My oral exposition

HORSEBALL

Hi I’m Nil and I’m going to do my oral presentation about horse-ball.

I’ve chosen this sport because I play horse-ball and I think that even is an unknown sport, is the sport that I like more and I want to show to the people how it is. I think that is one very exciting sport and I hope that in a couple of years it is going to be more famous.

Horse-ball was created in France during the decade of 70’s. His origins aren’t so clear but people think that is one adaptation of Pato, one very similar sport that is played in Argentina.
In Catalonia, this sport appeared in 1997 when Jordi Serra and Jordi Traveria discovered it in “Salon du Cheval” of Toulouse and in the “Ecumat” of Madrid. In 1999 this two men took part in one European Championship celebrated in Wells with the Spanish team. After that, “les Alforges de Banyoles” and “els Diables de Masies de Roda”, two Catalonian teams did some exhibitions of Horse-ball in Catalonia. The following year, some new teams appeared in Catalonia and started the first Catalonian league of horse-ball.

Horse-ball is a very intense sport and it makes that you must be concentrated all the time.

This sport is a combination of basketball, rugby and polo. They play 4 players and 2 substitutes per team. The coach can do the number of changes that he wants. One horse-ball match has two parts of ten minutes each. In one horse-ball match there are two referees, one on chair and one on horse. The players play with one handled ball. They’re tied for the stirrups to be able to recover the ball from the ground without falling down of the horse. One horse-ball field has 60 meters of long x 30 meters of width. Horse-ball is a very intense sport and it makes that you must be concentrated all the time. The matches are very short and if you are not concentrated you don’t play good.

The players must be agile, strong and with a good individual level. But this sport also can be dangerous if they play people without enough riding level, the can hear themselves. The most important thing in this sport is the horse. The players must be identified and to work very well with his horse because if the player is good he can be the 50% but the horse is the other 50%.


If we talk about the horses maybe the most important qualities of one horse-ball horse are the speed, the acceleration, the managing and the corpulence. There are some kinds of horse that are good to play horse-ball. The pure Arab, the pure English, the American quarter horse and some combinations of these races are excellent races to play horse-ball.



There're several international competitions organized by the International Horse-Ball Federation, the European Championships, the World Championship, and the clubs FIHB Champions League. This year had been celebrated in Ponte de Lima (Portugal) the fifth edition of the European lady championship and under-16 European championship, and the first edition of the World championship. In this edition, Spain got the gold in under-16, silver in the world championship and bronze in ladies. France has always been the main reference in this sport.