Yes, you’re reading that right. Despite having only reached the semi finals of the Rugby World Cup and having never gone past the group stages at the FIFA World Cup, the Scots have conquered the sporting world with famous triumphs in Nepal.
The sport, of course, was Elephant Polo.
Captained by the Duke of Argyll, Chivas Regal Scotland took home the World Elephant Polo Championships in 2004 and 2005 for a country with a weirdly strong history in the Nepalese sport. Obviously there is a glaring lack of Elephants native to or even just living in Scotland, which has been stated to make training quite difficult.
The Scots have dominated the game since its return in 1982 but have a connection rooted in history as they played often at the turn of the twentieth century. The Scots played often while in India and it was even a Scot who brought the sport back, James Manclark of Edinburgh the man to do so.
A Scot conquered the world once again in 2014 with Samantha Prentice of East Lothian leading the first ever all women side to global victory. She became the eleventh Scotland born winner of the Elephant Polo World Championship, beating her husband to the title and furthering the country's dominance.
Time for some transparency. The so called ‘World Championship’ is less of a world cup and more of an invitation to teams around the world to compete for the title.
Obviously the game differs greatly to its nearest relative, Polo. The main difference being, of course, that one uses an elephant instead of a horse. The teams consist of four elephants with eight players, two on each. An expert known as a Mahout ‘drives’ whilst the player concentrates on the game.
The rules are mainly similar to the horse counterpart but with some necessary changes made. Penalties are given for laying down in front of the goal or wandering off to eat bamboo.
Smaller elephants are most often used as attackers thanks to being more mobile and faster whereas the larger animals will be used for defence. Best of all, the largest elephant acts as the umpire.
It has had its fair share of controversy, it was accused on numerous occasions of animal cruelty, most notablly by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). This lead to matches being cancelled, sponsors pulling out and any references to the sport being removed from the Guinness Book of World Records. Thailand announced in 2018 that the sport would be coming to an end.
It was revealed through an exposé that the animals were beaten and gouged with bull hooks and had their ears yanked during training for the Thai tournament.
So in the past, Scotland dominated the sport, but they couldn't have all the fun and England had to get at least one over their northern neighbours, with Air Tuskers winning it in 2009.
cover photo credit: By Krish Dulal - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17515979