Let other people play at other things. The king of games is still the game of kings.
This verse is inscribed on a stone tablet next to a polo ground in Gilgit, north of Kashmir, near the fabled silk route from China to the West. In one ancient sentence it epitomises the feelings of the players today.
It’s all things equestrian at the Nihiwatu from November 3-10. That’s when the 21-villa resort on the Indonesian island of Sumba celebrates the occasion of it joining the British Polo Day series, an international network founded in 2009 that includes events in Morocco and Russia.
In a thrilling four chukkas of polo at the Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club, the rampant London foursome of James Cooper, Arthur Cole-Fontayn, Kristina Karailieva and Harold Hodges smashed ten goals past an accomplished Oxford side of William Hsu, Chris de Kroning, Lawrence Wang and Louis Maddison, who managed six in return.
In the final round of preliminary matches at the Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club today, Harvard Polo Club defeated Yale University Polo Club by 8 goals to 6, while University of London Polo Club dispatched Stanford Polo Club by 10 goals to 4.5. London and Harvard will join Cambridge and Oxford to contest the semi-finals of the Metropolitan Intervarsity Polo 2015 – The London Challenge on Saturday; Stanford and Yale will fight it out for fifth place.
The invention of the ancient sport of polo, called the King of Sports and the Sport of Kings, had been dated to the 6th century B.C. in Persia, but that may be changing soon.
Archaeologists have excavated three leather balls and eight long-handled polo sticks from the Yanghai Tombs in Turpan, China, dated to between 2,400 and 2,800 years old. If they are as old as 2,800 years, they predate the previous estimated date for the invention of polo.
Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club has announced that Metropolitan Intervarsity Polo 2015 - The London Challenge will take place from 21 to 26 July 2015 at the club.
Following two successful editions of the Arena Polo World Cup Azerbaijan, World Polo GmbH now raises the stakes and presents the 1st FIP Arena Polo European Championship Azerbaijan in Baku in September.
The Indian state of Manipur, the birthplace of modern polo, is home to the oldest active polo ground, Mapal Kangjeibung. Here, the “game of kings” is the province of the common man: Masons, laborers, government employees and police officers populate the roughly 20 active polo clubs in Imphal, the capital.
