The History of Polo

by Read Listen Learn

Let’s go back a few thousand years to the Himalayas. Just outside a mountain village, on some flat ground, twelve or fifteen men are riding their horses around, chasing something moving on the ground. They hit it this way and that way with long wooden hammers while they laugh and shout to each other. This is a game, of course; a sport for horsemen to make them better at riding, especially for hunting or war.

The thing they are chasing and hitting is a dead man’s head taken from one of their enemies. The game is to celebrate winning a battle the day before. This is how the sport of polo started, probably in Iran about two and a half thousand years ago. It was called ‘Chowgan’ at that time.

Of course, modern polo is not played with a human head. The ball is usually made of wood or rubber or, these days, of plastic. The sport became popular with kings and princes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Some horse-traders only bought and sold polo ponies especially for the game. They are still called polo ponies but now they’re horses, a little bigger, but they do need to be quick, brave and intelligent.

The game was only found in the Indian/Himalayan region until the late 1700s when the British began to arrive in India. When they visited important princes, they often watched or even played a polo match. Very soon, the British in India took up the game, especially young officers in the cavalry because it was easy for them to keep a lot of ponies. Winston Churchill was a polo champion when he was in the British cavalry in India.

Competitions began and the rich Indian princes offered prizes and places to play the matches – a polo ground is about three hundred metres long by one hundred and fifty metres wide. The British learned to love the game and took it all over the world with them, not just in the British Empire but to places like Argentina and California where a lot of British businessmen lived. The British also wrote the rules and started polo clubs back in Britain as well.

The game is exciting to watch but very few people get the chance to play it. The reason is that you have to know how to ride a horse very well before you even begin to play polo – otherwise, it can be very dangerous. Another reason is that serious players need to keep six to twelve expensive ponies and not just feed them but also transport them several times a year to go to polo competitions from South Africa to Buenos Aires to Scotland. Polo is often called the ‘sport of kings’ but could be called the ‘sport of millionaires’. This very high cost is one reason why the Olympic Games doesn’t have polo anymore.

Usually, polo teams have four riders and these can be men or women. Polo does not separate the sexes as in tennis or football. However, it can be a very dangerous game and everyone, these days, wears a helmet.

Perhaps to give people who aren’t rich the chance to try the game, there is now a version with bicycles instead of ponies and you only need one bicycle, not six.