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A Short History
of Polo
Polo is thought to
have originated in China and Persia around 2,000 years ago. The
name of the game may well come from the word “pholo” meaning
'ball' or 'ballgame' in the Balti language of Tibet.
The first recorded
game took place in 600BC between the Turkomans and Persians (the
Turkomans won). In the fourth century AD, King Sapoor II of
Persia learned to play, aged seven. In the 16th century, a polo
ground (300 yards long and with goalposts eight yards apart) was
built at Ispahan, then the capital, by Shah Abbas the Great.
The Moguls were
largely responsible for taking the game from Persia to the east
and, by the 16th century, the Emperor Babur had established it
in India. (It had already long been played in China and Japan,
but had died out by the time the West came in contact with those
countries). In the 1850s, British tea planters discovered the
game in Manipur (Munipoor) on the Burmese border with India.
They founded the world’s first polo club at Silchar, west of
Manipur. Other clubs followed and today the oldest in the world
is the Calcutta Club which founded in 1862.
Malta followed in
1868 because soldiers and naval officers stopped off there on
their way home from India. In 1869, Edward “Chicken” Hartopp, of
the 10th Hussars, read an account of the game in The Field
magazine while stationed at Aldershot and, with fellow officers,
organised the first game. Then known as “hockey on horseback,”
it was played on a hastily-rolled Hounslow Heath where a
shortlist of about 10 rules was also hastily assembled.
But, it was John
Watson (1856-1908), of the 13th Hussars, who formulated the
first real rules of the game in India in the 1870s. He later
formed the celebrated Freebooters team who won the first
Westchester Cup match in 1886. He was a key player at the All
Ireland Polo Club which was founded in 1872 by Horace Rochfort
of Clogrenane, County Carlow.
The first polo
club in England was Monmouthshire, founded in 1872 by Captain
Francis “Tip” Herbert (1845- 1922), of the 7th Lancers, at his
brother's estate at Clytha Park, near Abergavenny. Others,
including Hurlingham, followed quickly.
Handicaps were
introduced by the USA in 1888 and by England and India in 1910.
The first official
match in Argentina took place on 3rd September 1875. The game
had been taken there by English and Irish engineers and
ranchers.
In 1876, Lt Col
Thomas St.Quintin, of the 10th Hussars, introduced the game to
Australia. He is credited with being the Father of Australian
Polo. Two of his brothers stayed on there as ranchers and helped
the game to develop. In the same year, polo was introduced to
the USA by James Gordon Bennett Junior who had seen the game at
Hurlingham during a visit to England.
Today, more than
77 countries play polo. It was an Olympic sport from 1900 to
1939 and has now been recognised again by the International
Olympic Committee.
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