The Game of Polo

"Let other people play other things - the king of game is still the game of kings"
Inscribed on a stone tablet next to a polo ground in Gilgit, north of Kashmir, near the silk route from China to the West.

The equestrian sport of polo is thought to be the most ancient of team sports. It was probably first played as a training game for warriors in China and Persia. As the use of cavalry in warfare spread, so did the game of polo. The first recorded polo match occurred in roughly 600 BC between the Turkomans and Persians, with victory going to the Turkomans.

In the 1850s, British tea planters discovered the game in Manipur (Munipoor) on the Burmese border with India. Recorded during the House of Lords debate on Juvraj Tikendrajit's trial on 22nd June 1891 is the Marquess of Ripon's statement, "it is a small State (Manipur), probably until these events took place very little known to your Lordships, unless, indeed, some of you may have heard of it as the birth place of the Game of Polo."

Polo became a popular sport amongst the nobility of Europe. It subsequently arrived in the United States in the 1870s. In 1876, James Gordon Bennett, an American publisher, organized the first polo match in the United States at Dickel's Riding Academy at 39th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. By the 1920s, the sport of polo had spread throughout the United States, and metamorphised into a faster game, with long passes down the field to players in full gallop towards the goal.

Polo is now played almost world-wide, and its popularity has greatly increased in the last twenty years.