Madrid bullfighter narrowly avoids death in ring after bull gores his neck

A bullfighter narrowly avoided death after he was gored twice in the neck by a bull during Madrid’s annual taurine festival – and then asked the doctor if he could return to “kill the bull”.

Saúl Jiménez Fortes, a matador from Malaga, had been fighting his second bull of the day when he was hoisted up on the animal’s horns and then injured.

He managed to get to his feet when his fellow bullfighters arrived to distract the bull, and was carried off with his right hand pressed to his heavily bleeding neck.

A combination of "luck" and immediate surgery by the in-house doctor saved his life after the incident at the capital’s Las Ventas bullring.

According to the medical report, Mr Jiménez Fortes suffered two gore wounds. One was more than five inches deep, damaging the carotid artery, jugular vein, thyroid gland and the oesophagus, reaching the vertebrae; the other four inch wound was close to the parotid gland.

Dr Máximo García Padrós, official surgeon at Las Ventas, said that the matador had asked him to sew up the wound so that he could continue the bullfight.

^{Bullfighter Jimenez Fortes is gored in the neck}

“He said ‘give me a couple of stitches and I will go out and kill the bull’,” the surgeon told the newspaper El Mundo, adding that when Mr Jiménez Fortes took off his suit and saw how seriously he was hurt, “he came down to earth”.

The bull was later killed by another matador.

The 25-year-old matador spent the night in intensive care and is recovering well, the surgeon said. Mr García Padrós said the bullfighter, whom he described as “lucky”, will need a neck scan to ascertain the extent of the internal damage.

At last year’s San Isidro festival in Madrid, bullfighter David Mora was gored repeatedly after opting to receive a bull on his knees. Mr Mora is still recovering from his injuries.

The last bullfighter to be killed in action at Las Ventas was the banderillero El Campeño in 1988.