# Get Ready to Rumble: The 2009 King's Cup Elephant Polo Tournament **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 22, 2009, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326 "2009-03-22T07:36:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2009, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/1 "2009-03-22T07:36:11Z")
From March 23-29, Monday to Sunday, in Chiang Saen, a pretty little town on the Mekong River across from Laos in the northern province of Chiang Rai. See [here](http://www.anantaraelephantpolo.com/) and [here](http://www.asiatraveltips.com/news09/271-ElephantPolo.shtml). Admission is free. There’s a nice little elephant parade through town at beginning. To date, the tournament has raised more than US$200,000 for the National Elephant Institute. Alas! We cannot make it. I can no longer play. The old team is no more, and I have a bum mallet-swinging shoulder now. But for anyone who is interested in playing sometime, there’s a team named [Tickle and the Ivories](http://tickle-and-the-ivories.com/) that always makes it and often advertises for players. ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/2 "2009-03-23T01:03:05Z")
I guess I should try that someday… but I know nothing about polo. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/3 "2009-03-23T04:41:44Z")
No worries. As the Tickle and the Ivories website shows [here](http://tickle-and-the-ivories.com/questions.htm), you don’t really have to: \*\*"Have any of you played horse polo before ? No. ## What experience do you need with elephants ? None. Some level of physical fitness and an eye for ball sports does help though."\*\* Recruitment info [here](http://tickle-and-the-ivories.com/recruiting.htm). The last I heard they were full up, but that was a year or so ago. As you can see, they don’t update their website very often. A lot of the teams and players are wealthy horse-polo players who seem to have the time and money to gallavant around the world indulging in their sport. I’ve seen at least one guy with a fancy case designed just to carry his polo boots! They love elephant polo as something different, plus it’s a good charitable cause. But many do it just for grins. There are, I believe company teams from DHL and the like. There’s even a New Zealand rugby team that plays every year without fail, the All Blacks; they do a Maori dance during the opening ceremony. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2009, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/4 "2009-03-25T02:24:02Z")
Photo of Monday’s elephant parade in Chiang Saen [here](http://xpress.nationmultimedia.com/specials/photogallery/showsection.php?pageid=0&id=6&pid=7804). No word yet on match results. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2009, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/5 "2009-04-03T19:20:35Z")
Is this the same event where one of the larger, gray entrants trashed the Spanish team’s Range Rover a couple of years ago? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/6 "2009-04-04T00:57:01Z")
That was in Sri Lanka, but part of the same international series, yes. Was it the Spanish team? I think the rider on said elephant was from the [DC Elephants](http://dcelephantpolo.com/), possibly America’s only elephant-polo team, but she could have been playing with them if they needed someone in a pinch. Someone started a thread on that incident; wasn’t it you? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/7 "2009-04-04T01:40:50Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Someone started a thread on that incident; wasn’t it you? Perhaps so, but I’ve slept since then. An elephant without rider trashed a Land Rover. I believe it belonged to the Spanish team. Some brave little guys were trying to chase him away with sharp sticks in the video I saw. Saturday is Visitors Day at [Riddle’s Elephant Sanctuary](http://www.elephantsanctuary.org/default2.asp). We can watch the Asian calf trip over her own feet. 🙂 When I was there three months ago, Mr. Riddle let the two Asian females out of their pen early. He drives a pickup over to their barn and they follow like dogs. The lady keeper I was speaking to said, “Why don’t we go over here?” and stepped back out of the way. I followed with great alacrity. As much as I like elephants, I have never had one, let alone two, walk by me within twelve feet unescorted. I swear they smirked at me. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/8 "2009-04-04T01:52:00Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > An elephant without rider trashed a Land Rover. I believe it belonged to the Spanish team. Some brave little guys were trying to chase him away with sharp sticks in the video I saw. The elephant did have a rider at first, but she may have been thrown before it attacked the Land Rover. I recall she had been dangling off it at least for a while with her foot caught in the stirrup and had to be hospitalized for minor injuries, but I don’t recall seeing her still attached in the video of the actual Land Rover attack. Her name I recognized as someone I’d talked to a few months before at the Thailand tournament, and she was with DC Elephants in that one; she said she was giving up elephant polo. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/get-ready-to-rumble-the-2009-kings-cup-elephant-polo-tournament/490326/9 "2009-04-04T02:22:57Z")
Ah, found the story [here](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-436392/Polo-playing-elephant-goes-berserk-crushing-rival-teams-minibus.html). Courtney Zenz, that’s the girl I was thinking of; she’s not the one thrown after all, but rather it was her teammate, but she’s quoted. She’s the one I talked to in Thailand; I remember her sister would run up and down the sideline waving an American flag when the DC Elephants were on the attack. It was, I believe, Courtney’s elephant that kicked the ball over the goal line and led to Jim Edwards’ pivotal decision that the elephant could score a goal.