Course landaise
The course landaise is an ancient form of bullfighting and bull-leaping held in oval or rectangular arenas covered in sand, that involves no bloodshed.
[1] The course landaise is one of various forms of entertainment involving a bull or a cow found throughout the south of France, and the Iberian peninsula.
The course landaise is for the most part the main attraction of the yearly celebrations held in villages of western Gascony (Bas-Armagnac, Chalosse, and Bearn) and as far west as Bayonne.
Other forms of related entertainments are the running of the bulls made famous in the neighboring Spanish Basque Country by the Ferias of Pamplona, but also enjoyed in Bayonne and smaller towns of Gascony such as Nogaro.
The course landaise can in a way be compared with the steer-wrestling events in American rodeos to the extent that they are related expressions of a rural culture that can be traced to the ancient Basque tradition of Iberia.
The cows are specially bred and grow up in the wild, on rural ganaderias (cattle farms or ranches) and are of a considerable size[3] (300 to 500 kg or 660 to 1,100 lb and 125 to 130 cm or 49 to 51 in).
During the course the cows leave their loge in a predetermined order and are led by the cordier, the man who holds the rope and two entraîneurs,to the position in front of the torero placed roughly in the middle of the arena.
The participants to this game are excellent athletes and generally peak in their early thirties since a lot of experience is necessary to dominate the wild cows.
The centralized government attempted repeatedly to forbid the courses landaises, viewed as dangerous and a mild proof of rural and regional resistance to the integration of Gascony to the French State, but the Gascons, well known for their free spirit, ignored the administrative rulings and persisted with their favorite entertainment.
Nowadays the course landaise are still very fashionable in the Landes and the west of the Gers where almost every village of more than 200 souls maintains its permanent or semi-permanent arena.
These challenges are called intervilles ('inter-villages'), and the events can also incorporate other activities, such as swimming pools, seesaws, soccer or rugby games, caterpillar races, etc.
