The sport of polo conjures up a nostalgic image of crisply dressed young men galloping around a green and pleasant field, bashing a ball about to polite applause. Bike polo, its increasingly popular urban cousin, is a little different. City dwellers have swapped thoroughbred horses for steeds of steel and grassy plains for tarmac courts.
The World Hardcourt Bike Polo Championship has just taken place in Geneva and players are now priming themselves for the two biggest fixtures in the UK calendar: the London Open and the women’s tournament, Hell’s Belles, both taking place in east London this weekend (24-26 August). Who needs Hurlingham when you’ve got Bethnal Green?
Jon Marshall, the vice chairman of the London Hardcourt Bike Polo Association (LHBPA), told me that bike polo tournaments are getting serious. “When it started, the polo was just a bit of fun based around the messenger scene,” he says. “People would just get drunk and crash their fixed-gear bikes really fast. Now bike polo is quite separate from that.”
This year the London Open is combining with Hell’s Belles for the first time, meaning 84 teams will compete over three days. With big-name sponsors including Le Coq Sportif and Urban Outfitters, the tournaments have had to move to a bigger site. There will be more courts, spectator seating and a big-screen scoreboard, and matches will be streamed live on the internet.
Strangely, bike polo previously experienced a golden age around a century ago, with a version played on grass featuring in the 1908 London Olympics. The traditional version is still played, but it is the newer, hardcourt game that has been causing a stir over the past five years.
The modern game originated in Seattle but London now has the biggest scene, symptomatic of the burgeoning cycle culture in the capital. The LHBPA has set up bike polo in schools, started a beginners’ league and organised women’s-only “throw ins” (casual polo meetups) to try to diversify those who play. “After we started the school project we realised that with a bit of help we can quickly take the sport to hundreds of people,” says Marshall.
The sport is still a grassroots endeavour, but Jon is working on setting up a nationwide association. This could lead to recognition from Sport England, open the floodgates for lucrative funding and propel bike polo into the mainstream.
Nicola Hamilton, who plays for Tornadoes, set up the first Hell’s Belles tournament last year. “It had the nicest atmosphere,” she says. “We even had girls come from the US and Europe.
“The point was to encourage more girls to play. Because of the tournament loads of girls got to meet each other and become friends and now play in teams with each other. In general the girls are catching up with the boys’ level. I think it’s at a real tipping point at the moment.”
Hamilton’s enthusiasm is beginning to rub off and I cautiously begin to consider trying out the sport myself. I mean, I do ride a bike … But having seen various videos online of spectacular crashes and toe-curling pile-ups, I have to ask about the risks of polo-induced injury. Hamilton reassures me the throw ins are pretty relaxed.
“You do get freak accidents though …” her teammate Erin Giuliani chips in, before telling me a story about two guys who were riding towards each other. One swung his mallet so hard it broke the other’s eye socket.
“We’d seen people’s eyebrows and cheeks get cut before,” she says, “but we never realised you could actually break an eye socket until then.”
I begin to understand why Marshall, in his attempts to encourage newcomers to the sport, is always trying to get more people to put up videos of skill play, “and less crashes”.
But to really understand what it’s all about I need to have a go, so I venture down to one of the beginner polo sessions at the Westway Sports Centre in Kensington. The sessions have been running since March thanks to the council’s Bikeminded scheme, in collaboration with the LHBPA. The uptake so far has been “amazing”, according to Sean Buckley, who runs the sessions, and there is a beginners’ tournament planned for September which already has 16 teams registered.
Under the Westway from Bikeminded on Vimeo.
The session takes place in a floodlit five-a-side court beneath the ominous Westway flyover. I meet fellow beginner Maddie Yuille, who is sipping a beer by the fence.
“My boyfriend kept telling me to try it out,” she says. “It was quite nerve-wracking the first time but I knew I had to persevere to get better.”
Buckley gives me a run down of the rules and within minutes I have mounted one of the single-speed mountain bike conversions that are best suited for the game. Wielding my mallet in my left hand, my right one aching with the strain of balancing, steering and, most importantly, braking, we begin to cruise around the court in teams of three.
With a cry of “One, two, three, polo!” the match begins and we all charge towards the orange plastic hockey ball. The rules are simple; contact has to be like for like – mallet-on-mallet, bike-on-bike, body-on-body; if you put your foot down you have to “tap out” with your mallet on the side wall. The rest depends on your ability to knock the ball into the goal without falling off your bike.
When I finally stop riding round in circles and get the chance to feel the solid smack of the ball on my mallet, it becomes clear why people find it such a satisfying game to play.
“I think it’s easy to learn but hard to master,” says Adam Hebiri, my teammate for that evening, who has been playing since January and is already looking slick on two wheels.
Still, despite several clumsy falls, a lot of swings and even more misses, there are moments when it almost feels as if I am playing the traditional polo game, charging around on horseback with elegance and style. You could even mistake the screeching of brakes for the whinny of a stallion.
From a spectator standpoint, you couldn’t ask for much more from a sport. It is fast-moving, skilful and full of dramatic tumbles. The tournaments this weekend will certainly be a spectacle. With Hell’s Belles kicking off the weekend, bike polo even looks to be following in the tradition of all great horsing events, complete with its very own ladies’ day. And there’s no need to starch your shirt or wear a silly hat.
• Hell’s Belles takes place on 24 August and the London Open on 25-26 August, both at Bethnal Green Gardens, London.
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