How a polo pony is made.

This page reports how schools, clubs and writers describe the making of a polo pony. It is not a training programme. Schooling a young or green horse is work for experienced professionals, and nothing here should be read as instructions for doing it.

The stages, as one school describes them

Argentina Polo School (February 2025) sets out three broad stages:

1. Breaking, starting between two and three years of age, with groundwork and getting the horse to accept the bit, saddle and reins.
2. Early riding, which the school describes as stopping, turning and moving forward.
3. Game training, covering quick reactions, changes of pace, tight turns, the mallet and ball, contact and speed.

Fortloc, a maker of polo GPS trackers, describes a similar path in its 2024 article. It says backing can start from age two and last from a few weeks to a few months, and that arena skills such as neck reining take a few weeks to a few months. Fortloc is a commercial source and its account could not be confirmed elsewhere.

Why neck reining matters

Polo players hold the reins in one hand, because the other holds the mallet. Wikipedia describes neck reining as an indirect rein aid: pressure of the rein on one side of the neck asks the horse to turn away from it. It says neck reining is taught after the horse responds well to weight and leg aids. The riding one-handed page covers the rider's side of this, as coaches teach it.

How long does it take?

The sources disagree, and none of them is a governing body.

Put simply: one source says one and a half to three years, another describes about three seasons, and a third says one to three years for ex-racehorses with some much quicker. The honest answer is that it varies with the horse, and the sources do not settle on a figure.

The ages fit the same broad picture. Wikipedia says polo horses begin training at about 3, mature at about 5 and peak at about 6 to 7. A La Nacion guide (2001, updated 2020; a single, older source) says Argentine ponies play from about 4, or 5 to 6 at Palermo. The Pony Club's 2026 rules set a minimum age of 4 for ponies in its polo.

Ex-racehorses

The HPA says many retired racehorses find a second career in polo. Fortloc says Thoroughbreds bought off the track are often given a few weeks to a month off first, and it warns against buying horses too set in a former discipline. Both points are Fortloc's and are not confirmed by a second source.

Bringing green ponies into the game

Clubs make room for young horses. Melbourne City Polo Club's 2022 to 2023 Wednesday chukkas included dedicated young-horse chukkas, which the club describes as a gentle introduction to the game for green ponies, alongside fast and slow chukkas for players.

You can sometimes spot a pony still in training. The St. Moritz Snow Polo programme says playing ponies have their manes hogged, and that young ponies still in training can be recognised by their longer, unhogged manes.

Tuning a made pony

Training does not stop once a pony plays. Fortloc describes "singling" as exercising a pony on its own at higher speed or with sharper stops and turns, usually the day before a game, to tune it to its player. That description is from a commercial source and could not be confirmed elsewhere. The string and grooms page covers how ponies are exercised day to day.

Protecting the pony while the rider learns

Several schools and clubs describe teaching arranged so that a learning player does not hurt a pony.

• At Yale, beginners start on a wooden horse in a hitting cage. The club's alumni adviser, Liz Brayboy, made the point, as Yale Alumni Magazine reported in 2015, that hitting the wooden horse's leg hard does no harm, while doing the same to a real pony is a problem.
• In a lesson at Coutts Polo at the Palace, Abu Dhabi, reported by The National in 2012, students practised the swing with wooden mallets before going near a pony and were taught above all not to hit the pony's head or rear.
• Singapore Polo Club's lesson rules (2019) require members to protect pony welfare when mounted, for example by taking care not to strike the pony's legs with the mallet.

The practice page covers the wooden horse and stick and ball from the player's side.

What we could not find

None of the sources we found on making a polo pony is a governing body, and two veterinary studies on the demands of polo and on pony training regimens could not be opened. The timelines above therefore come from a school, a commercial company and two magazines.