A teenage bullfighting enthusiast celebrates victories in Bosnia

KAKANJ, Bosnia (AP) — Like most girls her age, Bosnian teenager Mirnesa Junuzovic splits her days into free time and time reserved for school and house chores. How she spends the former, however, makes her quite unique.

The 15-year-old Junuzovic takes daily, hourslong walks with her bull, Cobra, and trains the beast for traditional bullfights that have been organized in the country for more than two centuries.

“We walk for three or more hours every day, I talk to him and call him by different nicknames that I have for him,” Junuzovic said, adding: “I can always anticipate when he is going to rush or scrape at the ground.”

Junuzovic believes that she and Cobra share a special bond and insists that while they train and walk through the fields and forest around her rural home on the outskirts of Kakanj, the bull sometimes uses its horns to move tree branches and shrubs out of her way.

When somebody else approaches him, Junuzovic insisted, “his whole demeanor changes” and he starts snorting.

“But he never acts like that with me,” she rushed to say. “He knows that I take care of him. He is just like a human, except that he cannot talk.”

Bullfights in Bosnia are relatively mellow and bloodless affairs resembling a natural clash for dominance between male bulls in the wild. Almost every weekend during the summer months, rodeo-like corrals are set up in forest clearings or meadows around the country.

Thousands of people gather around these enclosures in village fair-like settings to watch bull-on-bull fights in which animals push each other and clash horns until one of them admits defeat by turning their tail and fleeing. The clash often lasts just a few minutes.

Before bulls enter the arena, inspectors check their horns and even cut off the tips if they are too sharp. They also check the animals’ anti-doping test results and make sure the bulls clash heads only if they want to.

Among the village folk in Bosnia, the love of bulls and bullfighting is installed in children at an early age. Attending the fights is often embraced as a family activity.

“This is a part of our tradition. We love it,” explained Muriz Spahic, who drove for more than 70 kilometers (around 45 miles) to watch bulls fighting last Sunday outside the village of Bijelo Polje in central Bosnia.

“My grandpa loves it, he is here with us today, I love it, my child loves it,” he said, “We go to the fights together.”

In between the fights, the spectators fire up grills, roast meat, drink and dance to blaring folk music.

Fighting bulls of Bosnia have traditionally been trained by men, but women started joining the fray several years ago. Still, women in this field are rare and Junuzovic, who started training bulls at the age of 12, remains the youngest of the trainers.

Some of her school friends look down at her hobby and insist that it is “stinky,” she said. But those who she really cares about are “very supportive. They call to congratulate me every time we win.”

Bulls fight in different weight classes and Cobra, who weighs 620 kilograms (more than 1,360 pounds), is among the “lightweights.”

Cobra’s winning streak, which began eight fights ago, continued in Bijelo Polje, where he scored his ninth victory of the 2025 bullfighting season.

The other bull “quit,” because he “was unprepared,” Junuzovic said.

Around half of the scheduled battles overall end with one of the animals leaving the ring without even trying.

“Still, we won and every victory counts,” she said with a big smile.