US News

POLO FOR DUMBOS

And you thought keeping your balance on the A train was tricky.

Try whacking a yellow ball from the rooftop of a careening SUV – and then imagine it from atop an elephant.

For a few hours yesterday at the deserted, wind-whipped parking lot at Jacob Riis Park in Queens, the city’s first and only elephant-polo team rode dueling Cadillac Escalade and Navigator rooftops in a practice session for the World Elephant Polo Association championships in Nepal later this month.

The pachyderm stand-ins jockeyed for position while the New York Blue Elephant Polo Club members tried at once to thump the ball with 9-foot metal mallets – and not get catapulted onto the asphalt.

At least in Nepal, the six pioneers will play on grass. The tourney is from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6.

“We’re just trying to master the use of a mallet,” said Blue team captain and Out magazine editor Bill Keith, who noted that in Nepal the elephants are trained to return dropped mallets to riders with their trunks.

Though in the traditional sport – played in Nepal, India, the UK, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Thailand – the long mallets are made of wood, the Blue version resembles a ceiling painter without the roller.

“We all have a taste for the absurd,” said team member Robert Forster.

Keith came up with the idea for a US team while covering the WEPA championship in 2005.

“It took three years to get it together,” Keith said.

According to its Web site, nycelepolo.com, the club got its official start in a bar in Anguilla, where Keith shared his dream for a team with Blue manager Melanie Brandman.

“This is a very competitive bunch, and they want a story to tell at the pub,” she said yesterday.

justin.silverman@nypost.com