BY DC CUEVA
■ @DC408Dxtr @ TW / IG / YT
Our ExtraTime series has ventured along with Team MTV to some of the most interesting places anywhere: South Padre Island for Spring Break, the Nevada desert for the Burning Man festival, Nickelodeon's Guts Aggro Crag in Manhattan, the streets outside a national political convention, the Chicago-based set of mega-hit Empire, and Hollywood for Floyd Mayweather's 40th birthday bash, among others. But for this first travelogue of this cycle, we may have found the most rad and extreme setting you can have, all the way across the Atlantic.
Before Premiere Week during a fairly light sports week in the month of July with baseball's All-Star Game, free agency, Wimbledon and the Tour de France, the highlight for many was an event that takes place in the country of Spain which brings people to the streets of a northern province for a tradition that's been around for hundreds of years. And before there was skate- and snowboarding, mixed martial arts and all else, this sport and rodeo helped define the word "extreme."
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| The Daily Telegraph |
Each bull run begins almost at the crack of dawn at 8AM local time during each full day of the festival, which begins with some fanfare and then rockets being set off to signal that the bulls' corral is open and for the runners to take off and run. The average time for each trip from when the corral opens to until the last bull enters the arena is about two minutes and thirty seconds at the pace of the herd's average speed, about 15 mph through Pamplona on a course that measures the length of nearly 10 U.S. football fields. And this is taking place in the streets of this town which is typical Europe in a canyon of buildings that have been around for centuries as well as cobblestones instead of pavement.
Rules state that the runners with their distinctive white shirts & red neckerchief must be 18 & older, run in the same direction as the bulls, not incite them in any other way and to make sure they are also running clean too. Given than about 50-100 runners are injured each year by the onslaught of the fury of the bulls and leading in rare cases to death, there are wooden fences and other places to help the runners get to safety, and the local Red Cross is on hand at every corner should someone get gored.
The Running of the Bulls receives worldwide TV exposure every July and a year ago, the event's fascinating appeal even tempted NBC Sports' hilarious Premier League duo, The Men in Blazers, to leave what they call their "crap part of SoHo" in New York City to watch and commentate on the proceedings during the offseason in European football and just after the international tournaments of the summertime. It even made an appearance in Billy Crystal's movie, "City Slickers."
During our last Trifecta cycle, we caught up with Isaac Stout from Real World Sydney and two Challenges, where we showcased his passion of traveling and him traveling to several countries both for The Duel II and Free Agents and for his travel venture, Bucket List Club. Him being able to spend time in Australia after filming of that Real World ten years ago this summer spawned that love of going around the world, which at last check brought him to Camp Nou Stadium in Barcelona when Messi, Neymar and FC Barca had that historic comeback in the UEFA Champions League earlier this year.
Someone who lived with him in Darling Harbour is Cohutta, when we last saw briefly on Bloodlines with cousin Jill, but we all remember him for his memorable romances with Kelly-Anne in Australia and then with Nany in Uruguay. And he joined Isaac for his return trip to the Spanish countryside, where they got the chance to take part in this year's Running of the Bulls as part of a trip Isaac's company arranged that brought other fellow travelers to not just Pamplona, but also a return to Barcelona. And they capped off the rendezvous on the island of Ibiza, the European hub for all things summer partying and who got a shoutout from a good friend of Brandon from AYTO Season 2, Mike Posner.
They took part in Day 1 of that Running of the Bulls and Cohutta captioned in his Instagram post, "Early this morning, as my friends and family were asleep in their beds, I did what is easily the dumbest, most terrifying, irresponsible, exhilarating, memorable, badass thing I've ever done in my life. Unbelievable. We ran with beasts and we survived." And before that, he also wrote on the time of calmness before the bulls came running: "The opening ceremonies to San Fermin was almost as insane as the actual bull run. Thousands of people piled on top of each other in the square of this extremely old Northern Spanish town spraying gallons of Sangria though the air. I had Sangria in my eyes, ears, everywhere. It got hotter and hotter until rockets went off signifying the beginning of festivities. Needless to say by that time all that Sangria had began to kick in. Viva San Fermin!!!"
Below is a video the Georgian took just moments after they ran, but it was marred by what happened to two other Americans who also made the trip to the festival and were not so lucky. They were gored during that same opening day's run, one of many incidents during the festival, though luckily no one was killed in the stampede. And in another Instagram post below, the caption from Bucket List Earth read, "The exact moment when terror and adrenaline turner to excitement and high fives. We survived! Somehow."
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| IG @CohuttaLee |
Below is a video the Georgian took just moments after they ran, but it was marred by what happened to two other Americans who also made the trip to the festival and were not so lucky. They were gored during that same opening day's run, one of many incidents during the festival, though luckily no one was killed in the stampede. And in another Instagram post below, the caption from Bucket List Earth read, "The exact moment when terror and adrenaline turner to excitement and high fives. We survived! Somehow."
- I AM DC
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