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By Daily Mail Reporter
Critical: Spanish matador Jose Tomas is gored in the groin during a national fair in Aguascalientes, MexicoOne of Spain's leading matadors was seriously injured in Mexico when a one ton bull gored him in the groin and hurled him into the air, his manager said yesterday.
Jose Tomas received an emergency transfusion of 17 pints of blood after he was gored by a bull named Navegante in the Mexican city of Aguascalientes.
The bull's horn punctured a vein and an artery, manager Salvador Boix told Spanish radio station Cadena Ser
Stricken: The popular matador needed 17 pints of blood and doctors operated at the bullring without anaesthetic
Transfusion: Doctors asked members of the crowd to donate A type blood to help Mr TomasMr Tomas, one of Spain's most popular matadors, has a relatively rare blood type - A - and bled so heavily that bullring officials appealed over the arena loudspeakers for compatible donors.
Doctors operated on the 34-year-old immediately to stabilise him, and he underwent three hours more surgery at a hospital later on.
Mr Boix said: 'Now he has new blood and is in intensive care, waiting to see how things evolve.'
Mexican television footage shows the matador working the animal with his cape, when it makes a quick turn and catches him in the groin, lifting him into the air for several seconds and shaking its head with the stricken matador suspended from its left horn.
Spanish newspaper El Pais said his injury was so serious that doctors did not even taken time to anaesthetise him.
Mr Tomas is known for a daring bullfighting style in which he gets particularly close to the bull.
In 2002, at the peak of his career, he suddenly retired without saying why
But in 2007 he returned to the bull ring, and told one interviewer 'living without bullfighting is not living'. Since his return, he has suffered a number of serious injuries in Spain
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