Picture time! I found this instagram with retro pictures of polo players, which confirms a bit of what I was saying. In these pics you still see tie downs, you still see two sets of reins, but no gags. No drop nosebands. No running reins. Just a snaffle reins and a curb rein. Like most disciplines, I think polo has been bastardized by a temporal drift from classical/cavalry based traditions. Like I posted about before, at the beginning of WWII they were still using cavalry horses. That’s in the late 30s and early 40s. So people still needed to know how to ride. Those war-related riding skills became more sporty and symbolic (horse sports instead of horses in war) and those sports have become more sporty and less skilled - because people don’t have to be skilled. They only need to stay on the horse and steer for somewhere between ten to forty minutes and as long as they Get Shit Done, they can win. When you have to count on a horse to be actually responsive, actually sound, actually trained, and the rider to be equally skilled, as you do in war, you don’t need extraneous equipment.
blah blah blah you all know my rant but here! some cool pictures
