Polo Equipment

Kit rarely fails on the field. It fails in a dark corner of a tack room between October and April, while nobody is looking. A saddle put away damp develops mould across the panels. Gloves dried on a radiator crack. Whites stored in a plastic garment bag come out faintly yellow. A merino base layer … Read more

Three garments, one fabric. Ona Polo’s base layer collection is built on a single construction, the same merino blend, the same weight, the same seams, which means the choice between Selknam, Quillah and Howsh is not a choice about quality or warmth. It is a choice about how you ride, how you wash, and what … Read more

Arena polo is not a smaller version of grass polo. It is a different game played by the same riders, on the same kind of horse, with a different ball, a different number of players, a different set of distances and, in one significant respect as of this season, a different equipment requirement. It is … Read more

There is a moment, familiar to every polo player who has ridden through a British winter, that no amount of talent prepares you for. The chukka ends. You come off a pony that has just carried you through seven minutes of sprints, turns and full-swing effort, and you are soaked through. Then you stand still. … Read more

Polo is one of the oldest and most misunderstood team sports in the world. To the newcomer it can look like organised chaos: eight riders on horses galloping at speeds of up to 35 mph, a small white ball, and long-handled mallets swinging at speed. In reality, polo is a game of precise rules, defined … Read more

Few sports are as instantly recognisable, or as widely misunderstood, as polo. To the newcomer it can look like an exclusive spectacle of galloping horses and swinging mallets. To the initiated it is one of the most demanding team sports in the world , a contact sport played at close to 35 miles per hour … Read more

Polo asks more of its equipment than almost any other sport. A player is riding a half-tonne animal at speed, swinging a long mallet with one hand, tracking a small ball across an outfield the size of nine football pitches, and doing it in close physical contact with three other riders doing exactly the same … Read more

Polo has a reputation problem. For a sport that anyone can try on a Saturday afternoon for roughly the price of a decent dinner, it carries an unusually heavy reputation for exclusivity ,  one that keeps a great many capable riders, and a great many curious non-riders, from ever booking a first lesson. The reality … Read more

  Of all the equipment that defines polo, none is more elemental than the ball. It is the smallest object on the field and yet the focus of everything that happens there: struck, chased and contested across acres of turf at remarkable speed. For a sport so rich in tradition and refinement, the ball is … Read more

Watch a chukka of high-goal polo for the first time and your eye follows the ball, the mallet, the players leaning from their saddles. Watch a second time, and something else comes into focus: the horse. The sudden stop from a flat gallop, the pivot on the hindquarters, the fearless shoulder-to-shoulder ride-off – these are … Read more