People in more than 60 countries play polo today and competitions attract more than 50 million viewers a year. Polo is most popular in the United Kingdom, Argentina, and the United States, but it has become more popular in Russia in recent times.

Polo is different from other team sports in a number of ways. It requires a huge field, polo horses have to train for years to achieve the required endurance, and players must be very agile and skilled. Polo is full of thrills and danger, which making it more exciting for spectators. Given that the best players tend to be members of royal families, public attention for tournaments is guaranteed. The sport’s regal status derives from its ancient traditions and the way it developed over the centuries.

The game’s history

Polo on horseback is the world’s most ancient team sport and no one knows exactly when it appeared. The first written mention of the game dates back to 600 BC, but the game appeared much earlier in the valleys of Mesopotamia.

Alexander the Great, who conquered Persia in 331 BC, was a big polo fan. In the Middle Ages, polo was a favorite sport of the Byzantine emperors and it became a past-time for aristocrats throughout the Orient. But by the nineteenth century, the game had lost its popularity and was only played in the Indian state of Manipur. Two British officers, Captain Robert Stewart and Lieutenant Joe Shearer, watched the Indians play and then introduced the sport to British officers and merchants shipping tea back to the Old World. Officers of Her Majesty’s Cavalry, all fanatical about polo, established the first polo club, the Cachar Club, in Assam in 1850. The club’s official patron was the Great Moghul, the last ruler of India.

Polo became a high society game in Britain and a compulsory part of education in many prestigious military colleges. The British royal family developed a love and passion for the game. Their royal relatives in Russia also caught on to the game, as did the Russian military elite. The first polo tournament in Russia took place in 1884 at Peterhof. Players included Grand Prince Pyotr Nikolayevich and the members of the winning team were awarded prizes by the Tsarina herself. The 1917 revolution put a stop to the development of polo in Russia, however.

Decades later, the tradition was revived. The first horseback polo tournament in Russia since 1917 took place at Nikolina Gora near Moscow and was organized by the Moscow Polo Club and Alfa Bank.

The Moscow Polo Club

Victor Huaco, organizer of what is Russia’s first and so far only polo club, was one of the first foreigners to come and do business in Russia. He arrived in 1991 and has lived here permanently since 1993. He is a partner at ESN Group, a group of companies specialized in investment in and management of the Russian energy sector. Huaco created the Moscow Polo Club with ESN President Grigory Beryozkin.

"People who play polo say that polo is not an activity you just spend your money on," Huaco said. "Practice shows that polo is not a business you can make a profit out of. If you manage to cover your costs, than it is already a very good result. So organizing this polo club is something I do for pleasure."

Everything began with a group of enthusiasts who rode their horses outside Moscow at Gorki-10 and found plenty of fields with level ground that would be perfect for polo.

"Finally, two years ago, I realized that it was time to stop talking and begin doing something and I started work on this project," Huaco said. "I sensed that there was a group of people who would be willing to invest their time, train and learn, so that we could put together a polo team in Moscow. We began from scratch, built a field, imported special polo horses from Argentina and also three Argentine trainers, two specialists to train horses and the manager of our club to train players." Almost all polo horses around the world are from Argentina. This is because the Argentines are the best players and know how to breed and train the right horses. The Moscow Polo Club imported 25 horses of an average age of seven years for its tournament. The horses are already well-trained and will be able to take part in polo tournaments in Russia for another ten years. The horses were flown to Amsterdam and then transported to Russia by truck.

The club’s organizers have already achieved a lot of what they set out to do. They have put together a team and have held two tournaments — in September 2003 and February 2004, in which teams from other countries took part.

"In creating the Moscow Polo Club, I wanted to return polo to Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union," Huaco said. "The Russians were always excellent riders, but unfortunately there was a long hiatus, and so the club’s mission is now to revive tradition and create the conditions and infrastructure for training players."

Polo competitions in Russia

Among those invited to the first polo tournament in Moscow were the presidents of the Brazilian and Argentine polo federations, two of the best players from Mexico and two of the best from Britain, along with Yuvraj Shivraj Singh III — a member of India’s national team. Players also included the first Russian woman professional player - Vladlena Bernandoni Belolipskaya — who has her own polo team, Vlada in Berkshire. Alfa Bank President Pyotr Aven and Vice President Alexander Gafin watched the event, as did many prominent Russian business, sports and cultural figures. Teams from Alfa Bank, ESN and others took part in the tournament.

The club will hold a summer polo tournament in May 2004, an event eagerly awaited by both players and fans alike.

The tournament in February that took place on the snow-covered ground of the Moscow Hippodrome was a particularly unusual event in the equestrian sports world. There is not such a big difference between ordinary polo and polo in the snow, but the horses get tired more quickly in the snow and the matches are shorter. The players are also outfitted differently.

The world’s most prominent snow polo tournament takes place in Switzerland’s Saint Moritz every January. In Russia, such winter tournaments had never been held and the February event was the first of its kind in the country’s history.