About This Reference

Horseball is well documented in French and thinly documented in English. Its rules run to three separate rulebooks, its championship record goes back to 1992, and its origins trace directly to a game played in Argentina, none of which is easy to find laid out in one place. That gap is what this site exists to fill.

What it covers: the rules of the game as the sport's own documents set them out, the record of every international competition with results by edition, the history from Argentine pato through the French codification of 1979 to FEI recognition in 2004, and how horseball compares with the other sports played on horseback.

Anyone who has watched a match understands the appeal without needing it explained. Riding is serene; horseball is fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled and full of excitement: four riders a side, a ball lifted off the ground at a gallop, and a hoop three and a half metres up.

Where the official material lives

Horseball is governed internationally by the Fédération Internationale de Horseball, which holds the current rulebooks, sanctions international competition and maintains the calendar. Entering a competition, refereeing, licensing and the present text of any rule all go through them, and this reference points at that source rather than paraphrasing it.

How the record here was assembled

Every rule figure on this site is attributed to the document and rule number it comes from, because the three rulebooks disagree with each other in places and the disagreements matter. Two are worth knowing about. The Sport Rules foreword describes the game as played between two teams of six riders, while rule 4 says a team is six riders of whom only four may be on the pitch at once; both are true, at different granularity. And the goal is described in one place as a ring 4.50 m up and in another as a ring whose base sits 3.50 m up; the ring is a metre across, so those are the top and the bottom of the same hoop.

The competition tables are transcribed edition by edition rather than summarised, which is why they show the gaps. The European Senior Championship skips 1997, 2004 and 2008. Three competitions appear in the structure with edition numbers and no results at all: a Champions League for under-16s, a European American Cup and an Asian Cup. A women's championship is known to have reached a seventh edition in 2012 with no podium on record.

Where it stops

April 2012. That is not a judgement about the sport, only about what can be checked. Later championships were held and later rulebook versions exist. Publishing a result that cannot be verified would make every other row in those tables worth less, so the tables end, and say where they end.

Corrections, and results that close one of those gaps, are genuinely useful. See contact.