![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEionzOARRDrZGJcXL2hMOmEaJXogN26qb-v_sB3JQSnFKwMqwrBErA30pcpjxEV6kJYCkZb81GsXThwSxyDB34nLEZYpZx3NELxCEP80pGeA0Fv9GzYCHLaKRDvB0s8UW2WsgQX-V6mGHM/s280/autopolo.jpg)
Who
came up with the insane idea of playing polo while driving cars? That
would be Ralph “Pappy” Hankinson, a Ford dealer in Topeka, Kansas, who
was looking for a way to sell more cars. The sport lasted from 1912 to
sometime in the early ’20s. We know about polo played on horse or
camels, but those are sentient animals that try to avoid crashing into
each other while the guy riding worries about the game. In Auto Polo,
paying attention to the game meant crashing one’s car into other players
quite often. However, it did mange to sell cars, probably because
players needed replacements.
Not only did
Hankinson’s plan work, it quickly became a hugely popular sporting event
in which not only the participants were at risk of injury or death but
so were the spectators who flocked to such events. The matches were held
across the country and the world, with the very first major auto polo
exhibition being held in Washington D.C. in 1912. The outright brutality
of the uncompromising sport also meant that cars would have to be
routinely replaced since they would often give up the ghost in the
middle of a match and because the main attraction of the sport was the
very high probability that cars would crash into each other.
In
other words auto polo was a bit like the 1985 film Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome only with cars operated by those insane enough to careen
them around an arena armed with ball-smashing mallets at 40 miles per
hour. So dangerous was the game of auto polo that an actual surgeon was
onsite during the matches just in case anyone was injured (which
according to most historical resources on the topic was shockingly
rare). But deaths on the field did happen and those infrequent
occurrences caused the sport to be banned in numerous states despite its
rabid fan base.
Read more about
the short-lived sport of Auto Polo and see plenty of pictures and a video at Dangerous Minds.
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