(Thumbnail image: The Sun)

Is it the heaviest sport on earth? Perhaps not, but the World Elephant Polo competition is in its 28th year and over a dozen teams from Nepal, the UK, the United States, Hong Kong and elsewhere gathered in Nepal for the week-long tournament.

We take a look at this unique sport and its impact on conservation and tourism from the perspective of The Telegraph, MSNBC, CBS, Republica Sports, and GlobeTrotter TV.

Telegraph TV and MSNBC shed some light on how the game is played.

“It’s one of those sports that’s never going to make the Olympics, but it’s just absolutely, incredibly good fun. It looks completely mad. Now when you play elephant polo, you don’t actually control the elephant. There is a mahout on the front and you sit on a kind of big saddle on the very back of the elephant with your big eight-foot long pole. And then you sort of run around chasing the ball and you’ve got to whack the ball as you get anywhere near it.”

“The rules are similar to traditional polo, the pachyderms are not allowed to lie in the goal mouth or pick up the ball with their trunks.”

Last year, a team of New Yorkers entered the contest in Nepal and did surprisingly well.  A CBS News report called the New York team a “pachydermal equivalent of the Jamaican bobsled team.”

"'We're excited to represent our country,' said one member of the team named New York Blue, 'even though our country has no idea it's being represented.'"

MSNBC says elephant polo doesn’t always look elegant, but it does involve skill, and it’s more than just sport.

“The money raised from the polo is for a pioneering elephant hospital. They’ve already bought this customized ambulance.  The polo players break for lunch. Elephants are a symbol for this region, but too often they face hardship and abuse, but here, for a while, they are treated like the regal elephants of folklore."

Elephant polo contests are held in Sri Lanka, Thailand and Nepal. Republica Sports, part of a Nepalese news site, says the event is good for tourism.

“The number of visitors -- both foreigners and Nepalis -- has increased dramatically while a local resident…said everybody is eager to see how the game is played.”

Lastly, Globe Trotter TV notes that the game is exciting for the elephants, too.

“I think what I love the most about this sport is when you’re playing polo on the back of an elephant and the game is close, the score is close, the elephant gets so excited by the game. When the ball goes down to the far end of the field, the elephants running, he’s looking at it, he stops.  Sometimes you can feel, you know he wants to pick up the ball with his trunk and help you because he knows which way you want to go.  He knows what’s going on. They’re so smart.”

So what do you think? Would you play elephant polo?

Writer: Melissa Ulbricht

Producer: Katlin Chadwick