Spanish bullfighter gored in Mexico out of danger, manager says

Gored Spanish bullfighter recovering in Mexico

MADRID — A top Spanish matador who suffered a horrendous, near-fatal goring in Mexico is recovering, his manager said Monday.

Doctors in Mexico are preparing to take matador Jose Tomas off sedation gradually and he is “totally out of danger,” manager Salvador Boix said.

Tomas was gored in the groin Saturday during a bullfight in the Mexican city of Aguascalientes. The bull’s horn severed a vein and an artery and Tomas received a blood transfusion of up to 17 pints (eight liters), Boix said.

Mexican television footage showed Tomas working the animal with his cape when the bull makes a quick turn toward the matador and catches him in the groin, lifting him into the air for a few seconds and shaking its head with Tomas dangling from its sharp left horn.

The bullfighter’s father, Jose Tomas Roman, said from Mexico that normally he watches his son fight from high up in the stands but this time happened to be at ringside. When Tomas was gored, he said, “the whole ring knew that it was a horrible injury.”

“I will never do that again,” he told the radio station, referring to his ringside spot. “I feared for the worst.”

Tomas is known for a daring bullfighting style in which he gets particularly close to the bull. His full name is Jose Tomas Roman Martin, but he goes by just Jose Tomas.

In Spain, he has been something of an enigma: in 2002, at the peak of his career, Tomas suddenly retired without saying why.

Tomas returned to the ring in 2007 to tremendous fanfare — he told one interviewer “living without bullfighting is not living” — and since then suffered a number of serious gorings in Spain.