Instinctively I know that it cannot fell good to be thrown from the back of a galloping, bareback horse. It follows that to land on another horse, bounce off, and then hit the ground would be worse. I saw this happen. In person. Yesterday.
Football is treated like a brutal sport. It isn’t. The Palio seems to be. A 90 second, three lap, horse race that happens twice a year. There are ten riders crammed into a narrow track that makes them look like sardines at the starting gate. So many riders fall, that only the horse is required to finish. Half of them fell off yesterday. Unlike the rodeo, it’s not just the rider that goes down. The horse falls too. Sometimes it goes down on top of or into the jockey. I am reminded of a condensed Nascar race. All the crashes with none of the uneventful bits. On top of which a 300,000 Euro award goes to the winner. Bribes are made between the riders at the starting gate. The jockeys hit each other when they get close enough. And there are more paramedics present than I have ever seen. This all make for a very intense minute and a half. Oh, and it’s old. In one form or another the Palio has been around for almost a thousand years. Over which rivalries have formed. My roommates and I had to stop and wait out a gigantic brawl between two of the neighborhoods before we could make it back to our apartment. It filled streets. I tried not to get too close.
They were also filming the next 007 movie during the Palio. I am told, by someone with a large zoom lens, that the small white silhouette I saw across the Piazza was Daniel Craig. So, fingers crossed, maybe I’ll make it into the next movie.
Several things about the photo.
-Not even half the spectators are there at this point (if that). No one from Siena has actually shown up yet.
-The Umbrellas are because it was so hot. They had IVs set up to re-hydrate people that were in continuous use.
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