Who Invented the Sport of Polo?
Polo is a sport involving teams of four riders, each mounted on horseback. Players carry a long-handled mallet and attempt to hit a ball through the goal of the opposing team. Traditional polo is played on large, grassy fields at high speed. The sport is believed to have originated as part of military training exercises.
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History
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The invention of polo is attributed to the Persians (modern Iran) of about 2,000 years ago. The first recorded game occurred in 600 B.C. between the Persians and the Tukomans. The sport continued in Persia, and in the fourth century A.D. Persian history records that King Sapor II learned the game at the age of seven. Shah Abbas the Great of Persia built a royal polo field in the sixteenth century that was 300 yards long.
India
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The Moguls took the game east, and by the 16th century, polo was established in India by the Emperor Babur. In the 1850s, British planters in India discovered the game and established the first polo club. The oldest polo club still in existence is the Calcutta Club, established in 1862.
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Spread
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John Watson of the British 13th Hussars formulated the rules of the game in India in the 1870s. Polo came to Britain shortly thereafter and spread to the United States in 1878. Since the early 1900s, English and U.S. teams have occasionally met for the International Polo Challenge Cup. Polo has been played at several Olympic Games. The last Olympic polo match was held in 1936.
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References
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- Photo Credit Polo Players image by Clarence Alford from Fotolia.com
