Horsing around in Siena

This is the beautiful shell-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena. It's unique because of its shape and how it's sloped like a sort of an amphitheater, the way the buildings and surface go together and because of this insane bareback horse race that takes place there twice each summer. There are 17 neighborhoods in Siena and 10 of them - with one horse each - compete each time. The neighborhoods have names like eagle, porcupine, snail or wave and there is intense rivalry and bragging rights between the groups. There are some posters around town showing the horses leaned over and sliding around corners and it just looks crazy. There was a store with a video playing showing the winning neighborhood reacting to the victory and it looks like hundreds of people all every bit as fired up as that kid in the viral YouTube video screaming I-GOT-A-NINTENDO-64!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm guessing that the wave 'hood won last time because their part of town was festooned with their dolphin symbol and this banner of the race. Tonight I had a little picnic on the bricks of the Campo and a parade came around the piazza. Everyone was dressed up like ER doctors with masks and such and there were banners and people beating drums. Every now and then a few of them would enact a little patient-on-a-stretcher skit and everyone seemed to be having a grand old time. I tried asking a couple of people what was going on but couldn't understand the explanation in either Italian or English. Maybe some kind of sour grapes display by a losing neighborhood? I bet it was those irrepressible porcupines!