'People think this sport is crazy'

"It is potentially a little bit dangerous. We are riding seven feet up in the air," said Neil Laughton.

"Quite often we end up nose first in the dirt doing a roly-poly on the grass."

The 62-year-old's claim to fame is that he invented penny farthing polo.

The sport is much like its horseback equivalent, only on the high-wheeled, Victorian-esque bicycle.

Laughton, from Henfield in West Sussex, said people's first reaction when they see the team playing is that they are "crazy".

"But when they've got past the fact we're doing something rather extraordinary... the reaction most people have is amazement, delight and curiosity.

"Generally, their reaction is a big smile.

"If you add the combat sport of polo, you have even more open-mouth wonder and surprise," he continued.

Asked whether he thought the sport could take off, Laughton said he was "under no illusions it was going to be anything other than slightly niche".

"It can hurt," he told the BBC. "Collisions happen fairly frequently."

He added that the penny-farthings themselves were also "quite twitchy".

The rules of penny farthing polo are that there can be no physical contact, alongside others to try and prevent collisions.

Teams are composed of four a side like in horse polo, but they use a bigger ball to avoid "killing the spokes" of the bikes, Laughton added.

Another advantage is that spectators can also see the ball an awful lot better than in normal horse polo, he continued.

Laughton said he came up with the idea on a whim.

"People will be familiar with horse polo, maybe even elephant polo, camel polo, et cetera, and indeed bicycle polo, but... as I got a little bit older I was thinking it would be good to do penny farthing polo," he said.

Laughton told the BBC he taught himself how to ride the Victorian-esque bicycle and then showed his friends until there was enough of them to form a team.

Laughton said he had taught maybe half a dozen people who at the end of a two-hour training session could ride a penny farthing and hit a mallet with little or no previous experience.

But he added for the vast majority of people they would need several hours of training to master the sport.

Laughton founded a penny farthing polo club in 2013, which practises on Astroturf at the local Steyning Grammar School.

He spoke to the BBC ahead of his team's match against another penny farthing team in the US, which is led by a former army colonel he taught the sport to.

"I am reasonably confident [we can win]," Laughton told the BBC ahead of his flight to the US on Monday.

"But you never know – anything can happen in sport."

In 2024, Laughton set a new record for the world's highest cycle ride after he carried his bike up Putha Huinchuli, a 7,246m peak in Nepal.

He and a friend, Tom Clowes, also rode a Penny farthing and unicycle across the South Downs Way from Eastbourne to Winchester.

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