Polo is considered one of mankind’s oldest team sports. It dates back more than 2,500 years, and it’s a military sport, developed to keep mounted warriors and their steeds ready for combat.

Famous leaders such as Alexander the Great, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Gen. George Patton Jr. are all credited as having been enthusiastic polo players. The modern version of polo came from British officers who observed Indians playing polo in Manipur in the 1860s and brought the sport back to England. Rules were codified, and from England, polo spread across Europe and to the U.S. in 1876.

The first recorded military polo match in the U.S. is said to have been played in 1896 at Fort Riley, Kansas. It was quickly recognized as an outstanding activity for cavalrymen because it sharpened riding skills and improved the maneuverability of cavalry horses, among other benefits. The Army General Staff supported polo for the cavalry, but polo also caught on with the other branches, especially the artillery, given their weapons were horse-drawn until mechanized before World War II.

Heyday Period

The heyday of military polo in the U.S. was the interwar period. By 1940, the U.S. Polo Association had over 1,430 military personnel registered as players—nearly double the number of civilians registered. The cadet polo team at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, garnered five national intercollegiate championships, and armories sprang up at college campuses across the country. The armories often included stables and arena space for polo, allowing the sport to be taught to ROTC cadets.

Back then, the Army General Staff knew that polo demanded high levels of athletic ability, stamina and outright courage. Perhaps that explains why then-Col. Lucian Truscott, an outstanding cavalryman known as one of the Army’s top hard-charging, aggressive polo players, was chosen to go to England in early 1942 to develop Rangers into commandos. When the U.S. entered World War II, Army leaders wanted to establish commando units like those Great Britain had. The same qualities required in polo are what members of commando units needed.

The success of the mechanized blitzkrieg by the German army in 1939 and 1940 convinced American military leaders to accelerate the mechanization of the U.S. Army, and the chief of cavalry position was abolished in early 1942. With the last U.S. horse cavalry charge made by the 26th Cavalry Regiment against the Japanese on Bataan in January 1942, the horse cavalry faded from the Army. This, in turn, spelled the death of polo as the sport that up-and-coming military officers should play. It was replaced postwar by golf, a sport that may have included strategy and hitting skill, but one that moved at a walking pace.

Battle Preparation

What value does polo have to the modern military leader?

Before trying my hand at polo, I wondered about that myself, especially when I read that Patton held it to be one of the best sporting preparations for modern mobile combat. I didn’t believe Patton’s assessment. At the time, I was a seasoned armor/cavalry captain, having recently completed a four-year assignment in Cold War Germany leading tank and scout platoons. I commanded a tank company in addition to being an experienced horse rider who had earned my spurs on the West Point Equestrian Team.

However, once I took polo lessons, I broke the code on what Patton meant.

Polo teaches mastery of situational awareness to keep track of three teammates plus four opponents moving at the same speeds a modern tank can maneuver cross-country—35 to 40 mph—as well as a ball that can move about 100 mph. Polo also requires split-second decision-making made with a cool head while hot, adrenalin-infused blood is pumping. In addition, the wrong move in polo can break your neck, just as the wrong move on the battlefield can be catastrophic.

The sport teaches teamwork with your horse to maneuver around the playing field, plus teamwork to mesh with the movements of teammates to anticipate how to defeat opponents. That mirrors a tank platoon, which now consists of four tanks. Likewise, the teamwork between a polo player and his horse imitates that needed between a tank commander and his tank driver to maneuver around the battlefield. But a polo pony needed to teach that mastery of situational awareness costs millions of dollars less than an Abrams tank.

Leadership Skills

Is anything else beneficial lurking within the sport of polo?

Does the responsibility of taking good care of a horse and the challenge of learning to work with and train a teammate that doesn’t communicate verbally translate to the responsibility of taking good care of one’s troops and the easier task of training teammates who do communicate verbally?

Consider a staff team-building exercise with polo. Might horses pose an interesting leadership challenge because they don’t care what exalted rank you might have? All they care about is whether you know what you’re doing in the saddle and can instill trust and confidence in them to barrel down the field at breakneck speed and spin on a dime when needed. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll be making a “walk of shame” to catch your horse after being thrown off.

Seeing how a player treats and trains their polo horse can indicate how they might treat their troops as a leader.

Taking it a step further, can polo indicate the true mettle of a military leader as to how they might behave during combat? Consider the following: In polo, there is a standard maneuver called a ride-off, which equates to a hip check in hockey, only this is done at a gallop with a 1,500-pound horse slamming into an opponent to get the ball away from them or block them out of a play.

In essence, it takes guts to execute it effectively, as well as skill and common sense to do it safely. When this maneuver is called for under the stress of a polo match, it indeed can reveal the tendencies one will have when faced with the intense pressure of battle.

Foreign Affairs

Is there anything else of value here? How about enhancing military-to-military relations by polo team exchanges with foreign countries?

In the past few decades, U.S. military polo teams have traveled to India, Great Britain, France, Germany, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Greece and Nigeria, among other places. From personal experience, I know of no other sport that generates such deep and lasting international friendships.

In addition, sending U.S. military polo teams overseas can provide U.S. ambassadors and defense attaches the opportunity to attend matches where they can meet with top foreign defense officials for substantive conversations in a relaxed atmosphere.

In one instance, in 1994, the U.S. ambassador to India sent the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a cable praising the U.S. military polo team that came there and requested they keep coming over. Why? It gave him two hours of time to chat one on one, sitting next to the Indian army chief of staff with no one listening in, which otherwise was impossible to do.

Finally, polo is played in at least 80 countries, and polo clubs in their capitals are usually where one can quickly tap into the elite decision-making networks of that country. Becoming skilled at, or at least familiar with, polo can allow U.S. defense attachés to get a leg up on plugging into those networks, connections that normally would take years to build.

The U.S. Polo Association has a committee dedicated to supporting military polo and provides a moderate budget to help fund such expeditions. The association also provides limited support to entities such as the Army Polo Club (no affiliation with the U.S. Army) located in The Plains, Virginia, to provide low-cost polo training for military personnel, veterans and the military community.

In addition, it helps support the polo clubs that host the national interservice polo championship and other competitions. Moreover, annual membership in the U.S. Polo Association is free for military personnel.

In short, saddle up for polo.

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Maj. Mark Gillespie, U.S. Army retired, served 20 years in the Army, with his final assignment as operations officer at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Washington, D.C. He commanded armor and cavalry units during the Cold War in Germany. He coached the Cadet Equestrian Team while an assistant professor in the Department of History at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. He currently runs the Army Polo Club, The Plains, Virginia, and serves as chairman of the Armed Forces Committee of the U.S. Polo Association. He graduated from West Point in 1977. He has two master’s degrees: one in history from Yale University, Connecticut, and one in international relations from Georgetown University, Washington.