The Argentine polo pony.

A breed with its own studbook

The Polo Argentino (Argentine Polo Pony) is a recognised breed with a breed society and a studbook. Wikipedia says the breed was recognised in 1984 and that its society, the Asociación Argentina de Criadores de Caballos de Polo (AACCP), was founded on 8 August 1984 and has kept the studbook ever since. La Nacion (July 2024) confirms the 1984 founding.

La Nacion traces the start of the breed to a talk given by Alberto Pedro Heguy at the Sociedad Rural Argentina on possible polo sires. It reports that the association began with about 50 members and now has around 400, including 37 abroad.

That membership figure is not settled. A Bichos de Campo interview with the association's president was summarised as giving about 320 to 350 registered breeders. We saw that interview only as a search summary and could not confirm it, so we give La Nacion's figure as the one we could read, and note the other.

Where the breed comes from

• Wikipedia says most Polo Argentino horses come from crosses of the Thoroughbred and the Criollo, a practice dating from the 1900s, after the English introduced polo to Argentina. Despite the name, Wikipedia says, the breed has no pony ancestry.
• Wikipedia's polo pony article describes the Argentine polo horse as developed by crossing racehorses with rustic country horses, with breeders stressing speed and endurance since the 1970s.
• La Nacion reports that the breed has added new bloodlines in recent years, including Australian mares (Ellerstina), a Chilean mare (La Aguada) and American mares (La Dolfina).

Height, coat and who may breed

Wikipedia reports a disagreement among the sources it cites on the breed's average height. CAB International is cited for 1.47 to 1.52 m, while the breed association and the Delachaux guide are cited for about 1.56 m. We give both, as Wikipedia does.

Wikipedia also says the coat is mostly bay and that only horses with good polo results may be used for breeding.

How Argentine horses came to fill the top of the sport

Different people credit different things, and most of them name horses.

• Global Polo attributes Argentina's rise to the influence of English immigrant landowners, plus open plains and plentiful horses.
• El Marplatense says estancia owners took up the game and adapted it to the pampas, where horses were already central to rural life. It credits selective breeding of fast, enduring horses, along with player families and the Palermo Open's role as a showcase.
• In a 2021 EFE report, Delfín Uranga, then AAP president, credited a strong genetic base of horses, among other things, and player Gonzalo Pieres (son) pointed to the number of horses.

The result shows up abroad. La Nacion reports that 862 of the 945 horses at the 2024 Queen's Cup in Britain were Polo Argentino, while noting that polo horses do not have to belong to any breed. The HPA lists the Polo Argentino among the common breeds in polo.

How many there are, and how they are bred now

La Nacion (2024) reports that about 95,500 horses have been registered in the breed's history. It also reports that around 90 percent of recent registrations involve embryo transfer, cloning or ICSI, with about 8,000 embryo transfers in the prior year and roughly 300 clones in the season. Those methods, and the gene-edited foals of 2024, are covered on the cloning and breeding page.

Prizes for the breed

Argentine finals reward the horses as well as the players. The AAP's report on the 2025 Tortugas Open final lists an AAP prize for the best horse of the final and a separate AACCP prize for the best Polo Argentino bred horse. The 2025 best horse was Show Down, ridden by Barto Castagnola. The 2026 Argentine Triple Crown is in progress as of October 2026; see the Triple Crown page.

A La Nacion guide to the Campo Argentino de Polo (2001, updated 2020) says each player uses 8 to 10 horses per match at the Argentine Open, but no more than 6 in the semifinals and final. That is a single, older source and we could not confirm it from a current AAP rulebook.

Welfare and testing in Argentina

La Nacion (2024) reports that the breeders' association designed an anti-doping protocol with vets and the laboratory of the San Isidro racetrack, and that the AAP planned updated animal welfare rules for the 2024 season. No AAP welfare rulebook was found in our research, so we cannot say what those rules contain. The welfare rules page sets out the rules we could read, from the HPA, the USPA, the Pony Club and others.