SN Magazine: Enrolling in matador school

By Brett Popplewell in San Diego & Mexico City
SPORTSNET MAGAZINE

There’s blood on my hands. Most of it’s mine, but some of it belongs to a cow who, just minutes ago, tried to gore me with her horns. I’m hurt, not really hurt, but hurt enough that there is a bruise above my right knee remarkably close in shape and size to a cow’s forehead.

I’ve been fighting animals for three days and I’m tired and sore. I’ve already been run over by a 300-lb. cow who wanted to put her horn through my face. Yet here I am, with a 400-lb. bull named Saucero (SA-oo-SAY-roe) staring me down with misleadingly gentle eyes. To the Mexicans watching me shuffle toward the bull, I am el gringo torero-a 29-year-old who exudes the dignity and grace in a bullring one would expect from a man who’s most comfortable in a tweed jacket. A week ago, I’d never picked up a muleta, the red cloth matadors use to lure the bull’s horns away from their bodies. Now it’s my only defence against Saucero’s horns. “Posture!” my matador instructor yells from behind the burladero, a wooden wall at the side of the bullring. I straighten my back and push my pelvis toward Saucero, just like I’ve been trained, so that someone somewhere might mistake me for brave.

“Good,” my instructor says. “Now cross his line of charge!”

As I inch toward Saucero’s horns, he lowers his head, plants his front right hoof in the sand and kicks. He’s warning me and I pause.

I’ve been ordered not to harm any animals in the reporting of this story. But Saucero, whose forebears have gored matadors infinitely more talented than me, is under no such restriction. As we stare at each other, I’m reminded of the last thing my father told me before I left for matador school. “Be careful of those horns,” he said. “They can really damage your sex life.”

Then something happens. Something I cannot control. My arm flinches under the muleta’s weight. A ripple descends the length of the cape and Saucero charges.

Like most bad ideas, this one spawned from a misunderstanding. Or, rather, a lack of understanding. It was late September when I stumbled upon an article in The Guardian. It began: “It was the end of more than 600 years of history. On Sunday evening, amid the cheers of fans and the bloody death throes of fighting bulls, Barcelona hosted its last-ever bullfight.” Knowing nothing about the sport, I began Googling “matador costumes” and “dead matadors” and “how to be a matador.” Before I knew it, I was lost in the words of Ernest Hemingway, who glorified the bullfight as the only event outside of war where spectators could watch death enter a public square, tap one combatant on the shoulder and bring honour to the other. The bullfight’s centuries-old power to seduce had me curious.

Soon, I was encouraging my editors to enroll me in matador training. “There are schools in Spain and Mexico where people slap on something called a suit of lights and learn the ‘science’ of the bullfight,” I told them. “We can do the training. Then we can go to a professional fight to get the full Hemingway experience of a bull’s death in the afternoon.” The controversy is as old as the spectacle, I said. It all began 1,000 years ago with Spanish noblemen jousting with bulls. In 1567, Pope Pius V tried to stop the slaughter, not so much because of cruelty to animals, but because the practice endangered the souls of the bullfighters and the spectators. But its popularity grew, especially after 1726 when the first nobleman challenged a bull on foot in a flashy suit with a muleta and sword in hand. An estimated 250,000 bulls die every year in fights, and though the anti-bullfight movement has grown, there are more fights being held now than at any point in history.

Then one of them spoke up. “You had us at ‘suit of lights.'”

I learn quickly that professional matadors are not keen on apprenticing journalists with a Wikipedia-grade understanding of the craft. So I turn to the California Academy of Tauromaquia run by Coleman Cooney, a surfer-turned-screenwriter-cum-winemaker who spent years trekking through Spain developing a love affair with the bullfight. Cooney, a 55-year-old bald hippy and amateur fighter, has run his matador school from his house on the outskirts of San Diego since 1996.

I call him up and tell him I want to learn the ways of the matador. He explains: Becoming a matador takes years of practice until a professional recognizes your talent and elevates you to his rank. Still, Cooney can teach me toreo de salon (a sort of tai chi with matador capes, practised without any animals) and then put me in the ring with some aggressive cows.

Curious, I ask, “Have you ever lost a student?”

He says a high-powered lawyer once dislocated a knee. Then there was the Italian woman whose leg was gored. Later, he informs me of his own injuries. A cow once got her horn in his thigh and left him with internal bleeding. Then there’s the swelling in his genitals, from getting “banged in the balls by a cow back in 2009.”

I tell him I think I need a bull and definitely require a suit of lights, the ornately embroidered-often pink, and invariably absurd looking-uniform of a true matador. “Those need to be earned,” he says.

THE BIG READ BIG PHOTO GALLERY: The many faces of the matador can be seen in a high resolution gallery of the sports most colourful men. | View It

I ask if there’s anything I should read. “Don’t read Hemingway,” Cooney says. “Hemingway romanticized things too much.” I tell him it’s too late.

When we speak again a few weeks later, I express some concerns. I’ve been letting my body atrophy for the last decade and ask how I might get into bullfighting shape before I head to San Diego. “Run uphill backwards,” Cooney says. “It’ll help you know where your feet are when you’ve got a cow running straight at you.”

I’m shuffling backward through the sand, retreating from the horns barrelling down upon me. There’s dirt and sweat all over my purple Lacoste polo shirt and plaid shorts and I’m starting to wonder: “Why am I not wearing running shoes? Who brings loafers to a bullfight?”

He’s charging faster now and grunting. I swing the capote-a purple and yellow cape, larger than the muleta-away from my body. The horns follow. I reposition for his next charge but he turns faster than I do. I’ve left myself open for a goring. He shakes his head and verbally chastises me for not taking this seriously.

I’m tired of holding this cape and Cooney’s tired of holding horns in front of his face, mimicking a bull. I’m pretty sure we look like idiots. We’re standing on a baseball diamond on the outskirts of San Diego. Two cops came by a few minutes ago and watched, no doubt wondering if there’s any law that forbids two grown men from carrying out a ritualized dance with a purple cape and a pair of horns.

We jump in a truck with Cooney’s friend Jerry Roach, a 68-year-old rocker with a white beard and white hair who became enamoured with bullfighting 50 years ago when he first ran with the bulls in Pamplona. We drive into Mexico to a bullring on the outskirts of Tijuana where Roach and Cooney pay $200 each to a local rancher for the right to fight his cows. “It’s an expensive hobby,” says Roach. “Like golf.”

Traditional Spanish bullfighting is illegal in the United States and Canada, so aficionados cross into Mexico and pay ranchers for a cow or bull from their fighting stock. No cow or bull can be fought more than once. Even if you don’t harm the animal, it will, after a few minutes in the ring, learn the treachery of man and no longer go for the cloth. “That’s when they turn evil,” Cooney explains. “That’s when they ram you.”

Within the ring’s stone walls, I remind Cooney that I don’t know what I’m doing. He says not to worry and that we will begin by cowering behind one of three burladeros on the edge of the bullring that serve as our protection.

There are three acts to a Spanish bullfight, he explains. In Act 1, the bull enters and charges the burladeros. The matador analyzes the charge, then emerges with the capote and entices the bull by yelling “Hey toro!” (Hey bull!) Or, in our case “Hey vaca!” (Hey cow!) The matador, keeping pristine posture, places his body in the bull’s line of charge and elegantly waves the capote through the air, tricking the bull into burying his horns in the cape instead of the man. After several passes, the matador leads the bull toward a man on a horse-the picador. The bull charges the horse, allowing the picador to stab between its shoulders with a lance.

Then the second act begins, and the matador’s assistants come out with banderillas, flower-studded sticks with steel-pointed ends. Now the dance gets bloody as the assistants, standing on their tippy-toes, reach over the horns of a charging bull to bury the sticks in its back. Then the matador re-emerges with sword and muleta to begin the final act. He advances to within inches of the bull’s horns and leads him back and forth into the muleta. This act lasts no more than 15 minutes and culminates with “the moment of truth” when the matador lowers his guard then leaps over the horns and drops the blade into the bull, piercing the heart.

If done correctly, Cooney says the bull’s death is considered beautiful and the audience will raise white handkerchiefs into the sky, awarding the matador one of the bull’s ears. But should the matador miss his mark and have to stab the bull again, the crowd will whistle and throw their seat cushions in disgust.

oday, we have no real swords, no picadors and no banderillas. Our cows are merely 300 lb., and though they have horns, they do not have the strength to inflict real damage. Yet I’m still intimidated when they burst into the ring and charge at Cooney and Roach. Eventually, Cooney beckons me to the middle of the ring with nothing but a red cloth in my hand and tells me to scream at the cow as it simultaneously drools and defecates in the sand. I do as I am told and yell: “Hey cow!” and she charges through the muleta, then turns and runs straight for me. Then I too run, backwards, just as I practised, stepping in her feces as she rams my legs until I scurry behind the burladero, huffing and puffing and scraping the bottoms of my loafers against the stone walls.

After two hours of dancing with cows under a Mexican sun, we head back toward the border. In the car, Cooney says my performance would have seen me booed out of Madrid. I have bad form and my natural inclination is to protect my testicles.

Roach asks why I’m down here. I tell him I want an inside look at the world’s most controversial sport. He says my premise is flawed. “This isn’t a sport. It’s an art.”

“Surely matadors are athletes,” I say. On this we can agree. But Cooney and Roach explain that the defence of bullfighting rests not on its merit as a sport but on its beauty.

We talk about some of the 52 major matadors who have died in the ring since 1700. This does not include all the lesser knowns who have been killed trying to crack the ranks of the elite. Cooney says the most famous among the dead is Joselito, one of two early-20th century toreros who revolutionized the craft by planting his feet and forcing the bull to make seemingly choreographed passes, drawing the horns ever closer to his body until, finally, he was gored in the stomach. Then there’s Manolete, one of the greatest bullfighters of all time. On Aug. 28, 1947, he was gored while executing “the moment of truth.” The next day’s headline read: “He died killing and he killed dying.”

Roach asks if I’ve heard of one of his favourite matadors, Juan José Padilla. A 38-year-old father of two who, last October, had a bull’s horn rip into his lower jaw and come out his left eye socket. “He’s mounting a comeback,” says Roach.

“How do you come back from something like that?” I ask.

“With an eye patch and a little less grace,” says Cooney.

Back at my hotel, I watch Padilla get gored on YouTube. It’s a horrifying clip that culminates with him shouting into the crowd: “I can’t see, I can’t see!” while his eyeball dangles and blood pours from his face. Then I read the comments on the video and remember for the first time in a while that bullfighting is despised by many. “The matador got what he deserved,” reads one.

Four days after our trip to Tijuana, we fly to central Mexico to visit one of the country’s many bull ranches. On our first day there, I fight three cows and embarrass myself when I forget my training, drop my muleta and sprint for the burladero. My notes recount my questionable athleticism and unquestionable cowardice: “Cow #1: I fall, tripping over my own feet. I am useless. Cow #2: She scares me, I see the troubles she is giving Cooney, a man who has killed bulls. I trip over the muleta as I backpedal away from her. I have the sense to raise the muleta away from my face to keep her from putting her horn in my throat. I get back up. I hear Cooney yell: ‘Don’t run!’ but a pistol goes off in my head and I run. Cow #3: Cooney struggles with her. He tells me, ‘I hate this cow, she’s evil.’ Then it’s my turn. She charges before I am ready. I do a backhand pass with the muleta, then she rams me in the hand, jamming my fingers, busting my nail and drawing blood.”

The next morning, I awake in a room overlooking the ring in which I must fight two cows and, providing I’m still reasonably intact, a bull. For some reason, I have chosen to sleep in a bed with a bull’s head mounted on the wall above me. It once belonged to a San Mateo, the bravest of all Mexican fighting stock, a descendant of the Saltillo bloodline, once the most revered in all Spain. At night I lie awake, staring at the head.

I have not earned a suit of lights, but I have noted the matador’s costume: tight pants, black slippers and a flashy jacket over a collared shirt. I reach for my fighting clothes: black jeans, covered in manure, dirt and my own blood; a button-down blue shirt; and loafers. I slip a note with my health insurance information in my front pocket and head outside. Hernando Limón, the rancher here, is waiting for me. We walk along a wall overlooking a bullpen. There, I see the two cows I must fight. At 350 lb., they are bigger than the ones that have already bested me. Then I see Saucero, my bull. Hernando says Saucero has brave blood in his veins. He may even have some remnants of Comanche, a toro that 50 years ago departed this ranch for The Plaza México, the biggest bullring in the world, where he wowed the audience with such poise and bravery that they did not allow the matador to slay him and returned him here to live out his life having sex with cows so that his seed might live on. Hernando has hand-picked Saucero for me. He says the bull was destined to meet someone like me from a young age when, in what could well have been an act of self-preservation, he bashed one of his horns on a wall and bent it down, rendering him worthless to a real matador.

Inside the ring, my chances at redemption are halted by the first cow who smashes my hand and steals my muleta. My form is so poor I cannot keep still, enticing her to stab at me with her horns on every pass. I am lucky she does not pierce my jeans, even luckier that I stay on my feet, depriving her the chance to gore me above the belt.

For the matador, one false step can be fatal. (Marcelo Del Pozo/Reuters)

I have zero interest in fighting another animal by the time the first cow is done with me. But the gate opens and the second cow comes in. She is bleeding. Someone, perhaps sensing I am at risk, has cut off her horns before throwing her into the ring. I feel sorry for her as she stares me down, blood dripping over her face and realize I am now confronting exactly what turns people off of this sport, or art, or whatever you want to call it. And yet, she is less prone to ramming me. She brings the best out of me as I stand my ground. As we open the gate and let her out, I finally begin to feel good about my form. Then I see her blood on my jeans.

Saucero is next. He seems less aggressive than his female counterparts and, though his lopsided horns are the most dangerous I have seen, I feel less intimidated by him because I have humanized him. I take the muleta and sword, inch up to his line of charge and pause. We stare at each other and it occurs to me that so long as I don’t move, he won’t either. Then my arm begins to shake and the movement entices him. I remember my training and keep my feet planted as he buries his horns into the cloth, earning me my first “Olé!” Saucero and I repeat these actions a few more times with me standing still, flaring only the muleta and shouting “Toro!” until he begins to see beyond the cape. Then the gate opens and Saucero is released.

Later, while calming my nerves with tequila, I ask what will happen to Saucero. Hernando says he will soon be slaughtered for his meat. Saucero is no longer of any use as fighting stock and has not been deemed worthy to breed. Later, I head back to the bullpen and look at Saucero as he sups on alfalfa beside an open field where he has roamed freely his entire life. There never was any means of preserving his life. He, like every other domesticated bull, was destined to be slaughtered the day he was born. I say my goodbyes and depart for Mexico City. I am done fighting animals, but there is still something I must do. I have learned the ways of the matador, but I have yet to witness death in the afternoon.

t’s Super Bowl Sunday. I have come to the world’s largest bullring for La Corrida de Aniversario, one of the biggest bullfights of the year. There are no protesters outside, just vendors hawking bullhorns, matador hats and miniature capotes. I take my seat inside the decrepit 41,000-seat arena. It smells of manure and cigar smoke. Then the ceremonial bugle blows and El Juli, a 29-year-old Spaniard who became a matador at 15, enters, stepping on a bed of carnations as he salutes a crowd that has risen to honour the man. Men throw sombreros at his feet as women shout, “Maestro!” Then the bugle blows once more and a 1,215-lb. San Mateo bull storms into the ring. I watch as El Juli manipulates the bull with every flip of his cape. He draws the bull toward the picador. The banderillas are next, and soon the blood is pumping from the bull’s back as he stands face-to-face with the sparkling matador and engages in the ritualized dance. El Juli crosses the line of charge, and leads the bull into the muleta. His form is impeccable, and the bull so fixated on the cloth that he cannot see the man before him. Then El Juli shuffles closer to the horns than I thought possible. He leans over the bull as he flares the muleta by his waist. But the bull does not react as El Juli has planned. He raises his head instead and finds the matador’s chest. El Juli is in trouble and the bull quickly pushes his horn into the matador’s leg, ripping his suit and lifting him into the air. Screams cry out from the crowd, then El Juli drops to the sand.

It all happens so fast, I’m unsure if El Juli is dead until he rises to his feet, tears off his jacket, reclaims his muleta and steps back in front of the beast that just tried to kill him. Again they dance, both of them bloodied. Then the matador raises the sword and the crowd falls silent. He sprints for the bull, dragging the muleta before his feet. Once more the bull falls for the cloth as El Juli leaps into the air.

The moment of truth has passed, and man and bull are both still standing. They stare at each other one last time. The crowd quiets. Then the bull’s mouth opens, blood pours off his tongue and he falls.

THE BIG READ BIG PHOTO GALLERY: The many faces of the matador can be seen in a high resolution gallery of the sports most colourful men. | View It