Ep. 154: When Lone Star Cowboys Took the Sport of Kings
Polo is called the sport of kings — but in America, it ran on Texas cow ponies.
In this episode of Wise About Texas, host Ken Wise traces the interesting but often ignored history of Texas polo, beginning with cavalry drills in sixth-century B.C. Persia and ending on a ranch in Kendall County. The game reached the United States in the 1870s when New York Herald owner James Gordon Bennett brought mallets home from England — but the horses he needed were not in New York or London. They were in Texas.
By 1885 San Antonio was the headquarters of polo pony development in the United States, with…
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