Born in Ancient Persia
Polo is one of the oldest known team sports in the world. Its ancestor was a game on horseback called chovgan, played in Persia and Central Asia from the 6th century BCE. It became a favourite of nobles, and both men and women played it. The Persian ruler Shapur II learnt the game at age seven, in 316 CE.
From there it spread far and wide, partly because it was good training for riders in the army. It reached from Constantinople, where Emperor Theodosius II built a polo ground, all the way to Japan. In Tang dynasty China, women played it too, wearing men's clothes to do so.
The game even shaped cities. Baghdad had a large polo ground outside its walls, and one of its gates was named after those grounds. In the 17th century, the great Naqsh-i Jahan Square in Isfahan was built as a polo field.
The Manipur Connection
The English word polo comes from the Balti word for ball. In Manipur, in northeast India, the names polo or pulu meant the wooden ball, and those words travelled west with the sport.
Manipur's game was fast. It had seven players a side, riding small local ponies under 13 hands tall. There were no goal posts. You scored simply by hitting the ball out of either end of the field. Sticks were made of cane, and balls were made from bamboo roots. The Imphal Polo Ground there is the oldest polo ground in the world.
British tea planters learnt the game from Manipuri players, and a European polo club opened in Silchar in 1859. In 1862, two British soldiers founded the Calcutta Polo Club, the oldest polo club still in existence. One of them, Joseph Ford Sherer, is called the father of modern polo. The pair then spread the game to their friends in England.
The Biggest Field in Sport
An outdoor polo field measures 300 by 160 yards, about the size of six soccer fields. That is the largest playing field of any modern sport. Two teams of four ride at up to 35 miles per hour, using a wooden mallet to drive the ball between the other team's posts. A goal counts no matter how high the ball flies.
A match lasts about one and a half to two hours, split into four to eight seven-minute periods called chukkas. Safety rules centre on the line of the ball, the path the ball is travelling along. The player who hit it usually has the right of way. Players may push a rival off that line shoulder to shoulder, a move called a ride-off. Oddly, polo must be played right-handed, to prevent head-on collisions.
At half-time, spectators walk onto the field for a tradition called divot stomping. They press back the chunks of turf torn up by the hooves.
The Pony Is Not a Pony
Polo horses are called ponies, but that is just tradition. They are full-sized horses, standing 147 to 163 cm tall at the shoulders and weighing 410 to 500 kg. Many are Thoroughbreds. They are chosen for quick bursts of speed, stamina and a calm head under pressure.
The horse matters enormously. A well-trained one can account for 60 to 75 percent of a player's skill and value to the team. Training usually starts at age 3 and takes from six months to two years. Barring accidents, a polo pony can keep playing until 18 to 20 years old.
Because horses tire, each player needs more than one. Top players bring a whole string of ponies and swap them between chukkas. Tails are often braided so they do not snag the mallet. Even the ball has a story. Today it is hard plastic, but it was long made of willow root, and the British first used a painted cricket ball.
Polo on Snow, Yaks and Segways
Polo was an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1936. Argentina, where the game found its greatest popularity in the Americas, won gold in 1924. It was the first gold medal in that country's Olympic history, and Argentina won again in 1936.
The game has also gone to extremes. Pakistan's Shandur polo ground sits about 3,734 metres up, the highest in the world. Snow polo is played on packed snow or frozen lakes with a bright plastic ball. People also play camel polo in Mongolia, elephant polo in South Asia and yak polo in Mongolia and western China.
Some versions skip animals entirely. There is cycle polo, even on old penny-farthing bicycles, plus Segway polo, canoe polo and auto polo, which swapped horses for cars. In 1998, players in Germany came up with hobby horse polo, played on toy horses. And water polo? Despite the name, it is closer to handball.
