"Are you ready to run with the bulllllllllls?" This is the first thing that Rob Dickens, chief operating officer of The Great Bull Run LLC, says into a wireless microphone on a Saturday morning in August. People are cheering at the sound of his voice. Some have been drinking, even if it is just past 11 in the morning. Ennio Morricone's theme fromblasts from the loudspeakers.Almost 12,000 people have driven past the gaggle of animal rights protesters holding signs ("BULL RUNS ARE NO FUN FOR BULLS") near the front gate, found and paid for a spot in the cracked asphalt parking lot, waited in line to get a wristband at the registration table, maybe bought a Coors Light tall boy, and taken a seat on the long unshaded aluminum grandstands that look over Virginia Motorsports Park, about 30 miles south of Richmond. These people are listening to Dickens but they're also watching a select 500 runners approach a high-fenced dirt track measuring 30 feet in width and almost a quarter mile in length. Many are wearing white clothes with red bandannas — traditional attire. There is palpable anticipation. People are leaning forward in their seats. Any minute now, a dozen car-sized, four-legged animals with horns will be chasing these runners within an inch of their lives. The bulls arrived in the morning via a tractor-trailer adorned with a pair of horns as wide as the truck itself. After backing into place, five men in white Stetson hats arranged a ramp at the truck's rear and released the gate, allowing the bulls, 24 of them in total, to rush down into a shaded corral. The bulls were also here yesterday for a dry run down the track, but were quickly loaded back and lodged overnight at a nearby farm due to worries that animal rights activists might try to sneak in and free them. Where exactly a trained rodeo bull would go if released into the wilds of suburban Virginia was unclear. (The Humane Society took a more pragmatic approach, requesting that the Department of Agriculture launch an investigation, sending out press releases reading , "These events are a shameful example of cruelty for the sake of nothing more than entertainment and profit. […] These companies put the health and safety of both humans and animals at risk, without the required federal oversight." Nothing came of it.) The media has arrived as well — no fewer than a dozen national and international outlets, who knows how many more local. They had been chattering about it for months, marveling at this curiosity of American entrepreneurialism, that a couple of guys living in Boston had convinced thousands of people to pay as much as $70 for the privilege of risking their life in a vague approximation of a festival in Spain where mostly young, mostly male risk takers have been running through the narrow streets with angry bulls for centuries. Kenny Mayne of ESPN is wearing a red do-rag. A tough-looking photo crew from, bearing beards and tattoos and cigarettes, is jockeying its cameras into the prime spots. A few guys with a camera-mounted drone helicopter are fiddling with a remote control. Everyone is listening to each word echoing from the loudspeaker, vaguely aware that what we're watching is, at least according to the media , history in the making. This is, we've been told, the first time that this grand European tradition has been imported to the United States. For Dickens and his business partner Bradford Scudder, the moment has a slightly different significance. They've spent months of planning and a million dollars of their own money just to get here, the first run of The Great Bull Run. For the next year of their lives, they have plans to replicate this moment in nine more cities throughout the United States. If something goes wrong today, it is going to go wrong in front of the entire world. "So, here are the rules for The Great Bull Run," Dickens announces. Ticketholders have each signed a waiver that thoroughly covers the rules he is about to read out loud. Given that liability insurance has been the single largest expense, with the bulls in the corral and the runners on the track, Dickens is going to make sure that no one can say they didn't know what they were getting into. "If you have a camera in your hand or anything in your hand, you will be thrown out of this event! You need those hands to climb. If you have a bull bearing down on you, you do not want something in your hand!" He's speaking the way that you might speak to a small child with a short attention span. As he dives into the long-winded list of rules, people start to sound restless. They talk over him. "We're going over these rules before we race those bulls," Dickens reminds them. "I need another beer," someone cries from the crowd. "I'm glad you just said that," Dickens fires back over the microphone. "If we see anyone who is visibly intoxicated, our security staff will come in and take you out. We want to make sure that everyone is safe out there, because the danger is not just the bulls, it's also all of you other runners." At this point, the crowd seems to realize that Dickens is not a guy who likes to be misunderstood. "So, here's the most important rule: Do not touch the bulls. If you touch a bull, we're going to have to escort you off the property. We don't want that to happen." How exactly is one able to avoid touching a bull when the general concept involves being chased by one in dangerously close quarters? Dickens does not explore the complications of this logic. "Stand against the fences, leaving the middle clear. Don't stop in the middle of the track. You gotta let the bulls run by, that's what running with the bulls is. We gotta make sure there's enough room for the bulls to get through." All of this talk of physical peril seems to have revived the crowd's spirits. The tension is building and the music continues to play:. "Now, this last rule is not really much of a rule, it's just some advice: If you find yourself on the ground with bulls coming by, curl up and protect your head more than anything else until the bulls go by. You do not want a bull's hoof on your head and I do not want a bull's hoof on your head." That gets everyone cheering. The runners are all spread along the track. Dickens has one more thing to add. "We're going to honor these bulls before we run," he says, and then asks for the crowd to repeat after him. "Here we are!""The courageous few!""To test ourselves!""And honor the bull!""From those that run!""And those that fall!""We honor the bull!""And salute you all!"The bulls are released.