In the year 2024, Paris will play host to the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, which will be the third time the capital city of France will host the games.
Interestingly, the last two times it hosted the event in 1900 and 1924, horse polo was played as an official Olympic event, but it has been nearly nine decades and 22 editions of the Olympics since the sport of kings1 has been played at the highest echelon of World sports.
Polo was first played at an Olympic level in 1900 and in a somewhat unusual move for an event at the games but one that is more common in polo itself, almost all of the teams bar one were mixed nationality, and the rules did not stop players switching teams during the tournament.
Maurice Raoul-Duval managed to lose twice in a row to Foxhunters Hurlingham, a team made up primarily of British and American players.
The 1908 games saw only British participants at the famed Hurlingham Club, and perhaps because of this and the onset of the First World War, it would not be contested again for another 12 years.
The 1920 games in Antwerp were the first to feature single-nationality teams, with Great Britain winning their second gold medal after a close match with Spain.
However, that would change just four years later, when Argentina and the United States, the best and second-best polo nations in the world at the time, entered their first Olympics. Argentina did not lose a single match and won the gold medal.
The final event would see another 12-year gap and a mass of controversy given its location and the competition format.
The five teams were split into two divisions, one where Britain and Argentina played against Mexico with their spot in the final on the line, whilst the other had Hungary and Germany play each other to see who could play for a bronze medal, allegedly because they were not considered to be strong enough competition.
It was nonsensical and after the outbreak of the Second World War again, it would be another 12 years before another Olympic event.
However, in 1948, Polo was not a listed event, allegedly due to the expenses involved in fielding a team and the horses needed for elite-level competition.
In 2018’s Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, polo was played as a demonstration sport, so there is a chance that it could appear again in the not-too-distant future.