Hemingway on Sports Psychology
They talked, sitting their gaunt horses in
the dark.
Zurito said nothing. He had
the only steady horse of the lot. He had tried him, wheeling him
in the corrals and he responded to the bit and the spurs. He had
taken the bandage off his right eye and cut the strings where they
had tied his ears tight shut at the base. He was a good, solid
horse, solid on his legs. That was all he needed. He intended to
ride him all through the corrida. He had already, since he had
mounted, sitting in the half-dark in the big, quilted saddle, waiting
for the paseo, pic-ed through the whole corrida in his mind. The
other picadors went on talking on both sides of him. He did not
hear them.
From The Undefeated, short story by Ernest Hemingway, c. 1927.
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