Horses are used in some sports.  Polo, horse racing, horse jumping, and horseball are just some of the sports where horses are ridden.

Polo is one of the world's oldest team sports.  Two teams of four mounted riders each play against each other.  The teams score goals by hitting a small hard ball with a long wooden mallet through the other team's goal.  A mallet is kind of like a hammer.  The team with the most goals at the end of the game wins.

People have been racing horses for thousands of years.  There are many kinds of horse racing.  The most popular is flat racing.  Flat racing is when all the horses in the race run as fast as they can to the finish line.  Most horse races are about a mile long.  The horse rider is called a jockey.

Horse jumping is done in the Summer Olympics.  The horse and rider are tested when they jump over log fences, rails, stone walls, and water.  The rider tries to get the horse to make all the jumps without a mistake.  The faster a horse finishes the course without errors, the more points are awarded.

Horseball is an unusual sport.  It’s like basketball on horseback!  Two teams try to get the ball into a large hoop to score points.  Riders can carry the ball or pass it to teammates.  If the ball falls to the ground, the rider must reach down and pick it up without stopping his or her horse.  Sometimes people fall off their horses.

Playing games with horses is serious sport.  You might even say there’s “no horsing around” allowed!