(CNN) -- Out with seekers and brooms. In with stirrups and hooves. This is horseball, where rugby meets basketball on horseback -- but players have more fun comparing it to quidditch, the sport of Harry Potter's wizarding world. "I usually ask people if they've seen the Harry Potter movies," says British horseball player Jamie Gibson. "Quidditch is the nearest comparison I can think of. That usually gets people going." While Potter and teammates pick up gruesome injuries with disturbing ease playing quidditch, full-contact horseball does at least feature helmets. "It looks a little bit violent, but it isn't," says Frederico Cannas, the sport's president, who began playing as a teenager in his native Portugal.
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Horseball mixes rugby and basketball on horseback in teams of six
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France dominates the sport, which has its origins in Argentina's national game, pato
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Players say horseball is one of the only "true" team events in equestrian sport
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Horseball is coming to the U.S. and the sport has future Olympic ambitions
@placeholder believes France's senior men's team has never been beaten at international level.
Gibson believes @placeholder's senior men's team has never been beaten at international level.