Polo Takes On Jumbo Proportions

Recruit a two-ton goalkeeper, gather a gaggle of jet-setters, call in the pooper-scoopers and what do you have?

The hugely entertaining, esoteric and expanding sport of elephant polo.

Although the game’s roots go back to the Mogul princes of 18th century India, man and pachyderm began playing it as an organized sport in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal in 1982.

Each December, teams from around the world assemble for a weeklong competition against the backdrop of the snowy, shimmering, peaks and hard by the Royal Chitwan National Park where tigers and rhinos roam.

The out-of-the-way event has attracted royals, celebrities and eccentrics, including former Beatle Ringo Starr, actress Stefanie Powers, ex-tennis star Bjorn Borg and Florida tycoon, hot-air balloonist and corkscrew collector Alf Erickson. Erickson’s Screwy Tuskers team routinely finishes last.

“It’s a crazy game,” said co-creator Jim Edwards. “The idea of elephants conjures up fun, amazement and awesomeness. People are intrigued by the idea of a two-ton animal following a ball weighing a few ounces.”

Last February, Sri Lanka staged the world’s first beach elephant polo contest, and recently the sport lumbered into a third country when Thailand held the first King’s Cup Elephant Polo Tournament at the seaside resort of Hua Hin.

The Thai tournament, which is planned to become an annual event, was won by a seasoned team from Nepal. Squads from Singapore and Sri Lanka also took part.

“We’re now on a steep learning curve,” said Bjorn Richardson, a former Swedish cavalry officer practicing for his first game along with 12 Thai elephants. The animals appeared to catch on faster.

“My elephant got so tired of me missing the ball that he just picked it up and handed it to me,” said Richardson, a Thailand-based hotelier who played for one of two Thai teams.

According to World Elephant Polo Assn. rules, elephants aren’t allowed to use their trunks to pick up the ball, the same as that used in horse polo. “No elephant may lie down in front of the goal mouth,” reads another rule, inserted after one team tried to get away with just that.

Soccer balls were used during the first game, but according to a veteran Indian player, Col. Raj Kalaan, an elephant stepped on one by mistake and apparently enjoyed the tickling sensation of the escaping air. Thereafter the beasts stomped on one ball after another.

Similar to horse polo, but played on a shorter field, elephant polo has teams of three animals with a “mahout,” or driver, and a player atop each. The player is required to wear a colonial-era cap and wields a cane stick that can be more than 8 feet long.

The key to winning, Kalaan said, is “getting the mahout, player and an agile elephant on the same wave length.”

While horses race across a polo field at up to 25 miles an hour, the elephants’ speed--9 mph max--sometimes slows down the pace of play. But the jumbos make it up in raw power: One elephant outweighs the entire lineup of an American football team.

During the action, squads of pooper-scoopers must dodge huge legs and swinging sticks to pick up copious amounts of dung. Kalaan recalled trying to strike a ball lodged between two hillocks of dung only to miss and send globs of elephant excrement into the face of an opponent.

“I think the elephants certainly enjoy it,” Kalaan said. “Many of them together, interacting, that’s what they like. It’s totally different from their boring daily routine of carrying tourists on safaris.”

Edwards and a friend, Scottish landlord and Olympic bobsledder James Manclark, came up with the idea for an elephant polo competition over buttered rum at a bar in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Things got rolling when Edwards received a six-word telegram now legendary among the fraternity: “Have long sticks. Get elephants ready.”

Edwards keeps 25 elephants at his Tiger Tops lodge, an award-winning eco-tourism venture that serves as base for the annual elephant polo tournament.