Auto Polo (en.wikipedia.org)

44 points by canjobear 3 days ago

12 comments:

by arlobish 43 minutes ago

"The official inventor of auto polo...devised the sport as a publicity stunt in 1911 to sell Model T cars."

Amazing to see how little has changed in 100 years when it comes to competing for attention

by msuniverse2026 27 minutes ago

Australian Motorcycle Chariot Race

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1avID4bJ3pw

by TomMasz an hour ago

Unsurprisingly, it died out "mostly due to the high cost of replacing vehicles". Was it the inspiration for demolition derbies?

by haunter 10 minutes ago

Was? Not with this attitude!

by merelysounds an hour ago

I guess the modern day equivalent (technology that’s relatively new, unsafe and unregulated) would be electric scooter polo? I found no sign of a sport like this though.

I think kick scooter polo exists. And bike polo[1] is well known.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcourt_Bike_Polo

by consumer451 an hour ago

My first thought was that Segways would be ideal for the nerdiest fun modern-ish recreation of polo. It turns out that it was a thing.

> The Segway polo world championship is the Woz Challenge Cup. It is named after Steve "Woz" Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Inc., and a player of Segway polo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway_polo

by swiftcoder an hour ago

WhirlyBall[1], which is kind of like pelota + basketball in bumper cars, seems like a pretty good bet. There are only a handful of courts left, but I've done a few offsites at the Seattle one, and it's good fun.

The bumper cars are truly weird - they draw power from the conductive floor of the court, and have a one-handed control system that makes you trigger forward/reverse by turning the steering wheel a full rotation...

[1]: https://www.whirlyball.com

by dgellow an hour ago

There is also unicycle hockey! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicycle_hockey

Makes me want to dust off mine

by vhcr 43 minutes ago

There's also e-wheel polo

by sandworm101 an hour ago

Nope. The modern version uses motorcycles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoball

>>Motoball is played in a 5v5 format. There are four players on motorcycles, and one on their feet as the goalkeeper.

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