BV bike polo tourney draws players from Colorado and beyond

On a warm Saturday afternoon, the Sheila Stout baseball field was buzzing with activity – but not baseball. 

Bike polo took over the grassy expanse for the day on May 3 for the Colorado Can Cup Grass Poloships, with players wheeling back and forth as they chased the ball and each other. 

Robin Guillaume of the BV Polo Club got started in the sport in Durango in the early 2000s. The BV club has been playing for nearly 10 years, getting together on the fields Sunday nights around 4:20 p.m. 

“We inherited an old polo mallet set with a ball and started goofing around. It took a really long time, but eventually we got regular games,” he said. “Simultaneously, games were happening in other towns.”

At first, they didn’t realize that the sport was already established. But once they saw how popular it was, they decided to form more groups. 

The first CCCGP was held in 2009, with some other smaller tourneys along the way. In 2025, teams from all over Colorado and beyond came to wheel on the BV field, some of whom have been playing since the 1980s. 

“There are only three or five rules,” Guillaume said of the lifelong appeal of the game, “it’s a gentleman’s sport and it’s not very dangerous because we play on grass. … It’s a totally welcoming atmosphere. We’re always recruiting new players, and anybody who happens to walk by, we’ll yell at them.”

Bike polo was featured in the 1908 Summer Olympic Games' unofficial program, and the World Bicycle Polo Federation was founded in 1987 in the U.S. 

Paul Fraser of Washington has been playing bike polo for over 30 years. They met a few Fort Collins players at a tournament in Arizona, who invited the Washington team to play in the CCCGP event. The Washington team travelled to a tournament in India in 2000. 

“We play a few times a week, but we don’t play any tournaments. There are no other teams (nearby),” Fraser said. “It’s our third year coming to this tournament, and we used to play a much different version of polo, but we’ve kind of adopted the Colorado version. It’s easier to teach new players.”

Fraser grew up playing soccer and basketball, getting into mountain biking in college. 

“It’s a combination of a bunch of fun stuff,” he said of bike polo. “It’s teamwork, competition. When people are playing well together and everything’s working out, it’s a lot of fun. … It’s a good way to get exercise without feeling like you’re getting exercise.”

Brian Belk of Fort Collins has been playing bike polo for around 14 years. 

“You can play as hard as you want,” he said. “If you’re really hungry, you can chase the ball all day and be in every play. But if not, just hang back. … You can turn really hard and kind of commit, ride your bike really hard, because when you lay it over, it’s just grass, so it’s pretty forgiving.”

And polo on a bike, he said, has another, more practical advantage. 

“You can crash your bike, bolt new parts on,” he said. “You can’t really crash a horse.”