Horsemen of Persia and Central Asia
Nobody knows exactly where polo began, but most historians point to the horse peoples of Persia and Central Asia more than two thousand years ago. It started as a training game for cavalry, teaching riders to control a horse at speed and work as a unit. In Persia it became the game of kings and nobles, and Persian poets wrote about it centuries before anyone in Europe had heard of it. The great square in Isfahan still has the stone goal posts of a royal polo ground.
Along the Silk Road
From Persia the game travelled east and west. It was played at the Tang court in China, across the Indian subcontinent and in the Byzantine Empire. In the high valleys of the Himalaya and in Manipur, in north-east India, a fast and fiercely contested version survived for centuries, and it was there that the modern game was born.
The British discover the game
In the 1850s British tea planters and army officers in Manipur and neighbouring Cachar took up the local game. The first polo club of the modern era was founded at Silchar in 1859, and the Calcutta Polo Club followed in 1862. It is still playing today, which makes it the oldest polo club in the world.
Officers brought the game home, and the first recorded match in England was played by the 10th Hussars at Hounslow Heath in 1869. The Hurlingham Club in west London soon became the headquarters of the game and wrote the first British rules in the 1870s. Those rules, and the governing body that grew from them, the Hurlingham Polo Association, still run polo in the UK.
Argentina and the Americas
British settlers took the game to the Argentine pampas in the 1870s, where an abundance of horses, wide open land and natural horsemanship turned it into a national passion. Argentina now produces the world’s best players and ponies, and the Argentine Open at Palermo in Buenos Aires is the most prestigious tournament in the sport. In the United States, James Gordon Bennett Jr. introduced the game in 1876, and the US Open and the Westchester Cup against Britain soon followed.
Olympic years
Polo was an Olympic sport five times: in 1900, 1908, 1920, 1924 and 1936. Argentina won gold in both 1924 and 1936, a sign of where the balance of power was already heading.
Polo today
Today polo is played on every continent, from the snow of St. Moritz to the beach at Miami and the green lawns of Cowdray Park. The professional high-goal game revolves around a calendar of great tournaments: the US season in Florida in spring, the English season from May to July, and the Argentine Triple Crown from September to December. Women’s polo, arena polo and new short formats are bringing the game to many more people, while the old traditions, from the Gold Cup to treading in the divots, carry on much as they always have.
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