Meeting all your needs for
the sport of POLO....
Polo is possibly the world's oldest team
sport. Its origins are lost in history but it might have begun
as a sport played by nomadic warriors in Asia over two thousand
years ago. The word 'polo' is said to derive from 'pulu'-
the Tibetan word for 'willow'- the material from which the
balls were originally made. The Moghul emperors took polo
to India where it was observed by British soldiers in the
early 1800s. It was not until the late 1860s that the sport
of polo had become established in Britain, the rules having
been drawn up by the British cavalry in the 1850s.
The
first regular polo match in England was played at Hounslow
in 1869 between the 10th Hussars and 9th Lancers; it was then
known as 'hockey on horseback'. Hurlingham started polo in
1874 and soon became established as the headquarters of the
sport. An American publisher named James Gordon Bennet took
the game back to New York in 1876 where it became popular
immediately. Within ten years there were polo clubs all over
the eastern United States. Polo had a golden age in the 1930s
when it was an Olympic sport and crowds of 30,000 plus attended
international matches in the United States. Today, there are
many polo-playing countries including South Africa, Australia,
France, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Mexico, with Argentina having
been pre-eminent for over 30 years.
Polo
was re-integrated as an Olympic discipline in 1999 with the
International Polo Federation and the International Olympic
Committee signing an agreement in Lausanne on 13th April.
Polo Merchandise - Polo Events - Polo Tournaments - Polo Ponies
- Polo Equipment
Polo Organisations - Polo Sport
Everything for the Polo Enthusiast
|
