LYONS, Colo.—The snow came down. The wind picked up. It didn’t matter. The game would go on.
Not even the uncertain weather of a Colorado spring could stop a true bicycle polo player.
“If you play into the storm, you’re fine,” Chad Cheeney of Durango said as the first flakes came down during a recent Saturday afternoon in Lyons. “If you play after the storm—that’s when it’s not really polo season. You start sliding, and everything becomes slicker.”
About 70 players descended on Planet Bluegrass March 7 for the town’s first bike polo tournament. Some came from as far as Casper, Wyo., or Salt Lake City for the chance to mount a bike and swing a homemade mallet at a miniature soccer ball.
“I’m still figuring it out,” chuckled Alex Sveda of Casper, a former Durango resident who heard about the match through a friend.
It doesn’t seem like a complicated sport at first. Set up two goals, just like in soccer or hockey. Then add a ball and two teams of four players each trying to knock that ball into a goal. Again, simple.
The tricky part comes when you try to do it—especially on a bicycle. Turns can be tight, passes can be tricky, and crashes onto the grass are not infrequent. On top of that, a player’s foot can’t touch the ground—you do, and you have to leave the field briefly before returning to play.
“It’s a good workout,” Dave Kemp of Fort Collins said. “I must have already biked at least 25 miles.”
One of the organizers, Chad Cheeney of Passion Productions in Durango, has played for 10 years. He’s organized tourneys in Durango, he said, but that city is a little out of the way for many players.
That’s why he teamed with Oskar Blues brewery two months ago to set up a Lyons meet, with Planet Bluegrass agreeing to provide the site.
“Up here, it’s pretty well situated,” Cheeney said. “It makes a difference.”
Chad Melis of Oskar Blues said the event matched well with the “bike culture” of the Front Range. And it let cyclers try something different from the usual races, he added.
“In a lot of races … it’s all very focused on the individual performance,” Melis said. “It’s fun to introduce a team aspect to bicycling.”
Bike polo was invented by an Irishman in 1891 and was even a demonstration event in the 1908 Olympics. Interest in the U.S. began to grow in the 1980s, and in recent years, “hardcourt polo”—played on pavement instead of grass—has become popular on the East and West coasts.
No asphalt for Lyons, though. Just a grass field and a horde of mountain bikers, many in bizarre team uniforms. The Fat Chads, for example, took the field with fake beer bellies attached beneath their T-shirts, while Business In The Front, Party In The Back wore suit jackets and ties to go with their bike helmets.
Cheeney said he looks forward to doing this again next year. So do many of the players, who continued to put their fun in high gear regardless of the sunshine or snow.
“The saying always goes ‘Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul,'” Sveda said. “That’s my philosophy.
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