All hail the lord of the ring
The Sun-Herald: April 1, 2007

Jo Hegerty discovers a bull fight where the animals rule.

I MET a girl once who had been trampled by a bull at Pamplona’s San Fermin festival. As she proudly showed me the nasty grazes from the beast’s hooves, I thought: it’s just not for me. The idea of running in front of a one-tonne, panicky bull just doesn’t appeal.

So it was with much relief that I found myself high above the makeshift arena in Bayonne, watching the daily highlight of the annual fete. In the sand-covered car park below, the crowd of young men steadily grew. This was the Basque region of France and the whole town was decked out in Pamplona-esque white outfits, with red sashes around their necks and waists. The oversized red beret and half-drunk bottle of red was a nice French touch as a fearless bloke prepared to take on some angry beast. He and the brave youths of the region linked arms to form a human corridor into which the beast was released.

As this is the gentler, French side of the region, the opponent was a small cow - albeit one with long, sharp horns. A crowd formed around her and she waited for a moment, assessing the situation, then put her head down and charged, scattering the men like seagulls. The crowd cheered wildly when one of the participants managed to cling onto the cow’s back for a few seconds, then sucked in with collective sympathy as another was trapped beneath her digging horns. For the most part, the animal charged and the men ran; not so much the running of the bulls as the chasing of the cow.

This went on for a couple of hours, the cow being replaced by a larger, angrier one every 15 minutes or so while an invisible MC gave a shrieking commentary. The backdrop was stunning and the atmosphere electric, but there were 300 people down there and only one small cow, and I found myself rooting for the latter.

In a tiny village about 700 kilometres east of Bayonne, I stumbled across a very different bovine spectacle. It was Salin-de-Giraud’s annual fete and the whole village had turned out to watch the abrivado (running of the young bulls). Astride white horses, a band of men attempted to herd four bulls from one end of the street to the other while "thieves", the braver men of the village, tried to capture them. The men on horseback were the guardians, cowboys of the Camargue, who rear the region’s famous black bulls, keeping the wild image of the area alive. It was an impressive display; the men and the horses leaning together as one to protect their charges, and the crowd was appreciative. Occasionally a bull broke free and the brass band played a cheerful cacophony as it was chased up and down the street.

The Camargue national park starts at the Roman city of Arles then flows down with the Grand and Petit Rhone rivers to meet the Mediterranean. It’s a land of rice paddies and flooded vineyards, pink salt-flats and beaches that melt into the horizon. The region is famous for its diverse bird and animal life: pink flamingos that squabble in brackish estuaries; white horses that are born black; and fighting bulls.

Slightly smaller than their Spanish equivalents at a mere 400 kilograms, these revered beasts have been living in the Camargue region since Roman times. They were deemed unsuitable for farm work long ago and are mostly bred for games and sport - although they do make a fantastic saucisson. It’s said that Camargue taureaux are too clever for Spanish-style bullfighting and a unique contest between man and bull has evolved here: la course camarguaise.

Bullfighting doesn’t really interest me but there’s a key difference between this contest and the Spanish-style corrida: in la course camarguaise it is the bull who is king, not a man in cape who delivers the fatal blow to a dying animal. Bulls that do particularly well in this Provencal bullfight will live a long and comfortable life and when they die, they will be buried standing up in their tomb; some bulls are so famous that statues are made in their honour.

I made my way to the 2000-year-old Roman arena nestled among the residential streets of Arles. The ring was about the length of a basketball court and 12 young men dressed in white lined up in pairs, bouncing on toes and loosening shoulders. These were the raseteurs who compete with one another to win prize money. To do this, they have to remove tassels tied to a cocarde, a rope tied between the bull’s horns, or ficelles, ribbons tied to the base of the horns.

There was a burst of tinny music and the first bull was announced. It’s a small one to start, but he wasn’t happy; within seconds he charged across the ring at one of the raseteurs who leapt over the chest-high red fence and clung to the stands above.

It was a beautiful game to watch. There were two ex-raseteurs in the ring whose job was to stir up the bull, to guide the direction it charged. The younger competitors then ran at the bull on a curve, timing their swipe at the prize with their crochet, a hook, for the moment they passed before the bull’s eyes - this point is known as the raset. The highlight, however, was seeing the men launch themselves out of harm’s way with such power and grace.

This may be a bloodless sport for the animals, but la course camarguaise is just as dangerous for the human participants as the Spanish corrida. At one point, the French government considered banning it due to the high number of casualties, but backed down in the face of a local uproar. And it’s not just the raseteurs that have been injured; bulls have been known to smash through barriers and chase the crowds.

In Arles, though, we were pretty safe as the stands are a couple of metres above the ground. This didn’t stop me jumping out of my seat when the second bull - demonstrating his breed’s famed mobility and intelligence - went after a raseteur by clearing the red fence and chasing him around the corridor. I couldn’t believe my eyes - the fence was higher than the bull was tall. He stopped just beneath my seat and I could smell his sweat and fury.

The raseteurs took on six bulls for 15 minutes each. They were doing pretty well and had snatched most of the tassels and ribbons, but the last bull was a powerful beast with red eyes, enormous shoulders and a reputation that caused the crowd to twitter nervously and call out encouragement to the men below.

A trumpet blew and the bull pawed the ground and snorted, raising a cloud of dust in the air, like a cartoon cliche. The raseteurs ran, then jumped, trying every trick they had but this bull knew the score; he was a veteran. He charged with the speed of a much smaller animal and knew when to flick his head. When the trumpet blew again to signify the end of the round, he still had all his ribbons intact. The bull stood for a moment in the corner of the ring facing his competitors, gave a derisory snort, then trotted back to the pen to the applause of the audience and the raseteurs themselves. This time, the bull had won.

TRIP NOTES

* Vietnam Airlines flies to Paris from Sydney from $1253, see http://www.flightcentre.com.au for more information. Air France flies four to five times daily from Paris’s Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports to Biarritz-Anglet-Bayonne airport for Bayonne. See http://www.airfrance.com.au.

* Les Fetes de Bayonne takes place this year on August 1-5. For information and a countdown, see http://www.fetes.bayonne.fr. The office of tourism in Bayonne has a website in English, http://www.bayonne-tourisme.com.