In a cricket-crazy nation, sports like polo often struggle for recognition, despite having strong Indian roots, and are generally not sought-after choices, especially for women. But, Rina Shah, who founded fashion brand Rinaldi Polo in the 1990s and was designing bespoke accessories for celebrities such as Kareena Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Shilpa Shetty, Naomi Campbell and Natalie Portman, was determined to transform her passion into action and hence, galloped her way to a polo field.

Rina Shah engages in a game of polo

Fall and rise
“I went to see a polo match in December 2009 and in 2010, I took up riding,” recalls Shah, who re-evaluated her decision after a couple of falls, but eventually packed her bags and left for Argentina around November 2011, to get trained in the sport.