Game of clones
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Argentina, cloning polo horses is transforming the sport. There are big companies, big profits and big ambitions. Against the backdrop of the Argentine Open, (the crown jewel of the Polo season,) presenter Marnie Chesterton talks to scientists and key figures in this tale of how cloning conquered Polo, and where the genetic interventions are heading.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:09.5 | I'm Marnie Chesterton. |
| 0:10.9 | This episode comes from Argentina, |
| 0:13.4 | where an obsession with the perfect polo horse |
| 0:16.1 | is driving scientific innovation. |
| 0:29.5 | Yeah, my daughter! No! driving scientific innovation. It's polo time. |
| 0:31.7 | I am watching the world's most prestigious polo tournament |
| 0:34.9 | in the centre of Buenos Aires. |
| 0:38.6 | What's extraordinary about this scene is that some of the horses playing on the pitch in front |
| 0:42.9 | of me are identical. Not similar, identical. They're clones. I'm Marnie Chesterton. This is |
| 0:52.0 | Game of Clones, the story of how Argentina, a nation obsessed with Polo, |
| 0:57.7 | became the epicentre of cloning. And in doing so, not only fundamentally transformed one of the |
| 1:03.6 | world's oldest sports, but pushed the frontiers of science. |
| 1:18.6 | Polo, which originated in Central Asia, was brought to Argentina by British immigrants. |
| 1:24.0 | He founded the first polo club here in Buenos Aires in 1882. |
| 1:30.2 | If you don't know this game, it's a bit like hockey, but crucially played on horseback, |
| 1:36.6 | where two teams of four people use long mallets to drive a ball past goalposts. |
| 1:42.2 | There's one at either end of this pitch, and a great horse can make all the difference to the final score. |
| 1:45.9 | The twists and turns of this game are not immediately obvious, |
| 1:50.4 | so I've brought an insider to help explain what's going on in front of me. |
| 1:52.9 | My name is Jose Santamarina. |
... |
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