Polo in France

What is Polo?

Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing team. Riders score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team’s goal using a long-handled mallet. The traditional sport of polo is played at speed on a large grass field up to 300 yards in length, and each polo team consists of four riders and their mounts.

A modern variant is called arena polo which is played indoors or more commonly outdoors on an enclosed all-weather surface (the field of play is much smaller, rarely exceeding 100 yards in length). In arena polo there are only three players on each team and a small inflatable leather ball is used instead. Arena polo matches usually consist of four 6 minute periods (called chukkas or chukkers), as opposed to field polo matches which consist of between four and eight 7 minutes chukkas (depending on the level being played).

Another modern variant is snow polo, which is played on compacted snow on flat ground or a frozen lake. The format of snow polo varies depending on the space available. Each team generally consists of three players and a bright colored light plastic ball is preferred. Other variants include camel polo, elephant polo, bike polo and Segway polo. These sports are considered as separate sports because of the differences in the composition of teams, equipment, rules, game facilities etc.

There are various Polo clubs in France all under the umbrella of the International Polo Federation (IFP) and the federation Français de Polo (FFP) The La FFE organise le Grand Tournoi de polo club (ETF)

FH&C will be bringing you more information on Polo in France and are always interested to receive results, information and stories from our readers.

Information can be found for all these associations on their web sites :-