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ARENA POLO
ОглавлениеIf you thought polo was out of reach, well ‘Arena’ is doing what five-a-side has done for football and making it much more accessible. It’s on a much smaller pitch, 300 by 150 feet, and there are high walls all around, so your horse can’t gallop off out of control. The balls are bigger and softer and if you do fall, you are guaranteed a soft landing because instead of grass, it’s played on rubbery mulch.
‘You can see the ground is nice and soft,’ Phillip Meadows of the Royal Berkshire Polo Club assured me, ‘and you feel safer and more comfortable in that protected environment. It’s when you take people outside onto the full hard grass pitches that they tense up.’
He was right. I joined a game with another novice polo player – Nathaniel Parker, the actor, who I had met on the set of Merlin. He is very experienced on horses and does most of the riding himself when filming. He’s also a huge racing fan, but this was the first time he had been on a polo pony.
‘This is so different. It’s forward, back, left and right, and these horses are so well trained they know more about it than we do. I was out there and I had missed the ball, and the horse was thinking “ah, he’s done it again”, so he turned around and went back to get it,’ he remarked.
It’s true, the arena polo ponies do all the work which is why beginners are able to trot around and get involved after listening to just a few instructions. Indeed after five minutes on the pitch I had forgotten about being on a horse and my main frustration was timing and trying to get to the ball before Nat and his team had smashed it up the other end.
At the top level, arena polo keeps the professional players active during the winter months when the grass pitches are unplayable. England captain James Morrison reckons it’s more physical than the summer game, because all the action is squeezed into a much smaller, enclosed area. ‘It’s more intense and I certainly get a lot more injuries in the winter when playing indoors,’ he said.
Once a year, arena polo is now played in the O2. I took part in a media match there and once again in the comfort of an enclosed, soft pitched arena, my lack of riding experience wasn’t to matter. The pony did all hard bits, cantering up and down while I clung on, trying to enjoy the ride and attempting to get the ball to teammate Kenny Logan, who proved if you can play rugby for your country, you can also cut it in a polo match.
So polo has come within reach. You no longer need your own horse or equipment to swing the mallet these days, and get a taste of the rumble of hooves and smack of ball. It’s become a popular corporate or experience day for a group of mates. Even so, a session won’t leave you much change from £100, but that’s still peanuts compared to the price of some of the four-legged stars of this sport.
For information and to give it a go and for all your polo needs, its www.hpa-polo.co.uk