Polo sports in singapore

Polo is arguably the oldest recorded team sport in known history, with the first matches being played in Persia over 2,500 years ago. 

Thought to have been created by competing tribes of Central Asia and then adopted as a training method for the King’s elite cavalry, it was adopted as the most noble of pastimes by Kings, Emperors and Caliphs, as a result, it became known across ancient lands as “the game of kings”.

British officers themselves re-invented the game in 1862 after seeing a horsemanship exhibition in Manipur, India. The sport was introduced into England in 1869, and seven years later sportsman James Gordon Bennett imported it to the United States. After 1886, English and American teams occasionally met for the International Polo Challenge Cup. Polo was on several Olympic games schedules, but was last an Olympic sport in 1936. 

Modern polo is played on grass, a full-size field being 275 metres (300 yards) long and 180 metres (200 yards) wide if un-boarded, or 140 metres (160 yards) if boarded.

Two teams of four players mounted on horses compete to put an 8.8cm ball (today commonly made of a synthetic material, but in more ancient times from a root, “pulu” in Tibetan, which probably accounts for the origin of the name of the sport) through goal posts standing at one end or the other of the field and the teams change ends after each goal scored.

A complete polo match consists of either 6 or 8 periods or chukkas of 7 minutes each. The play is usually so intense that players normally require to mount fresh horses after each chukka.