What an odd game

I saw a sport I had never seen before on Sunday. A friend of mine, Jon,
who is currently undergoing studying as an Office Cadet at Sandhurst
invited me along to watch a polo match at the Royal Military Academy.

What an odd game! It is played on an absolutely huge field. I would
guess about three times the size of a football pitch (perhaps not
surprisingly, given that horses do run rather faster than your average
premiership footballer). And, although we saw lots of goals scored (10
in all, I think) it still struck me as a wonder that anyone could score
– hitting a small ball with a five foot long mallet, whilst cantering
(at least) on a horse must require a fair degree of coordination This
is apparently not quite the most spectacular game of its kind in the
world though, as I was informed that in Nepal, they tend to play using
elephants (and oh my god, but its
only true!).

As the above photo shows, it was a very overcast day. In fact, we were
astonishingly lucky because there was a huge rainstorm about twenty
minutes after the end of the match. However, prior to that there was
certainly a lot of thunder in the air, which has a tendency to spook the
horses out a bit. This led to one of the most brilliant health and
safety warnings I have ever heard. Adding to the atmosphere of the place
were two Hussars in full dress uniform (you can see one of them in the
centre of the photo below). There horses seemed to be particularly jumpy
as the lightening storms approached. Indeed, earlier in the afternoon,
one of them had actually bolted, at full gallop across the field. I’d
never seen a horse bolt before, and I can quite honestly say it was
quite terrifying (or at least it was once I realised that the horse was
out of control – not really being familiar with military or equestrian
etiquette I just assumed that the rider was bursting to be excused…).

At the prize giving, the horse that had previously bolted was back on
parade, again getting very edgy as the lightening got closer. This
prompted the base commander of Sandhurst to issue a warning to the crowd
that, not only might the horses bolt, but in the event that they did the
Hussars would be "throwing" their swords away, and it would be best if
everyone tried very hard not to get in the way. Needless to say, this
was once piece of health and safety advice it seemed sensible to heed.