Sports Sponsorship | Polo Team Sponsorship

Polo originated in Persia where it was played by nomadic warriors. The first games in recorded history date from 600 BC. It became the national sport and was played by nobility and military men. The version of polo we recognise in the west has its roots descend from northern India.

Polo today is played by a vast range of people worldwide. Although at the highest levels it requires a lot of funding, it's not just the elite who participate, this is a frequent misconception and there are opportunities for anyone who wants to be involved.

Polo is one of the few sports where men and women can compete together. Amateurs can also compete in a team with the world's best.

Outdoor, grass polo, is played during the summer months of April - September and arena polo is played October - February in the UK. The main polo seasons in each country runs during the summer months. Professional players and patrons often follow the polo seasons around the world.

At the top levels, players may also have a separate strings of ponies another country. The ponies are brought into work to play the season and then turned away to grass for a holiday.

The three most prominent seasons are; the English season which runs from May to July, the Argentine from Oct to Dec and the US, Florida season from Jan to April. There is competitive polo in many countries around the world.

A polo team to play on the grass consists of four riders and their ponies while an arena polo team only has three players due to the restricted size of the area of play.

Polo is played on a grass pitch 300 yards long by 200 yards wide (approx 3 football pitches wide).

A match consists of 4 chukkas which each last for 7.5 minutes. The number of chukkas in a game depends on tournament level. In Low goal games there will be four chukkas while in high goal games will be as many as 6 chukkas in the UK and 8 in the Argentine Open.

Ponies must be changed each chukka and can only play twice in one game with one full chukka break before their second chukka.

There are three main levels - low goal (-2 to 10 goal), medium goal (12 to18 goal) and high goal (18 to 22 Goal) in the UK.

Each player is given a polo handicap based upon their riding, ball and game skills. Polo Handicaps start at –2 and reach 10 goals, 10 being the best in the world and near impossible to achieve.

Currently there are less than ten 10 goalers in the world, at the moment they all are from Argentina and the highest rated British player is 7 goals.

Women's polo in Britain started in London at the Ranelagh Club in 1905. In 1964, Claire Lucas (Tomlinson) played in the Oxford versus Cambridge Varsity Polo match as the first female player. She was also the first woman to play in the high goal Queen's Cup in 1979 after campaigning to change the HPA (Hurlingham Polo Association) rules that women were not allowed to participate at the highest level.

Although all women players have the standard 'mixed handicap' rating, they are now also given a specific women's handicap. This special rating was introduced in 2015 with the aim of ensuring women's tournaments worldwide are more evenly contested as previously there was a vast difference in the ability of players in different countries due to the UK starting on a handicap of -2 and Argentina, for examples, starting their polo handicaps at 0. The women's handicaps also gives the professional women in the sport more recognition of their ability and skills.

The highest mixed polo handicap a woman has achieved in history is 5 goals. Both the American Sunny Hale and British Claire Tomlinson held this record. Currently the highest woman player in the world is British player Nina Clarkin, who is the only person to hold a women's handicap of 10 goals.

Bio-mechanical traits associated with the Polo Pony as an elite performer

All the training in the world will not transform a carthorse into a top polo pony. The genetic make up of the horse greatly limits or accentuates its capacity to respond to any given training programme.

The ‘ponies’ are around 15.2hh in size. Thoroughbred types are commonly used due to their speed but a high goal polo pony also needs to have endurance, intelligence, agility and a lot of ‘heart’.

Americans have bred thoroughbreds to quarter horses to improve agility but since the 1930’s the majority of the very best ponies have come from Argentina where thoroughbreds are crossed with the Argentine native Criollo ponies which has created the Polo Argentino breed.

Now at the top levels the absolute best horses are being selectively bred using advanced techniques such as embryo transfer to incorporate all the main characteristics which are required for a polo pony. Even cloning is now taking place to preserve the bloodlines of the best mares and stallions.

Polo involves short bursts of high intensity exercise, if it is a hard fast game, players may change ponies two or three times during a chukka, often jumping from one to the other, especially in high goal. In low goal this is not as necessary and ponies are usually only changed at the end of each chukka.

Exercise intensities constantly change throughout the chukka; horses work at heart rates of approximately 170 bests/min but may reach maximum heart rates for short periods of time (Marlin & Nankervis,2002).

A polo pony has to carry out aerobic exercise interspersed with anaerobic explosions. To this there must also be control; the horse must stop and turn whenever its rider desires it, whether it is tired or not. This is why training and feeding programmes must be planned with this in mind if optimum physical aptitude is to be achieved.