Even Without Using Bulls, Matador School Has Fight

SAN DIEGO — Matadors call it poetry, this art of taunting, of mesmerizing--and ultimately, yes, of killing--a warrior bull. They call it beautiful.

Their critics prefer “barbaric.”

So when two bullfight enthusiasts keen on promoting the sport started a matador school here, a clash was sure to follow. It did. And now, in a dispute that has revved fierce passion on both sides, the Humane Society is investigating the school for cruelty to animals--even though no bull is ever used in training.

Undaunted, instructor Peter Rombold continues to snap his red muleta and to charge, snorting, at sweating students, determined to push forward with what he believes is the first matador school on U.S. soil.

By teaching bullfighting as an art, he said, he hopes to encourage Americans “to look beyond the brutality of it, the blood of it, and to accept it.”

It will be a tough sell.

Though bullfighting was all the rage a generation ago, with movie stars clogging Mexican rings to cheer flamboyant matadors, the sport has not caught on with today’s skateboard and Nintendo crowd. Although Rombold insists that “there are Walter Mittys out there who want this kind of adventure,” his school has so far attracted only one paying student, plus several others he trains for free.

Even more devastating to his dreams, after the school--grandly called the California Academy of Tauromaquia--was featured in a local paper, the opinion page overflowed with bitter letters to the editor.

“It is just plain cruel to torture the poor bull and make sport of him,” one woman wrote.

“It is the art of sadism,” a man declared.

And from Oceanside, a woman pleaded: “Keep this bloody business south of the border.”

Traditional bullfighting is already illegal in the United States. But some states permit “bloodless bullfights,” in which the toreros thrust at the animal with Velcro-tipped barbs that stick to the bull without causing any harm.

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In California, bloodless fights are permitted only as part of a religious celebration, such as those commonly staged in Portuguese communities. Further, state law explicitly prohibits advertising, staging or promoting bullfights “or any similar contest or exhibition.”

It is this anti-promotion clause that Humane Society Agent R.L. Carl suspects the school may be violating. For even though Rombold uses no animals during training sessions in the United States, he is clearly preparing students to face down bulls in Mexico. Three of his pupils have already ventured to a ranch near Tijuana to test their skill in bloodless battles with cows bred for fighting.

The way Carl looks at it, that’s promoting bullfighting, plain and simple. Though the school may not draw a drop of toro blood on U.S. soil, “as we see it,” he said, “the intent is there.”

Humane Society agents have police powers in animal cases. For now, however, Carl said he plans no arrests. He says he simply wants to watch how the school operates in hopes of gathering enough information to take a case to the district attorney. Violation of the bullfight law would be a misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

The threat of criminal prosecution astonishes Rombold.

An amateur matador who has killed 39 bulls, he thinks of the sport as gloriously noble--for man and beast alike. “The animal dies a warrior’s death,” he said.

Rombold loves the sport so fiercely that he has taken all sorts of odd jobs, from operating an embroidery machine to painting pinstripes on cars, to “support my bull habit,” as he put it. (Along with the expense of traveling abroad to fight, amateurs must buy the bulls they kill, at $700 to $800 each.

The school he founded in March with business partner Coleman Cooney, another bullfight aficionado, finally gives Rombold a shot at making a living off his passion. He charges $500 for a course, modifying the training to suit the student’s schedule and stamina.

Public protest forced him to move his training sessions from a schoolyard in Chula Vista to the baseball diamond at Morley Field, a public park not far from San Diego’s Hotel Circle. Since he cannot bring bulls to his makeshift ring, Rombold acts the part himself--and with considerable flair.

Crouching low and brandishing a pair of horns one recent morning, he rushed at student Tricia Slane, snorting wildly. Slane arched her back. Planted her feet. And flapped the fuchsia and yellow capote, the heavy cape used in the opening passes of a bullfight.

Dropping his role-playing for a minute, Rombold paused to critique. “Your hands are getting too far ahead of you,” he said.

Slane, sweating, adjusted.

She flicked the capote back into position and barked, “Hut, hut,” like a quarterback, goading Rombold-as-bull to charge.

“Better,” he said afterward. “But you would have gotten tossed.”

An actress who plays a passenger in the upcoming movie “Titanic,” Slane, 23, joined the school on a whim after answering an advertisement that Rombold placed in an effort to drum up business.

“I fell into it,” she said, “but I also fell in love with it.”

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Starting this spring with once-a-week sessions as a “scholarship student,” Slane built up to two practices a day earlier this month to train for her encounter with the fighting cows in Tijuana. (These are not mild moo-cows, but a hard-charging species that breeds with championship bulls to produce offspring used in the ring.) Slane found the experience terrifying--and thrilling. And it only reinforced her view that there’s nothing barbaric about bullfighting.

“It’s so graceful,” she said. “It’s like ballet.”

Another student, software executive Jim Koustas of Colorado, said he overcame his skepticism about the sport when he realized the bull is bred to fight. “That species would be extinct if it were not for the bullfight,” said Koustas, who flew to San Diego for an intense two-week course this summer as the school’s only paying customer. “It literally knows nothing but combat.”

So eager to talk up bullfighting that his speech tumbled out fast and fiery, Cooney argued that the bulls bred for the ring live--and even die--more humanely than cattle raised in cramped and filthy pens for slaughter in the United States.

“They’re out in the most beautiful pasture in the world,” he said. “They’re cared for lovingly. And in the last 30 minutes of their life, they go through the ordeal they’re bred for.”

Although they favor such arguments, Cooney and Rombold also defend the school on legal grounds.

They argue that the state ban on promoting bullfighting is too vague. They contend that it crimps their right to free speech.

Plus, they ask, if they can be prosecuted for waving capes in a public park, what about others who are promoting the sport? What about the local hotels that display brochures for Mexican bullfights? What about the travel agents who sell tickets to Tijuana fights? What about the newspapers that carry related advertisements?

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Humane Society Agent Carl concedes that he can’t possibly move against all those sources of bullfight promotion. The Humane Society acts when it receives complaints, he said.

And plenty of complaints have been lodged against the California Academy of Tauromaquia.

Many echo San Diego resident Jan Stockdale, who argued in a letter to the editor that bullfighting is “an inhumane and barbaric blood sport that has no place in a civilized society. Remember, the ancient Romans considered watching gladiators fight to the death a sport, and that was part of their culture. Should that be acceptable [in today’s United States] too?”

Despite the vigor of such protests, Rombold remains convinced that his school will win converts. After all, many bullfight aficionados started out repulsed by the sport and learned to appreciate it only in time.

American matador Raquel Martinez said she nearly fainted when she watched her first bullfight as a teenager. But a friend kept dragging her to the ring. Soon, she was addicted enough to take it up as a career in Mexico.

“It’s like heroin,” she said. “It really gets in your blood.”