Yak Polo - A Mongolian Variant of the Traditional Game

I had a chance to search the web for sports trends for my site The UncoolHunter.com and i could see an interesting Polo variant; Yak Polo.

Polo is a team sport played outdoor on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing team. Riders score by driving a white wooden or plastic ball into the opposing team’s goal using a long-handled mallet.

Yak polo (or sarlagan polo) is a Mongolian variant of the original polo. It is played on yaks instead of on horseback.  This sport was originally designed to entertain tourists, much like the elephant and camel versions do. This game was also created to evoke the glories of the once-great Mongol empire and because of the necessity of Mongolians to reinvent themselves for the adventure and “ecotourist” market.

The Mongolian Association of Sarlagan Polo claims that the sport is booming, with four games a week since summer of 2006.

These show games are periodically done in Ulan Bator, the Mongolian Capital.

Nowadays the skillful riders of Mongolia’s nomadic population were putting their mounts yaks to this new unlikely use.
In an interview published on the London Daily Telegraph, Miss Tsedendamba Monhzul, whose family set up the first yak polo team last year, said that yaks can be trained to cope with a range of playing surfaces. In December, when temperatures plunge to minus 22 degrees, they play on the iced-over rivers.