Damián Castaño, target Bilbao: “Although the sea is dragged”
Damián Castaño has started the physiotherapy sessions this midday with the challenge of arriving in the best conditions on Sunday in Bilbao, where he is announced in the General Bullfights, to fight the Dolores Aguirre bulls together with Luis Bolívar and Román. The hair-raising somersault that he suffered the day before yesterday in Ceniientos (Madrid) —which finally ended miraculously without the fracture or serious cervical injury that flirted with the worst omens— has put him on the ropes. Bilbao is Bilbao and, after the mishap, it makes the challenge even more difficult. “Right now it’s like I’m carrying a backpack full of bricks; and the pain is greater today than yesterday”, confesses the bullfighter three days later. “I’ve been told it’s normal,” he continues. “Respect for mobility I feel much better, but I have a very tight back”points out the bullfighter.
Now the challenge is Bilbao. And you have five days to get it. The debut of Damián Castaño is announced on Sunday in the first of the General Bullfights, which are the great port of summer. The first bull, the one that imposes more than any other. A maximum level stage; and there are all the eyes of bullfighting pending what happens in those eight days in the black sand of the old Bocho. The dream of bullfighters. Category for the figures and the great showcase for the modest ones. There Damián Castaño found accommodation a few weeks ago in what was going to be one of the most complicated exams of the not easy campaign that he has ahead of him. He is facing the bulls of the most feared currencies and in some of the most demanding stages of bullfighting. What he didn’t count on was arriving with his back almost split in two, as he claimed to feel right after the somersault. Once the miracle of having come out ‘alive’ from a cervical injury that led to fear of the worst after the brutal hook of the Cuadri bull, Damián Castaño was left on the ropes ahead of the Bilbao event.
On the ambulance ride from Ceniientos to the hospital in Móstoles, without even knowing the seriousness of the injury, Damián Castaño already told his manager not to cancel the Bilbao contract for the world. And, on Monday, already in Salamanca, he ratified it to LA GACETA: “Even if the sea drags you, I will be there”. Physiotherapy sessions have started today. And so it will continue in the coming days with the aim of reaching the key day on its agenda in the best possible way in a year in which it has entered some of the events of the great circuit. And there Bilbao is marked with capital letters (Toros de Dolores Aguirre, along with Luis Bolívar and Román). The Canal Toros cameras will be live (6:00 p.m.) to broadcast the celebration.
For the time being, he has been advised against fighting tomorrow’s festival in Pedro Bernardo (Ávila), although he was still unclear at noon. The eternal doubt of the bullfighters. In the routine of these days a series of specific exercises are included to improve the area and gradually begin to fight in the hall. On Friday he will return to the physiotherapist again to try to release the contractures that invade him right now and take over his back.