NEWS

Written by USPA Chairman Stewart Armstrong and published in April 2024 edition of POLO Magazine.

During my formative years in polo, the San Antonio Polo Club was home during the winter months to some of the best horsemen in the polo community. Many of the best were retired high-goal players who made their living as horse dealers. Horses, in fact, were their real vocation. The polo was a marketing channel. As they aged, they thought nothing of their handicaps descending down the handicap scale. They were making a living the same as before, selling horses, but they also served another purpose. They were the reservoirs of knowledge in regard to becoming a high-goal polo player and they attracted young players interested in learning more about horsemanship.

Today, Thoroughbred polo pony prospects in the USA are in short supply. The ranches no longer raise Thoroughbreds in favor of Quarter Horses, which are easier to train and generally more docile. Breeding for Thoroughbred racing has declined markedly over the last three decades from 40,000 to 18,000 foals registered per year. Without high quality prospects in relative abundance, the polo pony trainers lack the livestock with which to compete with Argentine imports and sustain themselves in a business of buying and selling horses for polo. As a result, about half as many trainers remain when compared with a decade ago. Without trainers and training centers, we have lost a key part of our ecosystem.

This is why the USPA sent out the survey recently to assess interest in breeding polo ponies. One need only look to Germany and its preeminence in producing top riders to see that their focus on breeding the best sport horses has created the worldwide demand for Warmbloods that drives their success.

The same is true for Quarter Horses in the USA. The quality and aptitude of the horses being produced for cutting, reining and roping have made the American Quarter Horse ubiquitous the world over and it has elevated professional cutters to international prominence. Polo is no different. Argentina has developed the Polo Argentino, a Thoroughbred phenotype that is gentle and relatively easy to train as compared to Thoroughbreds bred for racing. In all three instances, top quality riders are a byproduct of these breeding programs.

We all know that breeding horses in the USA is more expensive than breeding in Argentina. But without the horses, the USA cannot complete what I like to call a pathway from 0 to 10. Horses in abundance lead to trainers, which lead to training centers. These training centers are a key element in creating a pathway for young enthusiasts to develop as good riders and horsemen. And without a pipeline of ponies on which to mount themselves, a professional player cannot reach the top of the handicap scale.

In order to reduce the cost of producing quality made ponies in the USA, and be competitive with Argentine horses, the quickest and best option is to breed horses that are easier to train and shorten the training time necessary to get them to the polo field. It costs $11,000 to ship a horse from Argentina to the USA. If an American pony can be competitive as a 5-year-old, then the cost of an Argentine pony is about the same. The Polo Argentino blood represents a short cut. We have Thoroughbred mares and the Argentine horses have polo aptitude. The combination of the two is a good strategy for breeding. This is why the survey spoke of breeding to Argentine stallions.

The U.S. Army had a dilemma in the early 1900s when cavalry horses were in short supply. They inaugurated a remount program to address the problem. The U.S. government purchased and accepted top quality Thoroughbred stallions, which they loaned to ranchers as part of a government administered program aimed at breeding the best horses for the military. Government agents circulated among the ranches to inspect mares, which had applied for breeding to the free stallion seasons. The result was the production of large numbers of quality Thoroughbred horses for use in the cavalry. Many of the offspring found their way into polo and helped fuel the USA’s rise to prominence internationally.

The USPA could create its own version of a remount service by purchasing or leasing a handful of proven Polo Argentino bred stallions and American Thoroughbreds. They could be housed at a stallion station in the central part of the country and their fresh or frozen semen could be provided to American USPA members as incentive to breed a top retired mare utilizing artificial insemination. The cost to the breeder might be for the semen collection from the stallion and delivery to the mare owner’s veterinarian via FedEx.

Having access to proven genetics would encourage breeders of both high- and low-goal prospects. More polo prospects would result each year and this would gradually lead to increases in the number of horses, trainers and polo training facilities across the USA. The training venues would attract young players interested in polo. This in turn would improve their grooming and riding skills, help them source ponies from which to maintain a string and position them to become competitive players with a goal of traveling to Argentina where the competition will hone their skills further. This initiative will take time and may require additional programs in the future, such as prize money for Best Playing Pony awards (funded by foal nomination fees paid by the breeders), an annual breeding stock auction and possible investment by the USPA in polo pony training facilities to help reduce training costs.

There is no way to predict whether such a plan will be successful unless it is tried. As chairman, my duty is to lead. What I have attempted to do in this article is to outline, as best I can, what appears to be a possible strategy to make polo better for all of us.