To cap or not to cap? from Josh Meyland on Vimeo.

I stumbled across this little gem while browsing other polo videos on Vimeo.

Sweet little short film. I know personally I’ve gone back and forth between capped and uncapped. Pretty happy with uncapped at the moment but who knows what the future holds.

With the increasing availability of light, well thought out caps I’m sure more and more people will look towards them for those faster, more accurate shots.

Check St Cago, MKE Bike Co, TPL (Total Polo Laboratories), Eighth Inch and the soon to be released Northern Standard heads for a different range of complete, off the shelf, capped heads or removable caps to fit your existing head.

Northern Standard Bike Polo from Ken Regehr on Vimeo.

Straight out of East Van.

Some very cool ideas going on here. Its obvious a lot of thought has been put into the development of these. From the slimmed down caps giving you the surface area you need without the extra weight, to the honey comb, concave side wall and a new, proprietary attachment system. It will be interesting to see if you can use the head with your own shaft.

Really keen to try these out and follow the company’s progress. Always good to see players putting in the hard work to bring good ideas into fruition. Not only do products like these support the broader polo community but also serve to validate the legitimacy of polo as a real sport.

Fuck yeah!

It seemed it was only a matter of time before bike polo became mainstream enough for gear to be made with them in mind. Although it seems hard for the home-made culture to be over-run, the Milwaukee-based Eighth-Inch (who have already cornered a polo market for their frame) have produced a mallet head.

Using the same HDPE as the sought after gas pipes, these seem to be pretty well designed. The main advantage I see here is the integration of end caps (replacements available) that can work with a variation of head lengths. They come in 150mm lengths and can be cut down to 140 or 130 while still being able to mount the end caps on one or both sides. They also seem to have a mid support sleeve for the shaft for additional strength.

I guess the potential flaws I can see at this stage is the set mallet head diameter, the shaft diameter set at 19mm, and the re-drilling fo end caps when shortened down to 140 or 130mm. Oh, and to get to australia it’ll probably end up around the $30 or $40 mark.

• HDPE Plastic
• Built in 19mm sleeve for added strength
• 1 bolt attachment to any 19mm shaft
• 150mm with cut lines for 130 and 140mm
• Includes 2 replaceable end caps
• Includes required screws

Peace,
brook (sydnebikepolo.org)