CARACAS, Venezuela – Taking the bull by the horns might be equated with
bravery elsewhere, but in Venezuela’s traditional sport of coleo, the
horsemen test their skill and courage by grabbing the animal by the
tail.
To shouts of “horns down the track” blasting from loudspeakers, cowboy
competitors spur their horses down a narrow 227 metre fenced course in
a race to be first to flip over a bull by its tail and win the ecstatic
applause of spectators.
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“This is a sport and a passion,” said Felix Salazar, a 34-year-old
tradesman and bull tumbler.
“It’s also a good way to release stress,” the dust-covered rider said,
grinning from under a large cowboy hat after finishing a successful
race in which he tossed a bull to the ground twice while managing to
stay on his galloping horse.
Coleo, also known as bull tumbling, was started by the horseback-riding
cattle herders who have inhabited the rolling central plains, or llanos
since Venezuela’s 19th century War of Independence against Spanish rule.
“When a bull runs away from the herd in the plains, two men have to
ride after it, one to lasso it and the other to force it to the ground
by its tail, because you can’t stop a big bull just with a rope,” said
Wolman Pena, one of the organizers of a Caracas exhibition of the
rough-and-tumble sport.
According to Pena, the practice eventually became a sport played
regularly in Venezuela’s heartland on the feast days of saints.
“The herdsmen will close down the town’s main street to tumble the
bulls by the tail, for fun, as a pastime and of course to win kisses
from the ladies,” he said. “But it has since grown into a professional
sport.”
Up to four riders play in each match and the winner is the one with the
most tumbles over a five-minute period. A tumble only counts if the
bull rolls on its back or has all four legs in the air. There are no
points if it falls on its belly.
Coleo, described by some as Venezuela’s only home-grown national sport,
may not provoke the same passion as baseball, but its aficionados
believe that nothing rivals it as a display of national identity and
culture.
Events are accompanied by fast-paced joropo music, played on harps,
maracas and the cuatro, a four-string guitar.
Joropo lyrics are usually humorous and easy-going.
Who wouldn’t want to ride/ in somebody else’s car/ and lounge in
somebody else’s hammock/ with the air conditioning on, goes one song.
A visitor seeing the crowd at a coleo, with the Stetson hats, cowboy
boots and big tires on the pick-up trucks, might be forgiven for
thinking he had landed in a typical Texan rodeo.
But the local bull tumblers, known as coleadores, are proud of their
Venezuelan heritage and long ago adopted their own version of the
American cowboy outfit, with wide-brimmed hats often made of woven
straw rather than hide or cloth.
Coleo is not for the faint hearted. Most of the cattle in the
competition end up in the slaughterhouse. Legs and tails of the bulls
are frequently broken in high-speed falls and flips.
In general, however, it is less bloody than bullfighting and not as
violent as Afghan buzkashi, a traditional game in which battling
horsemen struggle for possession of the body of a headless goat.
But the sport often exacts a painful price for the rider. A coleador
will sometimes break a bone performing acrobatic maneuvers while trying
to flip 500 kilogram bulls.
“Someone might have the bad luck to smash against the fence or his
horse will fall on him,” said 28-year-old Gustavo RivasBello, a
bull-tumbling judge. “That’s part of the sport, but it almost never
happens.”
One reason bull tumbling is not as popular in Venezuela as baseball or
soccer might be the high cost of owning horses in a country where a
large percentage of the 11 million strong work force earns less than
$130 US a month.
Although it is the fifth largest oil exporter in the world, Venezuela’s
economy shrank in the first half of the year and unemployment rose to
16.2 percent.
A good horse costs at least $3,000, but the sport also offers prizes of
up to $670 in professional matches. As well, RivasBello said stores and
saddle makers are starting to sponsor riders.
