For the six days in April, the Maestranza ring in Seville is the centre of the bullfighting world. During one of the traditional corrida, Spain’s greatest living matador, Jose Antonio Morante, made a mistake. Local press described ‘un exceso de confianza’. Suddenly, he found himself with the bull at his back, charging, and was gored at the top of his thigh, suffering injuries so eye-watering that they made international news. One of his colleagues, Roca Rey, was also hospitalised several days later, with a severe injury to his right leg. Morante described the ‘immense pain’ of the incident.

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Sport has a complex relationship with danger. Since the beginning of last year alone, an extreme sports athlete, Felix Baumgartner, died during a paraglide; a Finnish racing driver, Juha Miettinen, had a fatal crash during a qualifying competition; and an Irish boxer, John Cooney, was killed by a brain haemorrhage. 

The attributes of sporting success – mastering technique, imposing discipline, pushing boundaries – are all achievable in games where there is minimal risk of severe injury or death. This is evident in the lives of Novak Djokovic, Rory McIlroy and Sydney McLaughlin-Levone and........

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