Polo
Polo is a stick and ball game that is played on horseback as a traditional field sport. It is one of the world's oldest known team sports, originating as Chovgan in ancient Persia over 2,000 years ago, and later adopted by the Western world from its modern form developed in India.
Polo has been called "The Sport of Kings" and has become a spectator sport for equestrians and high society, often supported by sponsorship. The progenitor of polo and its variants existed from the 6th century BCE to the 1st century CE, as an equestrian game played in Persia. From Iran, where the sport evolved and developed, the game became popular around the world, with well over 100 member countries in the Federation of International Polo, and is played professionally in 16 countries; it was also an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1936.
Mastery in horseriding is a must to play this game. There are also risks of injuries mainly from falling from the horse; therefore, one should be physically active and strong.
History
Origins and etymology
The game was originally invented by Iranians and its Persian name is "Chovgan". The game's English name derives from the Balti language, from its word for 'ball',. It is cognate with the Standard Tibetan, also meaning 'ball'.Many scholars suggest it most likely began as a simple game played by the Iranian people. An archaic variation of polo, regionally referred to as buzkashi or kokpar, is still played in parts of Central Asia. It was developed and formalised in Ancient Iran as "chovgan", becoming a national sport played extensively by the nobility. Women played as well as men. During the period of the Parthian Empire, the sport had great patronage under the kings and noblemen. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, the Persian ball game was an important pastime in the court of the Sasanian Empire. It was also part of the royal education for the Sasanian ruling class. Emperor Shapur II learnt to play polo at age seven in 316 CE.
Middle Ages and Early Modern era
Valuable for training cavalry, the game was played from Constantinople, where Emperor Theodosius II constructed a polo ground early in the 5th century, to Japan by the Middle Ages. The game also spread south to Arabia and to India and Tibet.Abbasid Baghdad had a large polo ground outside its walls, and one of the city's early 13th century gates, the Bab al Halba, was named after these nearby polo grounds. The game continued to be supported by Mongol rulers of Persia in the 13th century, as well as under the Safavid dynasty. In the 17th century, Naqsh-i Jahan Square in Isfahan was built as a polo field by King Abbas I. The game was also learned by the neighboring Byzantine Empire at an early date. A was built by Emperor Theodosius II inside the Great Palace of Constantinople. Emperor Basil I excelled at it; Emperor Alexander died from exhaustion while playing Polo. died from a fatal injury during a game.
After the Muslim conquests to the Ayyubid and Mameluke dynasties of Egypt and the Levant, their elites favoured it above all other sports. Notable sultans such as Saladin and Baybars were known to play it and encourage it in their courts. Saladin was known for being a skilled polo player, which contributed to his cavalry training. Polo sticks were featured as one of the suits on the Mamluk precursor to modern-day playing cards. Europeans transformed the polo stick suit into the "clubs" of the "Latin" decks, as polo was little known to them at that time.
File:Georgians playing Polo by Castelli.jpg|thumb|The Georgians Playing Polo in the Kingdom of Imereti, by Italian missionary Teramo Castelli, 1640.
The game spread to South Asia where it has had a strong presence in the northwestern areas of present-day Pakistan since at least the 15th to the 16th centuries. Qutubuddin Aibak, originally a Turkic slave who later founded the Mamluk dynasty Delhi Sultanate, was accidentally killed during a game of polo when his horse fell and he was impaled on the pommel of his saddle.
Polo likely travelled via the Silk Road to China where it was popular in the Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an, where it was played by women, who had to wear a male dress to do so; many Tang dynasty tomb figures of female players survive. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, the popularity of polo in Tang China was "bolstered, no doubt, by the presence of the Sasanian court in exile". A "polo-obsessed" noblewoman was buried with her donkeys on 6 October 878 in Xi’an, China.
Modern era
India and Britain
In use in Manipur were the game's Tibetic names, or, referring to the wooden ball, and it was these terms, anglicised, which were adopted for the sport's name in its slow spread to the west. A European polo club was established in the town of Silchar in Assam, India, in 1859, the English tea planters having learnt it from Manipuri incomers.was one of three forms of hockey in Manipur, the other ones being field hockey and wrestling-hockey. Local rituals such as those connected to the, the winged-pony god of polo and the creation-ritual episodes of the festival enacting the life of his son,, the polo-playing god of sports. These may indicate an origin earlier than the historical records of Manipur. Later, according to, a royal chronicle of King Kangba, who ruled Manipur much earlier than Nongda Lairen Pakhangba introduced . Further regular playing of this game commenced in 1605, during the reign of King Khagemba under newly framed rules of the game.
In Manipur, polo was and is still played with seven players to a side. The players are mounted on the indigenous Manipuri Pony, which stands less than. There are no goal posts, and a player scores simply by hitting the ball out of either end of the field. Players strike the ball with the long side of the mallet head, not the end. Players are not permitted to carry the ball, although blocking the ball with any part of the body except the open hand is permitted. The sticks are made of cane, and the balls are made from the roots of bamboo. Players protected their legs by attaching leather shields to their saddles and girths.
In Manipur, the game was played even by commoners who owned a pony. The kings of Manipur had a royal polo ground within the ramparts of their Kangla Fort. Here they played on the . Public games were held, as they still are today, at the , a polo ground just outside the Kangla. Weekly games called were also played in a polo ground outside the current palace.
The oldest polo ground in the world is the Imphal Polo Ground in Manipur. The history of this polo ground is contained in the royal chronicle starting from. Lieutenant Joseph Ford Sherer, the father of modern polo, visited the state and played on this polo ground in the 1850s. Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India visited the state in 1901 and measured the polo ground as "225 yards long and 110 yards wide".
The Cachar Club, established in 1859, is located on Club Road in the heart of Silchar city in Assam. In 1862, the oldest polo club still in existence, Calcutta Polo Club, was established by two British soldiers, Sherer and Captain Robert Stewart. Later they spread the game to their peers in England. Polo was first played in England by the 10th Hussars in 1869. The British are credited with spreading polo worldwide in the late 19th century and the early 20th century at the height of its empire. Military officers imported the game to Britain in the 1860s. The establishment of polo clubs throughout England and western Europe followed after the formal codification of rules. The 10th Hussars at Aldershot, Hants, introduced polo to England in 1834. The game's governing body in the United Kingdom is the Hurlingham Polo Association, which drew up the first set of formal British rules in 1874, many of which are still in existence.
This version of polo played in the 19th century was different from the faster form that was played in Manipur. The game was slow and methodical, with little passing between players and few set plays that required specific movements by participants without the ball. Neither players nor horses were trained to play a fast, non-stop game. This form of polo lacked the aggressive methods and required fewer equestrian skills. From the 1800s to the 1910s, a host of teams representing Indian principalities dominated the international polo scene. The game had reached Samoa by the 1890's.
Ireland
Polo first began its Irish history in 1870 with the first official game played on Gormanstown Strand, Co. Meath. Three years later the All Ireland Polo Club was founded by Mr. Horace Rochford in the Phoenix Park.Argentina
Polo was brought to many parts of the Americas, but found its greatest popularity in Argentina. Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and English immigrants in the Argentine pampas started practising polo during their free time, and eventually some of them began to put together games. Among them, David Shennan is credited with having organised the first formal polo game of the country in 1875, at Estancia El Negrete, located in Buenos Aires Province.The sport spread quickly among the skillful gauchos, and several clubs opened in the following years in the towns of Venado Tuerto, Cañada de Gómez, Quilmes, Flores and later Hurlingham. In 1892 The River Plate Polo Association was founded and constituted the basis for the current Asociación Argentina de Polo. In the Olympic Games held in Paris in 1924 a team composed of Juan Miles, Enrique Padilla, Juan Nelson, Arturo Kenny, G. Brooke Naylor and A. Peña achieved the first gold medal in the nation's Olympic history. The title was defended at the 1936 Berlin Games with players Manuel Andrada, Andrés Gazzotti, Roberto Cavanagh, Luis Duggan, Juan Nelson, Diego Cavanagh, and Enrique Alberdi.
United States
on 16 May 1876 organised what was billed as the first polo match in the United States at Dickel's Riding Academy at 39th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. The historical record states that James Gordon Bennett established the Westchester Polo Club on 6 May 1876, and on 13 May 1876, the Jerome Park Racetrack in Westchester County was the site of the "first" American outdoor polo match.H. L. Herbert, James Gordon Bennett and August Belmont Jr. financed the original New York Polo Grounds. Herbert stated in a 1913 article that they formed the Westchester Club after the "first" outdoor game was played on 13 May 1876. This contradicts the historical record of the club being established before the Jerome Park game.
There is ample evidence that the first to play polo in America were actually the English Texans. The Galveston News reported on 2 May 1876 that Denison, Texas had a polo club which was before James Gordon Bennett established his Westchester Club or attempted to play the "first" game. The Denison team sent a letter to James Gordon Bennett challenging him to a match. The challenge was published 2 June 1876, in The Galveston Daily News. By the time the article came out on 2 June, the Denison Club had already received a letter from Bennett indicating the challenge was offered before the "first" games in New York.
There is an urban legend that the first game of polo in America was played in Boerne, Texas, at retired British officer Captain Glynn Turquand's famous Balcones Ranch. The Boerne, Texas legend also has plenty of evidence pointing to the fact that polo was played in Boerne before James Gordon Bennett Jr. ever picked up a polo mallet.
During the early part of the 20th century, under the leadership of Harry Payne Whitney, polo changed to become a high-speed sport in the United States, differing from the game in England, where it involved short passes to move the ball towards the opposition's goal. Whitney and his teammates used the fast break, sending long passes downfield to riders who had broken away from the pack at a full gallop. In 1909 a United States team defeated an English team with ease.
In the late 1950s, champion polo player and Director of the Long Island Polo Association, Walter Scanlon, introduced the "short form", or "European" style, four period match, to the game of polo.