Polo and Equestrian Sports: Rules, Terms and Medals

Polo and the equestrian disciplines are the two horse sports that general knowledge papers draw from, and they are asked almost every year in one-mark form: the number of players in a polo team, the name of a period of play, the state where modern polo began, the world body for equestrian sport, or the Indian rider who won two silver medals at an Asian Games. Both sports are also the oldest kind of organised game played in India, and the modern form of polo is an Indian export to the world, which is why examiners treat the chapter as static general knowledge rather than current affairs.

Polo: the game, the ground and the terms

Polo is played on horseback by two teams of four players each, who drive a small ball into the opponent goal with a long-handled mallet. The ground is the largest in any organised sport: about 300 yards long and 160 yards wide when it is boarded, and up to 200 yards wide without boards, with the goal posts set eight yards apart. A match is divided into periods called chukkas, each of seven minutes, and a match has four to six of them depending on the tournament. Ponies are changed between chukkas because the work is severe; any horse may be used, and the old height limit was abolished, so the term polo pony is traditional rather than technical. Horses are measured in hands, one hand being four inches.

• The four positions are numbered one to four, number one playing forward and number four, the back, defending.
• Every player carries a handicap rated in goals from minus two to plus ten, and the team handicap is the sum of the four; a ten-goal handicap is the highest honour in the game.
• Common terms are the ride-off, in which a player pushes an opponent off the line of the ball, the hook, in which one mallet blocks another, and the throw-in, with which play restarts.
• Arena polo, played in an enclosed sand arena with a larger ball, has three players a side.

Polo in India

Modern polo grew out of Sagol Kangjei, the horseback game of Manipur, which is therefore called the birthplace of modern polo; the Manipuri pony is the breed on which it was played. British tea planters who saw the game founded the Silchar Polo Club in Assam in 1859, the first polo club in the world, and the Calcutta Polo Club of 1862 is the oldest surviving polo club anywhere. The Ezra Cup, instituted in 1880, is the oldest polo tournament in India, and other well known trophies are the Sir Pratap Singh Cup and the Maharaja Jiwajirao Scindia Gold Cup. The Indian Polo Association governs the sport in the country, while the Federation of International Polo is the world body and runs the World Polo Championship. Jaipur, Jodhpur and Delhi are the main centres, and Sawai Man Singh II of Jaipur is the best remembered Indian patron and player of the game. Polo was an Olympic sport in five editions between 1900 and 1936, after which it was dropped; Argentina, the leading polo nation, won the last Olympic title and its Argentine Open at Palermo is the most important tournament in the world.

Equestrian sport and the FEI

Equestrian means riding sport as a whole, and its world governing body is the Federation Equestre Internationale, founded in 1921 with its headquarters at Lausanne in Switzerland. Besides the Olympic disciplines it recognises driving, endurance riding, vaulting and para-equestrian events. Equestrian has two distinctions that papers love: it is the only Olympic sport in which men and women compete against each other in the same events, and the only one in which an animal takes part alongside the athlete.

The three Olympic disciplines

India in equestrian sport

The Equestrian Federation of India runs the sport in the country and the armed forces, especially the cavalry regiments and the Remount and Veterinary Corps, have supplied most of its riders. India won its first equestrian gold at the Asian Games held in Delhi in 1982. Fouaad Mirza brought the sport back into the headlines by winning two silver medals, individual and team, in eventing at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, and he went on to represent India at the Olympic Games. At the 2022 Asian Games, held in Hangzhou, the Indian team won the gold medal in team dressage, the country first equestrian gold in four decades. Tent pegging, in which a rider lifts a peg from the ground with a lance at the gallop, is another equestrian event in which Indian army riders have done well.

Indian horse breeds and allied horse sports

The recognised Indian horse and pony breeds are the Marwari of Rajasthan, famous for ear tips that curve inward and touch, the Kathiawari of Gujarat, the Manipuri pony of the polo country, and the mountain breeds Spiti, Zanskari, Bhutia and Chummarti. Horse racing, run by the turf clubs, is a separate professional sport whose best known race is the Indian Derby at the Mahalaxmi racecourse in Mumbai. Polocrosse and horseball are hybrid games that mix riding with ball play.

Exam point traps

Four confusions decide most questions. A polo team has four players, not eleven or six. The period is a chukka, while a quarter belongs to basketball and an inning to cricket. The birthplace of modern polo is Manipur, not Persia, although the ancient game is Persian in origin. And the governing body of equestrian sport is the FEI, not the International Olympic Committee or the Indian Polo Association.