DANGERS OF POLO. 69 



The causes of the accidents which occur in polo 

 may be summed up as follows : 



I. Faidty potties. — A polo pony should be under 

 his rider's control, should be up to his rider's weight, 

 should be thoroughly trained to the game, should 

 have good shoulders, and should not be liable to 

 cross his legs or speedy cut. Many ponies, however, 

 are played in fast games before they know their 

 work, and even before they are properly broken. 

 Consequently they pull, get out of control, and will 

 neither stop nor turn. The well-trained ones, on 

 the contrary, will stop dead to avoid a collision, will 

 turn, as the saying is, on a sixpenny-piece, and, like 

 clever Irish hunters, will have a spare leg for every 

 emergency. Besides, they will use their weight to 

 such advantage that it will be exceedingly difficult 

 to knock them over, even if they be charged almost 

 at right angles. 



Some people aver that it is more dangerous to 

 play on big ponies than on small ones. This, I 

 think is wTong ; for apart from the question of 

 hardness of ground (see following paragraph), we 

 cannot get over the fact that falls from colliding and 

 crossing are more frequent in India than in England. 

 Besides, big ponies are stronger than little ones, 

 bumps take less effect on them, they are up to more 

 weight, and consequently they are less likely to fall. 

 The old idea that big ponies cannot be made as 

 handy as little ones has been entirely exploded. In 

 fact many leading English players hardly ever ride a 

 pony less than 14.2, and yet I have never seen 

 handier ones in India than some of them. Still, I 

 am prepared to admit that big ponies take more time 



