Bike-O-Polo

(from the Washington Post)
From a distance, you might think you're watching some kind of two-wheeled synchronized drill team with a serious synchronization problem. On a scrubby elementary school playing field, eight bicycles dodge and weave among one another, stop short, wheel abruptly and charge off at full tilt, first one way then another. Occasionally a rider stalls and stumbles sideways in an awkward one-footed hop. Amid the fray, a massive, mangling pileup of bicycles and bodies seems at any moment inevitable. Yet somehow, repeatedly, that outcome is only just avoided.

Draw closer, and you notice that all the riders wield long-handled wooden mallets swung and whirled deftly within the knot of bicycles. A mallet sweeps in a swift downward arc; a softball-size ball shoots across the field, and the riders tear off in wheel-churning pursuit.

It occurs to you that you are not watching some avant-garde "Dance of the Cannondales." It occurs to you that you are in fact watching polo, played on bicycles. It occurs to you that this is a very cool idea for a game.

Bike polo -- also known as cycle polo -- is played across the United States and internationally from Canada to the United Kingdom and Germany to India (which claims 10,000 players) by enthusiasts as young as 7 and as old as the late fifties. The sport's invention is credited to a retired bicycle racer, Richard J. Mecredy of Ireland, in 1891, who wanted something new to do when his racing days were over. It is a game inspired by the horse-mounted version, with mallet and ball and the object of using said mallet to whack said ball through the opposing team's goal. According to the official rules of the International Bicycle Polo Federation, a game is played with a maximum of four players per side and lasts for 30 minutes divided into four quarters (or chukkers) of 7 1/2 minutes each. The winner is the team with the most goals when the bell rings to signal the end of play.

 That there exist official rules implies a degree of organization and formalized structure to the sport greater than what actually appears to be the case, at least when it comes to bike polo in the United States. Take a general survey of cycle polo around the country, and "you'll find a rather broad spectrum of rules (or anti-rules), formality and general approach to the sport," writes Dennis Mullen of the Washington-state-based American Bicycle Polo Association in an e-mail.

 Says Mullen, who played for the gold-medal-winning U.S. team in last summer's seventh International Bicycle Polo Championship in Canada, "The sport has seen a grass-roots renaissance in quite a number of independent areas and has yet to converge to anything as universal or homogeneous as the major sports." In other words, local rules are the order of the day.

'ALL ABOUT THE FUN'

Take, for example, the Mount Washington Bicycle Polo Association in Maryland.

 On every possible Sunday afternoon, when the weather is cooperating and the ground isn't hopelessly soggy or frozen solid, Aaron Meisner, his brother Dan and a loosely affiliated group of mostly residents from Baltimore's Mount Washington neighborhood gather on a small field next to Wellwood International School for a couple of hours of bike polo. They are mostly married, mostly in their thirties, mostly dads (though women are welcome), with regular day jobs in finance and architecture and the like during the week.

 For the Mount Washington players, a game is 4 p.m. (3 p.m. in winter) to whenever; the bell that brings things to a close is usually the ring of cell phones, with wives at the other end asking, "When are you coming home?" (though sometimes darkness or exhaustion sets in first); and the winner is largely irrelevant.

 "Who won?" asks Aaron Meisner. "Who cares? It's all about the fun."

Fun it certainly looks, as the cyclists dodge and race across the grass. The play is swift and vigorous, full of sprints and turns and nimble mallet-work (everyone plays right-handed, in accordance with international rules). The ball shoots between bikes, bounces off wheels and occasionally goes airborne. There is much good-natured trash-talking. "Hey, if you ladies are caught up on 'Days of Our Lives' . . . " bellows Dan Meisner down the field when the opposing side lingers too long in a strategy conference at the goal. When a play is well executed or a point is scored, the riders knock mallet heads in lieu of high-fives.

 Aaron Meisner rides panting off the field to note, "Two hours of this, you'll get a tremendous workout." Since taking up bike polo, Meisner, a former squash player, has given up his gym membership. "Why would you want to be inside a concrete building with fluorescent lights when you could be out here?"

In general, the Mount Washington players adhere to the international rules, "insofar as they keep everyone safe," Meisner says, "but we're here mostly to have fun. I usually keep a copy of the international rules with me, but we never refer to it."

To a first-time observer, what's most amazing is how fast the game moves, with rapid stops and abrupt changes in course, and how close the play is, mallets flying and bikes converging at heedless speed. The challenge of bike polo would seem to be not so much to score as simply to remain on your bike and disentangled from the seven other players while you're all swatting and chasing the ball up, down and around a large field; pedaling hard, stopping suddenly; steering one-handed through tight, fast turns; calculating the trajectory of self and ball; and swinging the mallet so as to connect with the ball and hit it where you want it to go. Imagine trying to play tennis on a bicycle in the midst of a rugby scrum and you begin to get the idea.

 Lou Lopez of Charlottesville, who started playing as a teenager in the 1970s, admits, "The most difficult thing for a group to learn, for when you start to play in groups, is how to keep from running into each other." But the Canadian Coalition of Cycle Polo Web page says that bike polo "helps develop excellent bike handling and control," and indeed, though when you're watching a game it's hard not to wince in near-constant anticipation of a bone-crunching pileup, somehow the riders almost never collide. Dedicated bike polo players also insist that injury is rare.

 "People say, 'Oh, bicycle polo, that sounds dangerous,' and I say, 'Compared to what?' "says Bill Matheson of South Carolina, another member of the 2004 international champion U.S. team (and in fact a two-time champion -- he played for the winning Canadians in 2003). Matheson, who as a fellow teenager started a team with Lopez in the early 1970s (he took a horse polo clinic, "and some of the better polo players at the club suggested that if I didn't have any horses, I should play bike polo") attests to a surprisingly low casualty rate in the game: "I've had a lot of falls in bike polo, and I've never gotten hurt. I've been playing off and on for 30 years now, and I've seen one kid break his arm and one guy break his thumb when he landed right on it."

To that end, minimal blood loss as well as fair play appear to be the chief objects of the official rules, which outlaw body checking, carrying the ball, rough play, intimidation, putting a foot down (you may, however, steady yourself with your mallet), or touching the ball more than three times consecutively. In particular, the rules have much to say on the subject of a rider's right of way, and not interfering with it, and who has it when multiple players are hurtling toward the ball, though it's hard to fathom how exactly in the thick of it all you're supposed to manage to calculate which one among you can lay claim to the smallest angle to the line of the ball.

And so it is. Even when it comes to formal, refereed play, "right of way violations (real, imagined, deliberate and unconscious) occasion the most foul calls (correct or not) or non-calls (correct or not)," admits Mullen, of the American Bicycle Polo Association, in an e-mail. On the other hand, he says, "the long arguments give the players a chance to rest, tune their bikes, grab a bite, take a nap. In serious matches, 30 minutes of playing time can stretch to 2 1/2 hours or more."

FREE-FORM BIKE POLO

One way, of course, to dispense with such tedious distractions from play is to dispense with most of the rules, which is the guiding principle for the Axles of Evil, bike polo players out of Portland, Ore. "We generally don't like rules," says the Axles' Web site. "We play rough."

 Possibly because most of the founding Axles were bike messengers, people for whom a forward roll over the hood of a car is all in a day's work, blood and mayhem are no particular object.

 "We just call it bike hockey, and that gets the message across," says Axles regular Kenichi Nakamura, though he's quick to add, "We've had some pretty good crashes, but no one has gotten seriously injured."

 The Axles play most regularly on an old, fenced-in, hard-surface tennis court, which adds a certain claustrophobic intensity to the games. Body blocking is allowed, as is throwing your mallet at the ball ("just don't kill anyone"), riding opponents into the fence, stealing and generally interfering with the opposing players' game. You can't put a foot down though. Winner is the first to five points. "We don't have any chukkers or any of that," Nakamura says. "Our games last about 10 minutes."

To purists, this stripped-down, amped-up take on bike polo could arguably be called a different game altogether. "It's more akin to playing pickup basketball or street hockey," agrees Bill Dozer, "minister of propaganda" for the Axles of Evil, and originally from the District himself.

 To Matheson, who's a vice president of the International Bicycle Polo Federation and a tireless enthusiast who would like to see more people playing everywhere, this kind of ad hoc hybridizing is also a major stumbling block to the spread of bike polo. "It is kind of tough to get people to want to go anywhere and play against [other] people if they don't have the same rules," he points out.

 Still, the Axles' version -- which the Portland players originally picked up "from some cats in Seattle," Dozer says -- seems to be enjoying a viral spread through the bike messenger culture, passed from home town to home town via regional and national messenger cycle competitions. This spring, when the Portland messengers play host to the North American Cycle Courier Championships, they'll also be hosting the "official" North American championships of their own style of bike polo.

As befits their independent spirit, the Axles of Evil favor homemade mallets built from ski poles and plastic-pipe or wooden-block heads, a street-hockey ball and, not surprisingly, beater bikes. "Playing our way, you definitely go through bike parts a lot," Nakamura says. "I can put together a polo bike for under $20."

In this regard, however, the Axles are on common ground with bike polo players everywhere. Broken spokes, bent (aka "potato chipped" or "tacoed") rims and a degree of inevitable equipment abuse being standard features of the game -- official and unofficial versions alike -- a bike polo match is not the place to show off your new carbon-fiber-and-titanium baby.

"I got that one out of a dumpster," says Aaron Meisner in Mount Washington, pointing to one of the bicycles in the thick of the fray. Also in his stable: a $20 two-wheeled steed off Craigslist, some yard-sale specials, the one he found abandoned in a parking garage and bestowed upon brother Dan, and the one Dan bought for $5 in a thrift shop. If you want to go for the official gear-up, add a basic mallet ($25 from Boxwood Bicycle Polo Co.), a ball ($10) and specialized handlebars ($10 -- or make them yourself, as the Mount Washington players do) to facilitate one-handed steering and free mallet play, and you've got a sport with an entry price point in the mid-two figures.

Among the top 10 reasons why bike polo is better than horse polo, according to the Bicycle Polo Association of America, is: "When you break a spoke, you don't have to shoot your bike."

JOINING THE GAME

So how hard is it, really, to learn how to play? In Mount Washington, John Douglas of Towson, trying bike polo for the first time, observes, "The hardest part is maneuvering and stopping and riding with one hand." But, he insists, "It's a pretty easy sport if you know how to ride a bike. You don't have to be Michael Jordan."

I know how to ride a bike. I'm definitely not Michael Jordan. In Richmond, where I live, I tracked down some local players and persuaded them to give me a quick lesson in the sport.

Mel Roach, Corey Smith, Andy Slabaugh and Jeff Paris, all mountain bikers, are the core members of a very loose group gathering for bike polo on Saturday mornings in the cold months.

 The group has been playing since 1997; for much of that time, they thought they'd more or less invented the game themselves, and thus happily invented the rules to go with it. Foot down -- not okay. Kicking the ball, however, that's okay. Throwing a mallet to prevent a goal, also okay. Intimidation, yes; left-handed play, yes; field boundaries, none; right of way rules -- where's the fun in those?

 They have handmade mallets with wooden blocks for heads and dowels or lacrosse sticks for shafts; beater bikes more beat even than the usual low standard; traffic cones for goal posts; a miniature toy soccer ball from Wal-Mart; and a playing field that makes Mount Washington's look like professionally manicured greens (the Richmond players have to heave their gear over a locked, six-foot-tall chain-link fence; when the grass gets too long, they quit for the year and go mountain biking and kite sailing). In the beginning, the Richmond bikers say, it was much bloodier. Paris ran into a pole once. Another player did a front flip over a bench at the side of the field. Things improved, they all agree, when they switched the brake levers to operate the rear rather than the front brake from the left hand -- a standard bike polo modification they figured out the hard way.

On the field, however, their acquired skill is obvious. Sprinting, turning, converging, somehow, they deftly move the ball around the field, feinting and passing, racing and stopping. They make it look -- not easy, certainly, or effortless, but surprisingly (mostly) graceful, and decidedly fun. In the absence of right of way rules, however, it also looks more hazardous than the Mount Washington game, though no blood was drawn except when Roach hit himself with his own mallet.

 "Come on and give it a try," Roach offered, tapping the ball gently my way.

 I swung, missed entirely, ran over the ball and promptly crashed. An auspicious start, not followed by any remarkable improvement.

 "For people trying it for the first time, the biggest challenge is staying upright," Bill Matheson says. "The bike is more predictable than the horse, but it doesn't have its own sense of balance."

 I'll say. In the middle of trying to pay attention to the ball and the mallet and fighting an instinctive urge to flee the pack of bikes bearing down upon me, remaining vertical was one challenge more than I could manage. Experienced players develop a neat skill for using the mallet for balance, leaning on it, pushing off from it, letting it take the place of the forbidden foot-down. For the newbie, it's just an unwieldy stick, likeliest to end up shoved through your own wheel, tripping you up or otherwise bringing about your own downfall.

 "It's not the easiest thing when you start, but it's important not to be discouraged the first time," says Matheson, insisting "almost anyone can play."

 "The first time you come out, you're going to be frustrated because you're dealing with so many new skills," says Mount Washington's Dan Meisner. "The second time, you get a feel for if you like it. If you come back for a third time, you're pretty much a lifetime player."

Caroline Kettlewell is a freelance writer and the author of two critically praised nonfiction books, including "Electric Dreams" (Carroll & Graf, 2004). She is a regular contributor to The Washington Post.

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