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Auto Polo (en.wikipedia.org)
112 points by canjobear 58 days ago
15 comments

Mad Max 1910
incredible indeed!
I’m sure many of us are reminded immediately of the old Top Gear auto football matches:

https://youtu.be/SIeu7_-iwdw

Fun to see this here. I had the good fortune of participating in the first match of motorcycle polo in Rwanda back in 2007. This continued on for a while and eventually got a writeup in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/sports/motorized-polo-gai...
This is absolutely incredible!
"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

Australian Motorcycle Chariot Race

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

These days I have to check the upload date to see if I'm being duped. At 8 years ago this one passes!
Cool. How do they stop?
Unsurprisingly, it died out "mostly due to the high cost of replacing vehicles". Was it the inspiration for demolition derbies?
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

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

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

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

Makes me want to dust off mine

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.

There's also e-wheel polo
I for one wish for mobile crane joust.
Bike Polo is still alive https://youtu.be/CBZgC7u6ji8 and for example https://youtu.be/PxMms5Yh_gI
I clicked the first link, expecting something akin to cycleball [0], and was rather surprised by the fact that it was so different from that.

We really should have an ocho channel for sports like this (of course /r/theocho exists, but it's not the same).

0: https://youtu.be/1UdoumWFWz8

Rocket League is basically the video game version of this.
I would love to see it make a comeback. Definitely not the dullest of entertainment.
Vehicles ... dirt track ... large, wooden mallets ... no protective gear ... I see this as an absolute win!
Was? Not with this attitude!
Can someone add this as a new game mode in Rocket League?
> though deaths due to auto polo were rare.

Oh well, then...

What an incredibly bad idea!

To hear it was "popular"...