No Deaths At Palio As 007 Crew Shoot

There were thrills and spills at the Palio horse race in Siena this year as a film crew captured the race for the 22nd James Bond movie.

But to the relief of the Siena authorities, the huge crowd and - presumably - the film producers, all horses and jockeys survived the dangerous bareback race.

Several jockeys were unseated as horses crashed into the wall at the notoriously tight San Martino bend, falling beneath the pounding hooves of their rivals. Miraculously none was hurt.

Instead, with Daniel Craig watching from a window high above the Campo, the square where the Palio is run on packed sand, Siena put on a classic show of colourful pageantry and excitement to a background of medieval drums and flags.

The Palio forms the backdrop to an action sequence in the still untitled Bond 22, as 007 chases a villain across the Tuscan hill towns rooftops and through its underground aqueducts, or bottini. But for the Sienese, the presence of the film crew was incidental.

Siena after all has been staging the Palio since the Middle Ages, and the stars of the show are not VIP visitors but the jockeys, the contradas (city guilds) they represent - and the horses.

Maurizio Cenni, the mayor of Siena, said Mr Craig and the Bond film crew were very welcome, but the Palio did not need any extra publicity. We have imposed extremely rigid restrictions on the production he said. This will allow us to check the contents and editing afterward, intervening if necessary.

Animal rights activists have protested against the use of the Palio in a Bond film, arguing that the race is brutal and pointing out that 50 horses have been killed or had to be put down since 1970.

For the record the Palio was won by the Leocorno (Unicorn) contrada, with Jonathan Bartoletti riding a ten year old bay called Brento.

Bond 22 is expected to be released in the autumn of 2008.

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