Photo Gallery Step into the Arena
Spanish matador Juan José Padilla, 38, suffered a horrific goring during a bullfight last October. In a SPIEGEL interview, he talks about his decision to make a swift comeback, his struggles to overcome his fears in the arena and his views of the sport's critics. "You can be run over by a car, or you can be in a plane crash. I was run over by a bull," Padilla told SPIEGEL. "I rarely think about that disaster." This photo shows him being hit by a bull in Pamplona in July 2010.
This photo shows the moment when Padilla was gored in Zaragoza. "The bull knocked me over. I fell, and he rammed his horn into my head, below the left ear. The horn came out again through the eye socket," he recalls. "There was blood everywhere. I still remember how I stood up and picked up my eye off the sand."
After only five months, Padilla returned to the ring on March 4 in the western Spanish town of Olivenza. He killed two bulls and was carried out of the ring on the shoulders of fellow bullfighters. "Injuries are my medals," Padilla says. "Now I've won the gold."
