Word: swords
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...Omaha, the most arduous of the five D-day beaches assaulted (Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold were the others), the sand is a dirty golden color, and the tidal flats reach in for 100 yards to a series of bluffs covered with tamarisk, brambles and wild blackberries. In 1944 the bluffs were ablaze with German fire: in the first violent hours of the invasion, some 3,000 Americans were cut down as they waded in from their landing craft and clung desperately to the perilous band of beach...
Crisis, of course, is as elemental to bullfighting as the cape and sword. Fifty years ago, Spaniards swore that Belmonte was commercializing the fights by breeding his own bulls and using an agent to arrange appearances at the then prime price of $3,300 an afternoon. The bull was no longer the central figure of the confrontation; the cult of the matador had been born. Once, such disputations raged in the comfortable surroundings of a packed arena. Crowds this year have been skimpy everywhere since the season opened in Castellon de la Plana. They have been rebellious too. In Seville...
...more people (instead of the mere 23,663 that can shoehorn into the Plaza Monumental), the bullfights have become a $25 million-a-year jackpot. In order to get a share of the pot, everyone concentrated on providing more fights. But a consumer society, like a matador's sword, is double-edged. More fights meant poorer fights. Aficionados hooted at the new bulls as so many genuflecting mules, praying calves or Hermanas de la Caridad (Sisters of Charity...
...satisfy this demand, breeders fattened bulls in pens on fishmeal and soybean extract instead of allowing leisurely grazing. This process builds fat, not muscle, and animals so topheavy that they stumble and fall before they are weakened with picas and banderillas and finally sword-slain in those moments of truth that are these days less true. Some bulls have even been sent out under the legal fighting age of four years. Last week, by government decree, breeders began to record every birth in an official register meant to end this practice...
Arts and Letters, a late developing three-year-old, has been trained by a master. Eliot Burch has trained other Belmont Stakes winners (Sword Dancer, Quadrangle), and probably has another in the small but long-striding son of the undefeated Ribot. Bred for the classic mile-and-a-half distance, this horse will finally have a chance to show his class on the long backstretch at Belmont. There will be no tight turns to prevent this horse from reaching his best stride. He should win convincingly. 50 per cent chance...