Matador stabbed and seriously injured by bull’s horn

One of Spain's top matadors was seriously injured in Mexico when a 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) bull gored him in the groin and hoisted him into the air, causing major blood loss, his manager said on Sunday. Jose Tomas received a transfusion of eight litres (17 pints) of blood after being gored on Saturday by a beast named Navegante in the Mexican city of Aguascalientes. The bull's horn penetrated 4 inches (10 centimetres) into Tomas' groin and punctured a vein and an artery, Tomas' manager told Spanish radio. Tomas, one of Spain's most popular matadors, has a relatively rare blood type; A- , and bled so profusely that bullring officials appealed over the arena loudspeakers for compatible donors to come forward for transfusions, Boix said. Bullring doctors operated on the 34-year-old Tomas immediately to stabilise him, and he underwent more surgery later at a hospital for more than three hours. Television footage broadcast by Aguascalientes TV showed Tomas working the animal with his cape, when the bull made a quick turn towards him and caught him in the groin, lifting him into the air for a few seconds and shaking its head with Tomas dangling from its left horn. Once on the ground, Tomas rolled away and held his hands up as if to say he was OK, but a large, dark red stain was already spreading through his glittering gold suit. The newspaper El Pais said Tomas' injury was so serious that the bullring doctors who first operated on him did not even take time to anesthetise him.
Tomas is known for a daring bullfighting style in which he gets particularly close to the bull.
His full name is Jose Tomas Roman Martin, but he goes by just Jose Tomas.
In Spain, he has been something of an enigma: in 2002, at the peak of his career, Tomas suddenly retired without saying why.
Tomas returned to the ring in 2007 to tremendous fanfare - he told one interviewer that "living without bullfighting is not living." Since then he has suffered a number of serious gorings in Spain.