111 pointsby canjobear5 days ago15 comments
  • esperent2 days ago
  • cheschire2 days ago
    I’m sure many of us are reminded immediately of the old Top Gear auto football matches:

    https://youtu.be/SIeu7_-iwdw

  • etrautmann2 days ago
    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...
    • djsavvy2 days ago
      This is absolutely incredible!
  • arlobish2 days 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

  • msuniverse20262 days ago
    Australian Motorcycle Chariot Race

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

    • Oarch2 days ago
      These days I have to check the upload date to see if I'm being duped. At 8 years ago this one passes!
    • fwipsy2 days ago
      Cool. How do they stop?
  • TomMasz2 days ago
    Unsurprisingly, it died out "mostly due to the high cost of replacing vehicles". Was it the inspiration for demolition derbies?
  • merelysounds2 days 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

    • consumer4512 days 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

    • swiftcoder2 days 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

    • dgellow2 days ago
      There is also unicycle hockey! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicycle_hockey

      Makes me want to dust off mine

    • vhcr2 days ago
      There's also e-wheel polo
    • sandworm1012 days 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.

    • tigerlily2 days ago
      I for one wish for mobile crane joust.
  • rmoriz2 days ago
    Bike Polo is still alive https://youtu.be/CBZgC7u6ji8 and for example https://youtu.be/PxMms5Yh_gI
    • fnordian_slip2 days ago
      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

  • NoSalt2 days ago
    Vehicles ... dirt track ... large, wooden mallets ... no protective gear ... I see this as an absolute win!
  • nticompass2 days ago
    Can someone add this as a new game mode in Rocket League?
  • haunter2 days ago
    Was? Not with this attitude!
  • xg152 days ago
    > though deaths due to auto polo were rare.

    Oh well, then...

  • prmph2 days ago
    What an incredibly bad idea!

    To hear it was "popular"...

  • empath752 days ago
    Rocket League is basically the video game version of this.
  • 2 days ago
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