Neil Laughton says he invented penny farthing polo, a game he describes for Newsround as being played seven feet up in the air. The 62-year-old from Henfield in West Sussex says the sport is deliberately contact-free, yet collisions still happen fairly frequently.
He said the first response from people who see the team is disbelief. "People think this sport is crazy," he said, before adding that most reactions turn into "amazement, delight and curiosity" once the idea sinks in.
Henfield in West Sussex
Laughton said he came up with the idea on a whim, taught himself to ride the Victorian-esque bicycle and then showed his friends until there were enough of them to form a team. He said a two-hour training session left maybe half a dozen people able to ride a penny farthing and hit a mallet.
The sport is played four a side, like horse polo, but with rules that ban physical contact and other measures designed to prevent crashes. Laughton said the bikes are "quite twitchy" and that the game uses a bigger ball so it does not damage the spokes.
He said the setup is meant to keep the game moving while limiting contact, but that does not remove the risk. "It is potentially a little bit dangerous. We are riding seven feet up in the air," he said, adding: "Quite often we end up nose first in the dirt doing a roly-poly on the grass."
Laughton called his invention slightly niche and said, "I was under no illusions it was going to be anything other than slightly niche." For now, that appears to be the point: a sport built to draw smiles, not crowds, and one that stays unusual because the bicycles and the collisions both make plain why it is unlikely to become mainstream.
