Mother Jones
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All things considered, the relocation of the Segway Polo World Cup from Lebanon to Washington, DC ranks pretty low on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s list of crimes. “The polite way of saying it—the PC way of saying it—is the situation with the Syrians,” explains Kelly Davies, chief operating operator for Ijma3, the Arab technology firm that’s sponsoring the event, when I ask how the world’s most prestigious tournament for people playing polo on Segways ended up on a solitary patch of field turf at Gallaudet University, the nation’s leading institute of higher learning for the deaf.
“The issue is Syria.”
Segway polo works a lot like regular polo, except instead of riding horses, the players are on Segways, and instead of invoking glamorous images of a centuries-old aristocratic tradition, the players are on Segways. Billed as the invention that would change the course of mankind when it was unveiled in 2001, the Segway has instead fallen into more of a niche market, used primarily for tour groups and the tech-obsessed. It’s also been hampered by a string of bad publicity. President George W. Bush famously fell off of one, and three years ago, James Heselden, the company’s owner, died after he lost control of his scooter and fell off a cliff.
The Segway Polo World Cup features nine teams from five countries—Germany, Sweden, the United States, Lebanon, and Barbados. The winner receives a trophy called the Woz Cup, in honor of the sport’s creator, former Apple computer guru Steve Wozniak. Although notably absent, Wozniak, who is known simply as “The Woz,” is referenced in almost every conversation I have at the world cup, sometimes in the first sentence. Segway polo players tend to describe their attachment to the game in terms of degrees of separation from the Woz.
On the field, the action is spirited. “I’ll be honest, when I saw the Segway was invented I thought, ‘Wow, this will make lazy people lazier,'” admits Jennifer Sandserson, the event coordinator, on Monday evening. (Segways polo players typically work up a sweat over the course of the game, but to Sanderson’s point, upon the conclusion of a Sunday evening game, one of the American players did yell “Nap time!”) But Sanderson has been won over in the last few days. “Oh my God, the European players and the Lebanese and the Barbadoes players they take this so seriously as if it’s their whole career!”
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