Nepal Wins World Elephant Polo Championships

This is the World Elephant Polo Championships, hosted in Nepal. A pitch of jumbo proportions was set up at the Bardia National Park.

Teams from all over the globe came to take part in this special tournament including Scotland, the United Arab Emirates and Austria.

[Peter Prentice, World Elephant Polo Association]:
"We have supported this country (Nepal) with Elephant Polo ever since 1982 and will continue to do so. And this year in fact is the biggest tournament we have ever had -twelve teams competing in these championships and three new countries coming to the frame- so we are very excited about this year."

Two British adventurers started up the sport about thirty years ago. The rules of the game are similar to horse polo. But drivers control the elephants, to let the players concentrate on their extra long polo sticks.




[Creel Price, Australian Team Captain]:
"These beasts they love it, they're out there...they love it. They actually know what's going on. If the ball gets under them they know exactly what to do -not put their foot on the ball- its just incredible what they do. You can tell they genuinely love the competition and although its interesting, some of them don't get on with each other and theyre playing against each other in some ways."

No more than three elephants are allowed at a time in one half of the pitch. This is to avoid the animals' herd instincts of huddling themselves into a crowd.

After a week of competition, host nation Nepal claimed the first prize against Thailand.

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• NTD
• NTDTV
• Nepal
• Elephant
• Elephant Polo Championship
• Sport
• Bardia National Park
• Scotland
• United Arab Emirates
• Austria
• UK
• Thailand