Welcome Mickeymickey@disney.comManage MyDisney AccountLog OutLion attacks trainer during performance at circus in FranceWednesday thanks to someone who distracted the lion with a fire extinguisher.DOULLENS France (KTRK) -- A lion trainer was seriously injured in France after the animal attacked him during a circus performance It happened on May 7 at the Buffalo Circus in Doullens Dramatic video from a woman in the audience showed the lion grappling with the trainer before it was subdued suffered serious injuries to his head and throat and was taken by helicopter to a hospital He was in surgery for several hours and is now recovering Representatives with the circus said that despite the vicious attack SEE ALSO: 9-year-old girl attacked by kangaroo at the zoo Report a typo to the ABC13 staff Joni Mitchell was a mad crazy cycling fan and her hit song The title itself is a reference to the yellow Alcyon bikes Henri Desgrange for a time made competitors in the Tour de France compete on (some suggest it's actually a reference to the Mavic neutral support vehicles but these didn't arrive until after the song was written) The line in the song that says they paved paradise and put up a parking lot well that's a reference to the Queen of the Classics and how the cobbles that gave the race its character were tarred over in attempts to drag the roads of the region into the modern era Title: Paris-Roubaix: The Inside Story - All the Bumps of Cycling's Cobbled ClassicAuthor: Les WoodlandPublisher: McGann PublishingYear: 2013Pages: 197Order: McGann PublishingWhat it is: A history of the Queen of the Classics.Strengths: Packed full of anecdotes and incidental storiesWeaknesses: 197 pages and close to a hundred-twenty years of history Cycling is a sport whose history is a mix of truth Often times this is one of the things I love most about the sport It is a history that is open to being revised constantly being reinvented to sell the story anew to fresh audiences Facts are just little nails round which stories get threaded and rethreaded until the nails become obscured and all that can be seen is the cloth the threads weave One such story is the way in which Paris-Roubaix acquired the first of its three alternative names: La Pascale Legend has it that the first running of Paris-Roubaix fell on Easter Sunday and ever after the association with the Pascal feast has clung to the race like a second skin When Théo Vienne and Maurice Perez teamed up with the publishers of Le Vélo to organise the first edition of Paris-Roubaix the intention was that the race should act as a training race for Bordeaux-Paris Vienne and Perez proposed running the race on May 3 unfortunately conflicted with the date of municipal elections clashed with a horse-racing festival in Roubaix was finally found to clash with nothing of any great import and that is the date the first running of the race occurred on Which happens to have been two weeks after Easter 1896 The following year Paris-Roubaix held its date in the calendar - or close to it - and was run off on April 18 followed the moon and was a fortnight later than the previous year: the Sunday of Paris-Roubaix Thus was born the race's first association with La Pascale Paris-Roubaix's roll of honour bears witness to the toll of war The winners of four editions of it died in the First World War: Octave Lapize (victor in 1909 1910 and 1911) was killed in action close to Verdun in 1917 and François Faber (1913) in 1915 the winner of the 1912 and 1914 editions of the race Awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1915 he was gaoled in 1917 - for trafficking in rationed goods was refused a racing licence and thus debarred from picking up where he had left off before war interrupted his career Pick almost any race of the era and you could tell similar stories: Bordeaux-Paris and the Giro di Lombardia - as well as the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia - all have rolls of honour scarred by the Great War in that it celebrates its association with a war that decimated a generation forever recalls the toll inflicted on the lands through which it races with the Armistice signed and representatives of the warring nations negotiating in Paris L'Auto - under whose aegis the race had by then fallen - sent Victor Breyer and Eugène Christophe (the latter then yet to become famous for his broken forks) on a scouting mission to see whether it would be possible to return the race to the calendar Breyer - British-born to French parents - was one of the movers and shakers in cycling at the turn of the last century As a journalist and race promoter he visited the USA many times in search of new talent to bring to Europe One of the founding fathers of the UCI Breyer had served as a director of the Tour de France - 1905 and 1906 - and was then an employee of L'Auto he had been on the staff of Le Vélo and it was to him in 1896 that the task of scouting out the route of the first edition of Paris-Roubaix had fallen he was being sent out to do the same again In his report Breyer drew a picture of the Dante-esque reinvention of the lands through which the race was run: barbed wire cut into one thousand pieces; unexploded shells on the roadside Crosses bearing a jaunty tricolour are the only light relief." it fell to Christophe to coin the phrase that gave the race a new name: "From Doullens onwards the countryside was nothing but desolation The shattered trees looked vaguely like skeletons the paths had collapsed and been potholed or torn away by shells had been replaced by military vehicles in a pitiful state The houses of villages were no more than bare walls The roads and the men weren't the only damage inflicted upon Paris-Roubaix by the Great War The little vélodrome in Roubaix that Vienne and Perez had opened in 1895 had been stripped of its wooden boards and its steel supporting structure and the race went in search of a new finish "Paris-Roubaix est une connerie." So says the Gospel according to Hinault and it's a brave man who argues with le blaireau it was a race Bernard Hinault had no choice but to win even after seven falls and having to shoulder his bike and run in Arenberg in order to pass race director Félix Lévitan's car Quite when Paris-Roubaix became the Queen of the Classics is unclear but it probably dates to the post-World War II years when the first real seeds of a united European racing calendar were sown by the creation of the Challenge Desgrange-Colombo in 1948 The publishers of L'Équipe in France and La Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy along with Les Sports and Sportwereld-Het Nieusblad in Belgium had come together to create a precursor of today's World Tour Designed as a way to ensure the best riders rode the best races - well at least those races organised by L'Équipe Les Sports and Sportwereld - the Challenge Desgrange-Colombo added to the lustre of the biggest races by encouraging the biggest champions to add their names to their rolls of honour By 1949 Paris-Roubaix was important enough for Fausto Coppi to threaten strike action if his brother Serse wasn't awarded a contentious victory over André Mahé Achille Joinard happened to be president of the French cycling federation at the time and was about to stand for the presidency of the UCI With multiple constituencies to appease Joinard settled on an inelegant solution: Mahé and Coppi could share victory in the race The following year a Coppi won the race outright when Fausto won the race with "a style and in a purity rarely to be equalled." many of the best riders in the world have won in Roubaix - Merckx and Hinault are on the race's roll of honour - and some have lost: Jacques Anquetil never managed to win the favour of the Queen of the Classics but the courtiers are increasingly staying away Eddy Merckx has noted the Queen's waning power: but Paris-Roubaix is losing more and more of its value because the great riders aren't there I've always said that to win without risk is to win without glory." Over the last two decades the big guns of the day - in particular Miguel Induráin and Lance Armstrong - haven't even tried to win in Roubaix "Paris-Roubaix will go on for as long as there are cobbles And you have to ask yourself if it's worth preserving the cobbles if they only interest a handful of riders if those who stay away think it's old-fashioned and out of date you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.. So as well as learning about the race itself Woodland takes time to talk about the changing role technology has played in the bikes used to ride it or paints portraits of some of the race's champions and their victories on the road to Roubaix Rich in anecdotes and incidental detail Paris-Roubaix: The Inside Story is a welcome addition to the cycling canon A lion locked its jaws around his tamer's throat and dragged him across the circus ring in front of horrified families midway through a live show in Doullens show the tamer being attacked by the male cat as onlookers rushed out of their seats Ma fille veux plus aller voir le cirque :-( ça fait peur aux enfants :-( Smoke was pumped into the arena to distract the lion and the tamer was able to get away The man was deeply wounded and was rushed to hospital with serious injuries, according to Daily Mail A representative for the circus said the tamer had been working with lions for years Also read: 'Don't even stop to answer call of nature' - warning issued after lions escapeA pride of lions on the loose in the Mananga area of Mpumalanga have taken refuge in sugar cane                   Escaped lions attack cattle in KomatipoortA group of lions‚ which escaped from the Kruger National Park have attacked some cattle‚ the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency said on Tuesday Facts about circus animal abuse compiled by global movementDoSomething.org. 1. Circus animals have the right to be protected and treated humanely under the Animal Welfare Act. 2. Tigers naturally fear fire, but they are still forced to jump through fire hoops in some circuses and have been burned while doing so. 3. Circuses are repeatedly cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Animal Welfare Act for trailers that have splintering wood and sharp, protruding metal pieces near animals' cages. 4. Trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks and other painful tools of the trade to force animals to perform. 5. In more than 35 dangerous incidents since 2000, elephants have bolted from circuses, run amok through streets, crashed into buildings, attacked members of the public, and killed and injured handlers. 6. Every major circus that uses animals has been cited for violating the minimal standards of care set by the United States Animal Welfare (AWA). 7. 11 months a year they travel over long distances in box cars with no climate control; sleeping, eating, and defecating in the same cage. 8. Virtually 96% of a circus animal’s life is spent in chains or cages. 9. Since 1990, there have been more than 123 documented attacks on humans by captive large cats in the United States, 13 of which resulted in fatal injuries. 10. During the off-season, animals used in circuses may be housed in small traveling crates. Such confinement has harmful psychological effects on them. These effects are often indicated by unnatural behavior such as repeated swaying, and pacing. 11. Lack of exercise and long hours standing on hard surfaces are major contributors to foot infections and arthritis, the leading causes of death among captive elephants. Register (it's quick and free) or sign in now Please read our Comment Policy before commenting It has been reported that a male lion has attacked a circus trainer during a performance in Doullens Footage available in the press shows that the lion locked his jaws around the keeper’s throat and dragged him across the circus ring in front of horrified families and children The person who appears to have filmed the video wrote on Facebook: ‘It’s my girl who screams in the video who apparently raised and trained the animal himself has now undergone a five-hour operation and is recovering in hospital His relatives reportedly told the press that the lion ‘is well treated well fed and there is no question of euthanasia.’ The lion will therefore stay at the circus and resume his performances when his tamer has recovered we are soon to be in the grip of a General Election and in response Born Free has published a list of election priorities which call on all political candidates to prioritise wildlife protection and animal welfare The list includes priorities relating to wild animals in travelling shows If wildlife protection and animal welfare are important to you we encourage you to ask your party candidates where they stand on these issues in the run up to the General Election