Polo - Polo history
Polo
History
The name comes from the Tibetan Polo 'spo-lo'.
"King of Sports, Sport of Kings", Polo, discipline rather elitist, is one of the oldest sports practiced in the world. It originated in Persia ca. 600 BC. The first polo club was founded by the British in 1859 to Silchar in the Himalayas in India. At the same time, settlers have become known in Argentina. The first regulations were codified by the Hurlingham Club in London.
The InternationalFederation, based in Beverly Hills, was founded in 1983. It currently comprises 48 member countries. First settled in Beverley Hills in California, the current headquarters is located in Vineuil-Saint-Firmin in France. Since 2005 she has chaired by Patrick Guerrand-Hermes. Recognized by the International Olympic Committee in 1987, it organizes the World Cup since 1987. The last edition was held in Mexico in 2008, won by Chile which battuen final defending champion, Brazil. Argentina, Olympic champion in 1924 and 1936, is among the leading experts.
According to an excerpt from 'A hundred years of polo in France' by Jean-Luc A. Chartier
Polo Club Edition - Paris - 1992
If we can not determine precisely where and when born the game of polo, there is agreement, however, consider that there appeared some 2500 years among peoples horsemen from the steppes of Central Asia, between China and Mongolia. It is the first game ball and mallet in the world and perhaps, according to some historians, the oldest team sports. However, if not no doubt about the Eastern origin of polo is in Persia that it is the first traces of this sporting activity mid-, mid-war, which would cross over two millennia to achieve to us. Since its appearance, it is considered a noble art, one of the best warriors, then the kings and princes ... Darius 1, King of Persia (522-486 BC. JC.) Was probably the first major players. In this powerful ruling in Asia Minor, polo is called "chaugan (mallet). It is then less a sport in the modern sense of the term, a training mode of elite troops - as the king's guard - and the monarch himself. It's basically a miniature battle, which can involve dozens of riders in each camp. He quickly became the favorite pastime of the royal courts, in this brilliant civilization and domineering supported by skilled riders and tireless. Noble activity and pageantry, there is richly adorned.
In the late ninth century AD, the Muslim historian Tabari says in his voluminous "Chronicle of prophets and kings," the story of Codoman Darius III, king of Persia between 336 and 330 BC. BC, which sends to humiliate, to Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, a ball and a mallet, thus making him understand the game better suited to his young age and inexperience as warlike activities. "The ball is the earth, and I am the hammer," Alexander meet him, sure of its future conquests ...
But as much as historians, poets is that they must report to us the echoes of the fabulous epic game of polo through the ages.
In the tenth century, the great Persian poet Fidursi mentions in his "Book of Kings", a true history of Persia, a tournament with extreme, a few centuries earlier than seven riders to seven Persian Turkish. A prince named Siawusch would hit the ball with such force that he, the poet says, "is seen near the moon."
Another Persian poet named Arifi, wrote an ode allegorical play about a Prince:
