Sally Gunnell, who, as a world-class hurdler, won a gold medal at the Barcelona Olympics, is now leaping to the defence of Spanish bulls and has fired off a letter to Pamplona Mayor Yolanda Barcina Angulo, urging her to put an end to the barbaric annual “Running of the Bulls” and replace it with a kinder, more festive humans-only run – the “Human Race”.

“Most of the tourists who visit Pamplona and attend the bull run have no idea of the animal suffering involved or the ultimate fate of the bulls. … People are horrified when they learn that their money contributes to death by torture of these magnificent creatures”, writes Gunnell. Gunnell asks Mayor Angulo to follow the lead of Barcelona, Calonge, La Vajol and other locales in Spain that have banned bullfighting and to instead adopt PETA’s “Human Race”, which involves only willing human participants.

Before the bulls are released to run through the streets, electric prods and sharp sticks are typically used to torment and frighten the animals into a stampede. As the bulls run to escape, they sustain bruises, cuts, and broken bones and are shot with darts by spectators. What awaits the bulls that evening is even more gut-wrenching. Having repeatedly stabbed and bled the bulls in order to weaken them, the bullfighters then sever the bulls’ spines while the animals are still conscious.

As one of the world’s all-time sporting legends, Gunnell knows what real sport is. She is the only woman to have held all four major championship medals concurrently – Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth. Having retired in 1997 because of injury, Gunnell is now a leading sports commentator for the BBC.

For the fourth consecutive year, PETA members will lead hundreds of activists from around the world – many wearing nothing but plastic “bull horns” and running shoes – in a media-mobbed “Running of the Nudes” this July, along the same route where the bulls are stampeded, as a means of promoting a humans-only run.

View Gunnell’s letter to Pamplona Mayor Yolanda Barcina Angulo.