POLO PONIES

A lot of polo ponies are cutting or Argentine gaucho ponies. These breeds make great low- to medium-goal polo ponies, but most high-goal players are on Thoroughbreds or Thoroughbred crosses. Only animals with a good degree of Thoroughbred blood have the speed and stamina to gallop the long distances required in polo.
High-end polo ponies are, in fact, bred specifically for polo, from successful playing stock. Polo requires not only a level of physical ability and strength, but also a certain ‘heart’ that can’t be judged when analysing potential polo mounts.
You need a pony who is brave, will attack a play, but still be obedient and willing, and breeding from proven stock increases the genetic probability of this ‘heart’ being inherited.
While breeding specifically for polo is an excellent plan when the time and resources are available, it is also a risk. Unless you clone, you cannot affect the genes specifically to breed for the qualities you want.

The mounts used are called ‘polo ponies’, although the term pony is purely traditional and the mount is actually a full-sized horse.
Many people say that an average rider with a brilliant horse can play much better than his actual skill level, while the best player in the world cannot achieve much with the wrong type of horse. Just as in Formula 1, where even the fastest driver can’t win a race if he has a car that doesn’t meet the same standard as his talent. For polo, the speed and agility of the horses is just as vital as the ball skills, horsemanship and talent of the polo player.
The horse has been around for a very long time – the modern day horse’s ancestors walked the Earth for the first time some fifty million years ago. The present day polo horse is the result of more than a century of careful genetic selection and breeding. To understand the present day polo horse we must go back to its origins, those first horses that inhabited the Pampa, who escaped from the first foundations of Buenos Aires in 1536. These horses had Spanish and Berber origins and are the species that gave birth to the criollo horse, which was unbeatable in its rusticity, endurance and ability to adapt.
However, as the game evolved so did the needs of the polo player and their needs from their horses. The best players started looking for the fastest horses so they could out-ride their opponents and get to the ball even quicker. They found it in the thoroughbred race horse, which turned out to be so fast that many high handicap polo horses share stallions with the horseracing world to inherit these racing traits. But this came at a price, they sacrificed manoeuvrability and easiness for speed and agility.
A modification in the rules about horses’ height allowed the use of the thoroughbred racehorse in polo. Previously a horses’ height was limited to 142cm and then to 147cm. In present day polo, the estimated ideal height of a polo horse is 156cm, which is more common height in thoroughbreds than in a crossbred.
Thoroughbreds weigh between four and five hundred kilos and have very powerful muscles and a strong temper. This means they are fast runners, they move with a lot of dexterity and require a very good horseman to ride them.
In Argentina, according to the records of the Asociacion Argentina de Criadores de Caballos de Polo (the Argentine Association of Polo Horse Breeders) around 3,000 foals are born each year. The best of which start competing when they are five years old and continue doing so until they are 12, there are some exceptions with some horses competing until they are 15.