment.
“I can’t tell you all the times he’s
been hurt,” she said. “He got kicked
in the face last October and the next
night a bull homed him while he was
trying to get a cowboy out from under
a bull.”
In the arena, Gines is all feet and
face paint. Bedecked in soccer cleats,
an oversized pair of patched and tat
tered denim shorts (he keeps them on
with a pair of suspenders) and a
polka-dot polyester shirt, Gines
looked like a living insult to “Hee
Haw.”
“We look a little silly,” he said
when he was painting his nose, “but
our job is pretty serious.”
Gines isn’t exaggerating.
Bullfighters, whose main function is
to distract bulls so thrown cowboys
can safely get away, risk life and limb
every time they jump into die arena.
But, believe it or not, this isn’t the
dangerous part of their job.
Bullfighters are famous for an event
called “freestyling,” which involves
taking on die bull one-on-one.
The bullfighter tries to catch the
bull’s attention to provoke him to give
chase. The fighters try to outmaneu
ver the bull while engaging in stunts
like jumping over its head and slap
ping it on the nose.
It was a mistimed jump over a
bull’s head two weeks ago that result
ed in Gines’ fractured ribs.
Friday night the thin fighter
seemed limber but nervous in the
arena as he threw his straw hat at
bucking bulls and then nimbly led
them away from thrown cowboys.
But being nervous is a life
instinct, according to Gines.
“If I ever quit being nervous I’m
done fighting bulls,” he said. “That’s
when Fll be hurt bad, bad, bad.”
But being nervous didn’t seem to
help Friday. It was during the
freestyle event that Gines hit the
fence with bone-crushing force. As
his face twisted in pain, Marcie shot
out of her seat in the audience and
cowboys lifted him out of the arena.
Gines had just separated his frac
tured ribs.
When he will return to the ring is
uncertain, but his dedication to the
sport of bullfighting and the life of
the rodeo isn’t
“I think he should be a bullfight
er,” Marcie said as she watched him
leap away from a snorting bull. “But
that's all he’s done and it’s made him
who he is.
“I wouldn’t ever want to change
that.”
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