VIDEOS: Bike Polo Played On Smart Electric Bikes!
Apr 23, 2013
6 Comments
Share
The Spring Break bike polo team on Smart Electric Bikes! Photo from: springbreakbikepolo.com
Bike polo is a lot of fun (I know from personal experience) and using electric bikes would make this high paced game pretty wild!
The folks at Smart Electric Bikes put the Spring Break bike polo team in London on their bikes and created some cool videos of this crazy sport.
Haven’t heard of bike polo? Well, it is very similar to traditional horse polo except it is played on bikes. Some people play bike polo on grass fields but there are a lot of folks who play polo on asphalt courts or “hardcourts”.
Bike polo is a high paced game with some occasional crashes. Maybe that is why it is a great spectator sport 🙂
Here is the intro video with some good footage of the game:
And here is a video with some background on bike polo:
Here is more info on the sport of bike polo.
What do you think? Would you like to play bike polo on an electric bike? Please leave your comments in the section below.
Thanks!
-Pete
P.S. Don’t forget to join the Electric Bike Report community for updates from the electric bike world, plus ebike riding and maintenance tips!
About Pete
Reader Interactions
Comments
Trackbacks
-
[…] Videos: E-Bike Polo! […]
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
As a ustabe equine polo player, and e-bike enthusiast: I have got to say that this is what money & leisure are for!
The videos show someone stationary, and acting as a goalie. This is antithetical to the elegant flow of equine polo, and I would like to see the “line of the ball” related rules applied to e-bike polo, and I would like to see it played on large fields &/or arenas, like equine polo.
I am too old, fat & crippled up to play the game competitively, but I would be eager to watch, do some “stick & ball” & referee if this happens in the midwest. I wouls also be eager to build some e-bikes for this game.
totally awesome.. I need your advise soon on flooded electric bicycles all my a2b-ecycle stock in NZ.
just sorting out the insurance….
Hi Kaye,
Sorry to hear about the flooded bikes. I recommend that you check with A2B and ecycle for their recommendations.
Sorry to hear of flood damage to e-bikes also. My experience is that once one has invested in a few good battery packs: the rest (of the spending) is all downhill.
Can the A2B parts be salvaged? Did you have damage to your stock of batteries too?
My personal ride is a Rans Sequoia, which is a heavily built semi-recumbent, specifically for tall people. Presently it has a Golden Motor MP3 (Magic Pie, third generation) hub motor in the rear wheel.
In the near future I plan to build a second bike, a “guest bike,” with a similar MP3 hub motor in a similar front wheel. I will add to/modify one or both of the wiring harnesses to accept a second hub motor in its’ otherwise non-motorized wheel, thusly enabling the relatively quick conversion assembly/transformation to a dual drive bike.
Golden Motor has joint-ventured with Giant, and offers dual-drive Giant Ucan2 full suspension mountain bikes. ¡These bikes are awesome! Unfortunately they are built for the average-sized Chinaman.
(When I was (over-eagerly) assembling my first “factory” dual drive bike, I damaged a connector to the rear wheel. In order to repair the damage I performed the same operation that is necessary to modify a single-drive wiring harness to accept a second hub-motor wheel. The hardest part was having strong sunlight to differentiate between similar colors of wire. Otherwise it is a relatively easy to accomplish task.
Dual-drive means the rider will have twice the torque available, though theoretically only the same top speed. I already have a rather large front sprocket, and the bike frame that I have now will not accept larger diameter wheels. In light of these facts I may, at some time in the (more distant than near) future, build a bike or a pair of bikes with larger, i.e. 29” or 700mm wheels with hub motors (I anticipate that by that time an MP4 will be on the market.)
Dual drive provides all-wheel drive for a bicycle, which is intriguing in terms of off-road use. In the case of MP3’s operating from nominal 36V battery packs: it means a 1500-watt bicycle, which is no longer “just” a bicycle according to legal definitions. (At 48V this is a 2000-watt bike. I have seen pictures of MP3’s operating from 72V battery packs: ¡WOW!)
With 375-watt hub motors the pair of bikes or the combined dual-drive bike could all be legally bicycles. This would be a very practical, if slightly less fun way to go. If I was going to make bicycles for the North American market: this (2 X 375) is the way I would go. It would be easier to install than mid-drive and more versatile.
Dual drive also provides twice the power and twice the rate of battery consumption. The extra power is a lot of fun, but the faster consumption the charge from a battery pack is not a good thing. The concept of two bikes that can be reconfigured/converted/transformed to make one bike with two battery packs, two motors and twice the rate of power consumption makes sense, if done with aforethought.
You may well ask: ¿What about the “extra” non-motor wheels? One valid answer for this is that they (the non-motorized wheels) are needed (if for nothing else:) to transport the bikes on bike racks that can’t handle the weight of two heavy e-bikes. Two bikes configured to be not-motorized can be transported on a bike carrier on the back of a car, with motorized wheels & battery packs in the trunk or elsewhere in the car, rather than hanging out toward the end of the lever that is the (relatively fragile) carrier rack. Thusly: several problems avoided.
Once a person has a few battery packs: a world of possibilities opens.