All things being equal: spatiotemporal differences between Open and Women’s 16-goal Polo

ABSTRACT

Polo is an equestrian team sport, consisting of Open and Women’s only handicapping systems. Equine activities may differ in distribution and their affect upon match outcome in Women’s Polo compared to Open Polo, potentially impacting equine preparation and management. We aimed to quantify spatiotemporal differences between Open and Women’s Polo when matched for handicap and assess their interaction with chukka and match outcomes. Distance, speed and high-intensity activity data were collected via player-worn global positioning system (GPS) units during 16-goal Open and Women’s Polo tournaments. Notational analysis quantified chukka duration and chukka and game outcomes. Spatiotemporal metric differences between Open and Women’s Polo were small to large (ES: 0.54–1.81). In Open Polo, players covered moderately more distance in games won (mean: 429.0 m; 95% CI: 238.9 m to 619.0 m), with small to large increases in high-intensity activities also performed. Whereas in Women’s Polo, moderately higher maximum speeds were attained in games won (17.13 km.h⁻¹; 11.86 km.h⁻¹ to 22.40 km.h⁻¹) and a small increase in accelerations performed (5.1; 0.2 to 10.0). Open and Women’s Polo, when matched for handicap, present with small to large spatiotemporal differences that are likely of practical significance, and may influence game outcome differently between codes.

KEYWORDS:

• Polo
• equestrian
• GPS
• horse welfare
• horse management

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Lucy Ainsley and Nina Clarkin for facilitating this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data accessibility

An anonymised dataset used in this study can be found online at: https://doi.org/10.3390/data4030095

Ethical statement

This research was carried out with owner informed consent in accordance with ethical animal research guidelines (International Guiding Principles for Biomedical Research Involving Animals), and was approved by WINTEC ethics committee (Approval code: WTFE2601102018).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.