Bull horns in on Bill’s run

ONE of the two Americans gored at the weekend during this year’s second running of the bulls in the Spanish city of Pamplona is swearing that he will run again before the festival is over.

Bill Hillmann, a 35-year-old Chicago writer who also was gored three years ago at the San Fermin festival, was in stable condition.

The bull that led the pack thrust its horn into Hillmann’s buttocks before flipping him onto the street.

“In a split second he was on me – I tried to jump, but he hit me in the butt,” Mr Hillmann said.

Despite his run-in, Mr Hillmann says his love for the chaotic and treacherous spectacle of Pamplona’s rampaging bulls hasn’t wavered.

“I am probably going to run tomorrow or the next day, sure at this festival,” he said.

Mr Hillmann’s wound was less severe than those of 22-year-old American Jack Capra, of California, who was in serious condition after his left arm was impaled and he was dragged for several metres.

Three other Americans, two Frenchmen and three Spaniards needed hospital treatment for injures received during Saturday’s frantic and crowded run of thrillseekers.

Mr Hillmann, like scores of foreigners, discovered the San Fermin festival thanks to Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises. “It changed my life. “It made me want to be a writer, to run the bulls, to come to Spain,” Mr Hillman said. “When I got here everything in the book was still here, but a thousand times more.”