hurlingham spring issue febraury 2012

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Photo (left page top right ) by David Lominska

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10 PonylinesNews from around the polo world, plus interviews and the Chief Executive’s column

16 TalkFeaturing Malaysian play-offs, barefoot hoof care and a provocative interview with Gonzalo Pieres

26 ProfileAntony Fanshawe recounts his memorable experience as England coach for the FIP IX World Cup

30 InterviewSam Morton talks to former USPA chairman, Summerfield Key ‘Skey’ Johnston, on his polo views

36 DestinationChina’s new Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Club is a remarkable development, as Herbert Spencer reports

40 VarsityPoloHenry Grabar-Sage outlines the pedigree and the tough challenges ahead for the sport at Yale

47 ActionReports and pictures from across the globe, including the Triple Crown, FIP World Cup, French

Open, Klosters Snow Polo and the Royal Salute Golden Jubilee Cup

66 ArchiveHerbert Spencer delves into the history of the much-loved Pony Club

FIP cover artwork by

Alejandro Moy

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Héctor Martelli, doctor of veterinary medicine, is publisher of polo newsletter Entre Tacos y Bochas. Passionate about polo, he first played aged 15 but stopped during university. Martelli took up polo again in 1967 at the Coronel Suárez Polo Club, where he became director, and retired in 1994. He was coordinator of referees for the Argentine Polo Association (1998-2004).

Henry Grabar Sage is a senior at Yale College where he majors in American Studies and French. He is an editor at the weekly Yale Herald, in which he first chronicled the trials of the Yale Polo team in September 2011 and which he describes on page 40. He is a dual citizen of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and likes jazz, football, and maps. He cannot ride a horse.

HurlingHam magazine

Publisher Roderick Vere Nicollexecutive editor Peter Howartheditor Arabella DickieDeputy editor Herbert SpencerContributing editor Sarah Eakineditor-at-large Alex Webbeart Director Hillary JayneChief Copy editor Chris MadiganSenior Copy editor Sarah Evans

SHow meDia editorial

managing Director Peter Howarth1-2 Ravey Street, London EC2A 4QP+ 44 (0) 203 222 [email protected]

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this publication, no responsibility can be accepted for any errors or omissions. All the information contained in this publication is correct at the time of going to press.

The HURLINGHAM Polo Association magazine (ISSN 1750-0486) is published by Hurlingham Media. The magazine is designed and produced on behalf of Hurlingham Media by Show Media Ltd. It is published on behalf of the Hurlingham Polo Association by Hurlingham Media. The products and services advertised are not necessarily endorsed by or connected with the publisher or the Hurlingham Polo Association. The editorial opinions expressed in this publication are those of individual authors and not necessarily those of the publisher or the Hurlingham Polo Association. Hurlingham magazine welcome feedback from readers: [email protected]

contributors

Celeste Neill is a Zurich-based journalist who regularly writes travel and trend articles for titles such as The

Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. She also works as the marketing director for the Klosters Snow Polo tournament, which has triggered a growing passion for the world of polo. Neill often travels abroad to polo tournaments and takes an occasional lesson at Zurich Polo Park.

George Pocheptsov is a self-taught artist. Born in Philadelphia in 1992, he started to paint six months before he could talk and his work now sells for up to $200,000. Pocheptsov has appeared in many leading publications including The New York Times and has been commissioned to paint for Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Celine Dion and Michael Jordan, among other prominent figures.

forewordRoderick Vere Nicoll Publisher

Welcome to the spring issue of Hurlingham. The predominant themes are FIP, China and art. The cover is a painting by Alejandro Moy which embodies all three elements. Herbert Spencer in Features writes about the Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club in Tianjin, China which has organised with FIP a 12-nation, 16-goal snow polo tournament. During the World Cup in Argentina in October, FIP broached the subject with the 12 nations and persuaded them all to field teams. This was an amazing feat and congratulations are due to all parties for putting on the largest international polo event ever! Continuing the FIP thread you will read about how polo will be played again in Hong Kong. Peter Abisheganaden describes how the Royal Malaysian Polo Federation came up with a novel way of funding the ponies needed for the Zone D (Asian, Australasian, African) play-offs last June. In Profile Antony Fanshawe, the English coach for the FIP IX World Cup, in San Luis, Argentina recounts his experiences and excitement of coaching for the first time. Finally, in Action Nick Snow, a member of the USA team describes the tournament where Argentina defeated Brazil in the final. For the art theme, we have the Moy painting and in Ponylines, Wellington College has commissioned a Nic Fiddian-Green sculpture of Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington’s favourite horse and the school is seeking to raise funding for an equestrian complex. George Pocheptsov joined the Harvard Polo team last year as a freshman. This ignited a childhood passion for horses and polo has become a major theme in his paintings. He has donated several to Harvard Polo Club which they can sell to raise funds for the team. On www.hurlinghampolo.com we have video highlights of the finals of the three Opens of the Triple Crown, courtesy of ESPN, and a number of other major tournaments. We are also covering all the action in Palm Beach.

HurlingHam meDia

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One tO Watch

On October 21, 2011, 1-goaler Salvador

Jauretche became the youngest ever player to win the FiP World Cup, aged 14. With poise beyond his years, salva played back in the qualifying games and then switched to position 1 halfway through the final, scoring two decisive goals in argentina’s 12–11 win over Brazil. One goal was a neck shot from 80 yards and an impossible angle that his 10-goal cousin, Juan martín Nero, would have been proud of. One of five siblings, the young argentine was ‘born on horseback’ and first started playing polo aged eight. His family farm is La tapera in trenque Lauquen, Buenos aires, where salva plays with his father, guillermo, his uncle and godfather Pablo, and first cousins the Neros and James. His mother is Josefina geoghegan – whose irish blood no doubt accounts for salva’s red hair. in November, salva turned 15 and in December his handicap was raised to 2 goals.

Chief executive

Since the last issue polo activity has not surprisingly been mainly overseas. Our England 14-goal FIP team was successful in Italy and qualified for the World Championships in San Luis, Argentina in October. In the semi-finals against Brazil they were very unlucky to be pipped in the final seconds but it was one of the best and most exciting games of the tournament. We are very grateful to Richard Britten-Long who helped significantly to fund the venture and to the players who committed themselves for the best part of six weeks as well as their horses for the Italy games. We were also very fortunate to have Alan Kent coaching the team in Italy and Antony Fanshawe in Argentina. It was perhaps disappointing that the final games were not watched by more top-level polo players but San Luis is far from Buenos Aires and air travel was hindered because of the Puyehue ash cloud.

In December, English players congregated at Palermo to watch a somewhat predictable final of the Open. Congratulations to Luke Tomlinson who replaced an injured Tommy Garcia del Rio for the Hurlingham and Open, to James Beim who played in the finals of the Cámara and to Mark Tomlinson who reached the semi-finals of the Cámara. Malcolm Borwick, Tom Morley, the Hanbury brothers, Ollie Cudmore, Jack Richardson, Max Charlton and Richard Le Poer all flew the English flag in various tournaments in Argentina, some with considerable success.

Once again, the office has been busy with travel arrangements. In February, an England three-man 16-goal team will compete with 11 other international teams for the Snow Polo World Championships at the Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club in China. The arena skills of the players selected should stand our team in good stead.

The HPA has been invited to field a 20-goal England team to play two matches in Chile at the end of March. It is hoped that this same team of Mark Tomlinson, Malcolm Borwick, Charlie Hanbury and Ollie Cudmore will then take part in a 22-goal tournament at Palermo in April.

During the winter arena polo has continued. After the Arena Gold Cup in February, there will be two international events in March. The first on 3 March at AEPC Hickstead for the Bryan Morrison Trophy, England (capt. Chris Hyde) vs USA (capt. Tommy Biddle). On 21 March there will be an evening of polo at the O2 Arena featuring two international matches: Scotland vs Ireland, and England vs Argentina.

Looking forward to the summer we are delighted that Marc Ganzi will be fielding an American team for the St Regis International Cup (19 May, Cowdray) and it is planned that we will play a 26-goal Commonwealth team at the Beaufort test match in preparation for the Coronation Cup.

In the office, Olly Hughes has arrived to help with the ever-expanding workload, and we are delighted that Sophie McPherson has given birth to another boy. We are also thrilled at Amanda Eaton’s engagement to eventer, Nick Gauntlett, not least because this maintains the record that all the women who have worked for the HPA have got engaged whilst working here at Little Coxwell!

Hong Kong Polo DeveloPment

On 29 November 2011 a ceremony was held in Hong Kong to herald the founding of the Hong Kong Polo Development and Promotion Federation (HKPDPF). In attendance were Harvey Lee, Vice Chairman of the HKPDPF, along with Asad Jumabhoy, Executive Committee, Federation of International Polo (FIP), Roderick Vere Nicoll, FIP Ambassador and Marketing Committee, and Tony Yue, MH JP, Vice-President of HK Sports Federation and Olympic Committee.

The HKPDPF is the only member association in China recognised by FIP currently. It aims to facilitate, promote and regulate the playing of polo in Hong Kong and its near region, and is supported by Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club, which will provide polo facilities.

Harvey Lee commented, ‘Equestrian activities in this city have a long history, and today, we are thrilled to declare that Hong Kong has become part of the world’s polo family.’ Tony Yue added, ‘It’s a great joy to see the establishment of the HKPDPF, which will surely help raise the awareness of horse-related sports in the region and propel Hong Kong’s sports scene and recognition to a new level.’

lawyers Polo

In November 2011, Lawyers Polo went to Dubai to play the Emirates NBD Polo Cup. Four teams contested in the tournament – now in its fourth year – which took place in the polo fields of Desert Palm, Ali Albwardy’s polo club. The final match, between Emirates NBD and One&Only, was a fast and open game in which Emirates NBD dominated from the outset and secured a 6-3 victory over One&Only. Emirates NBD was captained by Eduardo Bérèterbide Sr and led by Ali Albwardy. The team was also ably supported by Eduardo Bérèterbide Jr and by Prince Carl-Eugen Oettingen-Wallerstein. ‘We want to thank Desert Palm for assisting us in the organisation of this tournament and for providing us with such an outstanding string of horses,’ emphasised Eduardo Bérèterbide Jr, founder of Lawyers Polo. ‘We are very excited to see how Lawyers Polo is growing over the years,’ said Carolina Bérèterbide, organiser of the tournament in Dubai.

The Most Valuable Player was Xavier Doumen, a Parisian lawyer and member of the Chantilly Polo Club. The distinction for the Most Gentlemanly Player was awarded to Carlos Rivas from Venezuela who practises law in California. The prize for the Best Playing Pony of the tournament went to Overall, a horse formerly played by Adolfo Cambiaso and played by Justin Fogarty.

hurlingham [ ponylines]

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the love of my life

Pony’s name Dolfina Buenaventura

Sex Mare

origin Argentina

Presented for the first time in 1908 by the River Plate Polo Association, the Lady Susan Townley Cup awards the Best Playing Pony of the final of the Argentine

Wellington’S gala Dinner

Last November Wellington College held a Gala Equestrian Dinner. To meet its aim to be the first-choice school for the equestrian pupil – a goal which cannot be far off given the success of its polo, eventing and show jumping teams and even its Cavalry Section of the Cadet Corps – several initiatives were unveiled. The first was the creation of a Polo Scholarship – the Grace Scholarship – in recognition of Peter Grace, founder of Ascot Park Polo Club, who is making the scholarship possible. Secondly, a five-metre high sculpture of Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington’s favourite horse, by world-renowned equestrian sculptor, Nic Fiddian-Green, has been commissioned. The final project is that Wellington plans to build a full-sized polo arena on its grounds. To help support polo, equestrianism and the creation of the Arena at Wellington, please contact Director of Development, Edward Schneider, on +44 (0)1344 751767 or by email at [email protected]. John gale

lunch of chamPionS

On 5 November 2011, Buenos Aires’ illustrious Hurlingham Club invited world-renowned ex-polo champions from the Sixties and Seventies to celebrate the 118th Argentine Hurlingham Open, and to honour them for all their dedication and commitment to the sport over the years. These individuals represent a huge part of polo history in Argentina, and we cannot forget this. Prominent former players in attendance included Gastón and Francisco Dorignac, Daniel González, Jorge Tanoira, Horacio Baibiene, Héctor Merlos, Luis Lalor, Luis Lalor Jr, Juan José Alberdi and Alberto Heguy. These ex-champions fought in prestigious teams such as Coronel Suarez, Santa Ana, Mar del Plata, La Alicia, Tortugas and Los Cóndores – which were the reigning kings of the Sixties and Seventies. Each of the players signed old photos of their former teams, after which lunch was served. In the afternoon everyone was invited to watch the final of the 118th Hurlingham Open: La Dolfina and Ellerstina, the kings of the 2000 era. It was a particularly unique and memorable final for the club, having so many stars together again under one roof. PePe Santamarina

Polo Open Championship. In 2011 the Lady Susan Townley Cup went to my red chestnut mare, Dolfina Buenaventura, the daughter of El Sol (Top Secret, SPC) and Ytacuá Bienvenida.

Buenaventura’s father, El Sol, is the brother of that great mare, La Luna, bred by the late Héctor Barrantes, and played by Gonzalo Pieres in the talented La Espadaña team in the Eighties. La Luna was presented with the Lady Susan Townley Cup in 1989 and 1990.

Dolfina Buenaventura is a magnificent mare, and one of the best in my horse string. She is extremely fast yet docile at the same time, and allows me to reach every play with high speed. It is this pace that makes it possible for me to reach or pass any rival.

This is not the first time one of my horses has been honoured for their skill during play: the first was Colibrí (1997-1998); then, Aiken Cura (2005); and now Buenaventura. It is often said that the horse makes up for 60 per cent of every player’s performance, so a gifted pony, like Buenaventura, is definitelykey to the quality of my game.

aDolfo camBiaSo, aS tolD to hector martelli

hookeD on Polo

Shilai Liu is founder and Chairman of

Beijing’s Tang Polo Club – host of the

2011 China Polo Open – and one of

China’s leading polo players. A self-

confessed polo fanatic and champion of

the US Polo Open 4 Handicap in 2008,

Liu has progressed from a handicap of

-2 to 1 over the past six years.

I was always a serious rider, but in 2005 I met the Jordanian Ambassador to China who introduced me to polo and I was hooked. Since then I have not looked back, and my wife now says she is a polo widow!

With polo it is the sport per se that fascinates me, not the social intercourse, not the so-called beau monde ambience, which mean nothing to me. I love polo because it is hard to play, it requires speed, and it is full of passion. The camaraderie that is built up is something that I have not been able to find in other sports. My most memorable polo game was La Dolfina versus Ellerstina in 2010. I never get bored of watching it on DVD.

Through the Tang Polo Club, I plan to promote polo sports, polo culture and the polo industry. It is important to be in line with international standards and to respect the spiritual aspect and the history the sport has in China. We also need to be able to breed polo ponies. Additionally we have to develop more Chinese coaches to ensure quality training. Through all this I really hope that members, guests and international visitors will get a true polo experience at the club and that the polo tradition passes from generation to generation.

The club recently hosted the China Polo Open, which was the first sanctioned National Open and a milestone in promoting professional polo in China.

My target before the end of 2012 is to move up to a 3-goal handicap, so I will play several tournaments in Argentina and will be going to Thailand to lead a team at the All Asia Cup. We also plan to take Tang Polo Club Team to England to play a tournament mid-year. It is important to show to the rest of the world the development of Chinese polo and the way we mix our historical culture with the sport.

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For the Triple Crown in 2012 only La Dolfina will keep the same team members but the team are now 40 goals. The three Pieres will be joined by their brother-in-law Mariano Aguerre (38 goals). La Aguada is replacing Eduardo Novillo Astrada with Guillermo Caset Jr (37 goals). Pilará Piaget is keeping only Hilario Ulloa who will be joined by Francisco Bensadón, Sebastián Merlos and Francisco de Narváez Jr (36 goals). Frederick Mannix’s Alegría is a new combination of Lucas Monteverde, Agustín Merlos and Juan Merlos (34 goals). Newcomers La Natividad will be Pablo Pieres Jr, Ignacio Heguy, Rodrigo Andrade and Bartolomé Castagnola (34 goals). Eduardo and Alejandro Novillo Astrada will play as La Aguada II with Lucas James and Cristian Laprida Jr (33 goals) but will have to qualify. Bautista, Pepe y Eduardo Heguy are without a team!

The St Moritz World Cup was cancelled for the first time in the tournament’s 28-year history due to exceptionally mild weather conditions. After various load-bearing capacity tests, the St Moritz Lake Commission would not give the go-ahead to build the necessary infrastructure (stands, tents, giant cowbells etc) on the thin ice. The frozen surface has to be at least 20cm thick, with each square metre being able to bear up to 350kg. The news came as a disappointment to players, spectators and sponsors alike.

On February 17 at the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame in Wellington, Florida, Carlos Gracida – winner of every important tournament in the world with more than 100 high-goal wins including a three-time Grand Slam win (US Open, British Open, Argentine Open) – will be inducted in the Hall of Fame. James P ‘Jimmy’ Mills, born in 1909 will receive the Posthumous Hall of Fame Award. Mills was one of the bright stars during the ‘heyday’ of polo in the Thirties. He went to Yale, winning the Intercollegiates twice and the US Open and reached 8 goals at the age of 25. In the Horses to Remember category, the award will go to Brown Fern, owned by Mike Phipps. The grey gelding turned in two excellent periods for Stewart Iglehart, helping the US team win their 1936 International matches with Great Britain.

Robert Jornayvaz is on a gap year and will start at the UVa in September. He spent last autumn in Argentina and is now playing in Palm Beach in the 20-goal. For the 26-goal he joins a dream team of Argentine Open winners Adolfo Cambiaso and Pelon Stirling (newly raised to 10 goals). No doubt playing with two of the game’s greats will help Robert’s polo career.

Peter Grace, Chairman and Founder of Ascot Park Polo Club, was awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the New Year Honours List 2012. The OBE award to Peter Grace is unprecedented in history being the first Honours Award for polo.


argentine exPerience

Receiving permission from my headmaster to miss a few days of school to go to Argentina for October half-term made my heart beat with joy. My friend and coach, Marianela Castagnola, had invited me to play some tournaments in Buenos Aires. The most important was the La Aguada Ladies Cup. Together with my team members, Maria Gené (2 goals) and Eva Bruhl (6), Marianela (8) and me (pictured, 0) we made a strong 16-goal team.

We won the first game against Jaeger-LeCoultre. The second game, against Rei do Caviar, was played that same day and, although I was less nervous, I knew that I had to be on top of my game. When we won the second match, I was thrilled to discover that we were now in the final. The following day I was more nervous than ever. Although we played well, it was a highly competitive game. My highlight overall was scoring a goal to help pull my team through to victory over La Ensenada H. Stern.

During the prize-giving we were so excited to be holding the trophy up in the air. But it was only when I heard my name called out for the MVP prize that I started to cry, my heart beating so fast as I received the prize from Miguel Novillo Astrada, a 9-goal player! Spending time in Argentina playing polo makes me feel so alive and happy… a feeling I can revisit every time I close my eyes when seated at my desk studying for my GCSEs.caroline DreeSmann

elePhant Polo WorlD cuP

On 2 December 2011 EFG Switzerland successfully defended their title at the 30th edition of the World Elephant Polo Championships in Nepal. Captained by the sport’s co-founder James Manclark, the EFG quartet beat the home team Tiger Tops Tuskers 9-7 in a thrilling match.

The Choegyal brothers Rinchen and Sangjay played for the Tuskers and EFG respectively. For EFG Manclark was ably supported by newcomer to the team Nigel Lea as well as Sangjay and EFG polo stalwart Robert Mehm with patron Keith Gapp managing the squad from the ground.

The Tiger Tops Tigresses, captained by Stine Edwards and representing Denmark, rode out the most successful ladies team ever by winning four out of five of their matches and beaten only in the semi-final by the title-holders. Sam Prentice, the Tigresses’ top scorer, was awarded the EFG Most Valuable Player, becoming the first lady ever to win the award.

Earlier in the day there was agony for the Pukka Chukkas in the closing seconds of the WEPA Olympic Quaich final when Chinggis Khaan Mongolia pipped them to the post with a 5-4 victory with just 15 seconds remaining on the clock. At half-time the Pukkas had enjoyed a four-goal lead but the incredible warrior power of Mongol Dovchin Tseveldorj proved overwhelming after the elephant change. The Equestrio Best Playing Elephant award went to the National Parks-owned tusker Narayani Gaj driven by mahout Lal Babu Chaudhary.

SADDLE UP WITH…

MAx CHArLTon

nationality British

Age 21

Handicap 5

Following the HPA Handicap Meeting in

September 2011, British player Max Charlton

was moved up from four to five-goals. Here

the talented player discusses his enduring love

of the game, his respect for his long-term

coach, John Horswell, as well as his future

plans for the 2012 season.

When and how did you first start to

play polo?

I did not start riding until I was nine. I had a

little black gelding called Gemini and we took

part in all the pony club activities. I was 12

when I met Paul Sweeney and he introduced

me to polo. I love the game because it requires

a lot of skill at speed, quick thinking and for

me every game is very different.

Who do you respect most in polo?

I have a lot of respect for John Horswell, who

has coached me since I was 12. He can read

the game really well and has been invaluable

help to me over the years. I am also very

fortunate to have a great team working for me.

Between my two Argentine grooms and English

groom, Ella – who has been with me for eight

years now – everything runs smoothly.

How many tournaments have you played

in this year – how many did you win?

I have played in over 30 tournaments this

season, reached 20 finals and won 18 of

them. I really enjoyed playing in the World

Cup and we were very unlucky to lose to

Brazil in an extra chukka in the semis.

What are your plans for this winter?

This winter I will be based at Memo Gracida’s

farm, La Herradura, in Argentina. Memo has

the most amazing organization and discipline. I

will be returning to the UK in December to

play in the Nations, before flying off to play in

Thailand, India and China. I am very lucky that I

have then been asked to play in teams for the

18, 15 and 12-goal tournaments next summer.

ALEjAnDro Moy

The star of this issue’s FIP World Cup cover artwork is Argentine artist, Alejandro Moy. Moy is

internationally renowned for his classic artworks, all of which focus on the equestrian themes

that have fascinated him since childhood. ‘I was born surrounded by polo and inherited my

passion for the sport from my father. I used to play but quickly learnt that my talent lay on

canvas, rather than the polo field! Through my artwork I aim to capture the movement, the

action and the dynamism of this extraordinary sport.’ Moy’s inspiration for the FIP artwork

was ‘taken from the fraternity of the countries united by polo’ – represented by the figure

of the polo player at the Metropolitan Club in Tianjin with the flags of the 11 countries and

one Special Administrative Region participating in the first FIP Snow Polo World Cup 2012.

Moy first collaborated with FIP more than 20 years ago, and he designed the FIP logo. Since

1988, he has held more than 50 exhibitions and his work is owned by prominent figures such

as HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, the Sultans of Malaysia and Brunei, and the Maharajah of

Jaipur. www.moy.com.ar

12TH AnnUAL TAnoIrA SALE

My favourite polo pony sale of 2011 took place at Cuatro Vientos, Pilar on 16 November. Why the

partiality? Well, obviously the Miguens and Tanoira families are very old and dear friends and Rod

Rueda, the auctioneer, is a pleasure to watch in action but also I have always been lucky with this

breed. So far all the Tanoira ponies I have bought turned out extremely well, giving me significant

sporting and financial benefits. The sale is well planned and laid-out, the ponies easy to scrutinise

and the victuals so sumptuous, that it is impossible not to overindulge. The statistics are telling: 64

Tanoira ponies have played in the Palermo Open in recent years and they figure prominently

in all the other great world tournaments. This is some polo bloodline; Pucará, Guindado, Gete

Galgo and Gete Menguante are among the planet’s most famous polo stallions and one must not

omit among the dams the incomparable Luna, Lagarta, Araña and Comunista. This year there

were 18 fillies, three colts and eight female embryos on offer and the bidding was keen. More

and more people are getting into polo pony breeding and are looking to found their operations on

proven stock, which is why sales like the Tanoiras’ always arouse such interest. AnDy HArPEr



15

post impressionsGeorge Pocheptsov’s recent membership of the Harvard Polo Team has led his artistic talents in a new direction, as he explains

A mother and son shiver in a frosty Philadelphia drizzle. Behind them, a small pile of worn, tattered suitcases are drenched by the icy rain that fell ceaselessly on that December night. My mother and I had been evicted from our one-bedroom apartment and sent into an unforgiving shadow of poverty, grief and despair. I don’t remember the bitter night clearly, for I was an infant, but my mother’s memory and my imagination coalesce in this image of the downcast Madonna and child.

With a pile of overdue bills to pay, and little understanding of the American job market, the last thing on my first-generation Ukrainian mother’s mind was her infant son’s entertainment. She would hand me an ancient pack of crayons and a few sheets of loose-leaf paper, and expect my imagination to fly. If I wanted to escape, or to express myself, it would have to be through those dreaded pieces of coloured wax. And so I drew. And I flew.

As luck would have it, in a few months’ time, I had amassed a substantial collection of art. My mother brought examples of my drawings and paintings to a gallery owner in Bethesda, Maryland out of simple curiosity. The owner savoured the figures he saw drawn on the small pieces of paper, coloured lightly with a delicate balance of crayons and markers. He said he would display it, and my work quickly found buyers. Then we ran into another problem: people wanted to meet the artist behind the canvas.

When these people did meet the artist, their jaws dropped to the floor, down where I stood at three-foot-eight. I began to be known as the ‘pint-sized Picasso’ and was summoned to television shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, and Today. Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton, Michael Jordan and Celine Dion, celebrities who I assumed lived in our television box, commissioned me to do artwork. I never relished the publicity, and no matter who commissioned a painting, I only saw my objective as filling the blank canvas in front of me. Soon my mother’s and my poverty came to an end.

In third grade, I established a foundation that would donate my works of art to charitable galas for auction, and to this day, I have helped raise over eight million dollars for charitable causes ranging from the Georgetown University Hospital to the establishment of a scholarship fund for my local high school. I do what I love, and I believe other people should have the opportunity to do what they love.

Hope is a tumultuous struggle. I have survived on hope my entire life, but I felt its succour most during the bitter years after my father’s death. That final December cold snap, and the long, riotous spring that

followed, gave me a reverence for the human capacity to dream, to follow the light of hope, and finally to become a beacon to others.

In the fall of last year, I earned the opportunity to attend Harvard University, a lifelong dream. I met fascinating people, and made one of my best decisions to date – joining the Harvard Polo Team. I kept fond memories of a childhood of horseriding on a chestnut affectionately named Bebo, and as soon as I paid my first visit to the arena, my passion for horses came alive again.

This past summer, the team was invited to Tommy Lee Jones’s ranch in San Saba,

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POCHEPTSOV AND POLO

Pocheptsov undertook his first two polo paintings last autumn: one of the Harvard Polo Club, the second of the Myopia Hunt Club, a grand dame of American polo where the Harvard team practises and plays. Each club lays claim as the oldest active of its kind: Harvard Polo was the first American collegiate club organised in 1883 and Myopia, one of the five original members of the US Polo Association, still plays its Sunday games on Gibney Field, the oldest active field in the US. Pocheptsov is undertaking similarly whimsical polo paintings for Circencester Club in England and Hurlingham in Argentina to comprise a limited-edition set of the polo elders, with 12”x 18” giclée prints sold and the roughly 3’ x 6’ originals auctioned for the recently re-established Harvard Polo Club’s campaign to build a home stable at Myopia. For more information, contact Crocker Snow Jr, Harvard Polo coach at [email protected].

Texas, for an unforgettable polo experience. Watching eight magnificent thoroughbred horses dash across a cinnabar field in the heat of summer was an inspiration. I felt an artistic goal to connect the desire, barely controlled chaos and luminescent colour of a polo match with the surface of a canvas.

The San Saba experience triggered a pivotal step in my art career. Up to that time, my artworks fuelled themselves with my own fantasies. They depicted an imaginary world of mermaids, dragons, butterflies, and other creatures that were illustrated with a touch of surrealism. Yet, the relationship that I developed with the

equine members of the team gave me a new artistic direction.

It began with a simple splash of magenta on white, and ended with an artwork that captured the crimson spirit, aptly titled ‘Harvard Polo’. The vibrant green hues of the field gave feeling of a fresh beginning. The fiery horses and articulated angles of the players imitated a chaotic clash to assume control of the ball. The portrayal of the final steps of heated determinacy lit up the human desire to triumph.

That same passion is felt by every player on the field. Each player lights up the other in a chain reaction, and they, together with

their horses, become a driving force. These unified forces are reflected in my second artistic rendering of the sport, ‘Myopia’, which pays tribute to the oldest polo field in the United States.

Polo may become a central theme in my art. The movement and sacred bond between the player and horse are the ingredients to creating an artwork that vividly captures the emotional landscape of a match. The more time I spend in the arena, the more my vision as an artist slowly peels away the first-glance visuals of the sport and embraces the inner spirit of the game.

Left ‘Harvard Polo’: auctioned to benefit the Harvard Polo Team

Above A young Pocheptsov with Colin Powell, 1998


Gene Ovnicek: farrier, clinician and

pioneer in the study of bare hoof care

Provided they are allowed to walk outdoors, keeping horses shoeless offers a number of health benefits, suggests Bill Clark

Although sceptical at first, my farrier concedes my horses have the healthiest hooves

In a 2010 issue of the USPA’s Polo Players Edition magazine, I saw a picture of 10-goal player Tommy Hitchcock on horseback in 1932. His pony’s left fore is raised – and it has no shoe. In fact, according to Grove Cullum’s 1934 book on polo ponies, Hitchcock played all his ponies and raced all his thoroughbreds barefoot. I’ve also seen a Western Horseman article that stated the cowboys on Charlie Goodnight’s original JA Ranch in the Texas Palo Duro Canyon often put 40 miles on a barefoot horse. That part of the world is dry and very rocky. Tim O’Byrne, editor of Working Ranch magazine, allowed that cowboys on the Texas Panhandle ranch called Quien Sabe also worked their horses barefoot. The USPA Eastern Circuit Governor has 28 barefoot playing ponies and the same circuit’s Lieutenant Governor has 30 barefoot playing ponies.

barefoot doctor

Bare hooves are healthy hooves. If properly trimmed, I find them safer than shod hooves. The key is to have your horses out 24/7 with run-in shed protection from bad weather and not locked up in a box all day like hot house plants. Barefoot ponies need to be out and about walking to pump blood through the foot, otherwise the injury quotient rises. I looked at eight barefoot school horses ridden on stone dust and rocky trails and was impressed by their soundness and the great shape of their

feet. Watching the farrier who trims these eight horses every six weeks impressed me further. One horse had two quarter cracks and one toe crack six weeks before; there was now space between the coronary band and the conservatively cleaned remnants of the cracks.

The gold standard for this school of thought is Colorado’s Gene Ovnicek with his website hopeforsoundness.com. Ovnicek and the Wild Horse Trim keep it simple. Both he and a veterinarian studied a group of 65 wild horses for two consecutive summers, analysing how their hooves are preserved naturally. In contrast to ‘farrier trims’, the Barefoot Trim aims to imitate exactly this. Benefits include improved blood flow, greater shock absorption and improved traction – so the hoof can adapt to all terrains. Other types of barefoot trim exist, including the 4-Point Trim and Strasser Trim, but in my opinion they exceed the usual attention span of most horse-owners.

My own farrier has overcome his initial scepticism and now concedes that my horses have the healthiest hooves – and I am his most profitable client. He arrives at 9am with two colleagues and leaves under two hours later with a cheque for trimming eight ponies. We follow Ovnicek’s Wild Horse Trim technique: 1. Trim toes but not heels. 2. Ignore soles but allow them to exfoliate by themselves and check ‘white line’ with hoof pick. 3. Conservatively and carefully trim frogs (as little as possible). 4. Gently rasp walls, bars and frogs as level as possible.

We have just put down 61 tons of ‘dead sand’ on a half-mile conditioning track. It is a quarry by-product and quite inexpensive. Three or four inches provides a wonderful ‘velvet’ cushion over the original mixture of stone dust and concrete sand which wears both steel shoes and bare hooves and is twice the cost. In a dry spell we leave a wee bit more space for sets of three. Dead sand does not run as much as concrete and expensive mason sand. But with shoes at $140 every month the replacement dead sand is a bargain for sound ponies.

Right now my barefoot ponies are thriving on the procedure. They slow-galloped three miles yesterday and will soon be at five miles. I think the ‘cup’ of a bare hoof grabs the grass just as well as a steel shoe. At least I will not have to leave a pony home on a Sunday with a pulled shoe.

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La Indiana Polo Club & Estates

General Rodríguez-Pilar

República Argentina

Tel: +44 207 349 1330

Fax: +44 207 349 1338

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.laindianapolo.com

“La Indiana Polo Club and Estates offers the

finest polo and family-oriented experience

within a secure, residential community located

in the epicenter of international polo. This is a

unique chance to shape your own polo lifestyle-

-at a fraction of the cost-- while we manage all

club services and amenities. Come live your

polo dream at La Indiana.”

Ruki Baillieu, Owner & Founding Member

43 Hectares

27 Residential Lots

6 Stable Blocks

3 Polo Fields

2 Clubhouses

Gonzalo Pieres Sr is a polo legend. The winner of six Argentine Open Championships, and one Triple Crown, he played with the 40-goal line-up La Espadaña in the Eighties, and later, he founded his own club, Ellerstina, with the late Kerry Packer. Gonzalo is renowned worldwide not only for his career as a player but also as a horse-breeder. Currently, the name Pieres is still riding on the polo fields, through his three sons: Gonzalo Jr, Facundo and Nicolas.

Every November, Ellerstina hosts the

Gold Cup in Argentina, a 20-goal tournament for patrons and professionals, one of the most important of its kind. The news of the 2011 edition was the implementation of play-offs, as Gonzalo Pieres Sr explains, a solution to when teams are tied at the end of the league stage of a tournament.

Pieres explains about the procedure: ‘The play-offs were implemented in the Gold Cup at Ellerstina whenever we had two teams that held even results. Teams met in a play-off match to decide the finalist. The idea was that if two teams were tied, the result was not going to be determined by goal difference. The 2011 Gold Cup consisted of 10 line-ups divided into two five-team zones. Therefore, if all five teams were tied, a play-off game would have taken place. If all games were won, there shouldn’t be any discussion; if one game is lost and there are two or three tied teams, or even four, we

will have a play-off match.’Adds Pieres: ‘These games consisted of

two or three chukkas, no more than that. And I believe it is the fairest solution. It would be great if this proceedure were implemented for all tournaments in order to dispel any doubt as to the final scores and team positioning.’

Many in the polo world argue that problems arise when players haven’t finished playing all the games in their league, yet know that whatever the results of those games, they will still go through to the final round. For this reason they are not motivated to ride their strongest horses or to play to their full potential in their final league matches, which could alter the overall score results. Sometimes this is to the detriment of other teams in the league, which isn’t the most sporting outcome.

According to Pieres, this problem is common in some of the world’s most important tournaments, particularly in the US and the UK. He states: ‘I proposed to use a similar system to the play-offs ahead of the UK Gold Cup, but it was a little too late and they didn’t dare make changes to such a well-established tournament. Hopefully they will consider the system next year.’

To make polo fair and to avoid questions overshadowing results, Pieres argues that play-offs should be implemented in all the tournaments; teams have to win every match if they want to avoid a play-off. ‘In fact, I believe that, in the future, 90 per cent of the tournaments will be played using a similar system or through elimination,’ he adds.

As a conclusion on this matter, the system proposed by Pieres is not only fair for polo, but also for spectators who pay to watch a good polo match with teams playing their hardest to win.

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Equestrian icon Gonzalo Pieres Sr sees play-offs as key to fairness, writes Alejandra Ocampos

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‘Play-offs should be implemented to make polo fair and to avoid any arguments over the final score’

Gonzalo Pieres Sr

• Sundaybrunch@Polo, from April till June every Sunday from 11am

• Happy Hour in July and August every Thursday from 6 pm

• Polo Shop Open from April till October• Events Marquee Open all year

• 4 polo fields and big stick&ball area• Polo players: we can help you for organising your stay• Commentator during semi-finals and finals of the most important tournaments• Polo Manager : +33 (0) 6 18 76 63 69

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Whole season: coaching chukkas and polo lessons

Subject tomodificationscalendar 2012

Polo Club Saint-TropezRoute du Bourrian – 83580 Gassin – France

T. +33(0)4 94 55 22 12 F. +33(0)4 94 56 50 66 E. [email protected] www.polo-st-tropez.com

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

APRIL

Lun Mar Mer Jeu Ven Sam Dim

MAY JUNE


Easter Polo Tournament (6-8 & 0-4 goals)

* 8:30 pm Polo Dinner Party

Hippocampus Cup (6-8 & 0-4 goals)


Weekends "Polo, Fun&Relax"(all levels)

Practice games

Côte d’Azur Polo Cup (8-12 & 0-6 goals)


Open du Soleil (8-12 & 0-6 goals)

* 7:30 pm Polo Team Parade

through the village of Gassin

** 9:00 pm Polo Dinner Party

Polo Club's 14ème Anniversary Tournament (12-15 & 4-8 goals)

** 8:30 pm Polo Dinner Party

Saint-Tropez Ladies’ Amateur (2 goals)

* 7:30 pm Cocktail

Var Tournament (6-8 & 0-4 goals)


The Ascension Tounament (6-8 & 0-4 goals)


Pentecost Tournament (6-8 & 0-4 goals)


Polo Silver Cup (8-12 & 0-6 goals)


Polo Gold Cup (8-12 & 0-6 goals)


Harvest Cup (4-8 goals)


International Polo Cup Saint-Tropez(12-15 & 0-6 goals)

* 7:30 pm Polo Teams Parade through

the Port of Saint-Tropez

** 9:00 pm Argentine Dinner Party

Open de Gassin (12-15 & 0-6 goals)


Saint-Tropez Polo Trophy* 9:00 pm Polo Dinner Party

JULY SEPTEMBERAUGUST

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Malaysian majesty

The Royal Malaysian Polo Association (RMPA) organised the largest-ever FIP World Cup qualifying tournament in June 2011 when seven countries from Zone D participated in what was dubbed the Asian-Australasian-African championships. Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nigeria joined hosts Malaysia for a 12-day celebration of polo.

The event was played in two historic clubs in Malaysia, starting at the Royal Pahang Polo Club, in the royal town of Pekan, Pahang. The final was played at the 109-year-old Royal Selangor Polo Club, in the shadows of the twin towers in downtown Kuala Lumpur. The club was magnificently turned out for the final.

In total, 216 horses were used in the tournament. Royal Pahang built new stable blocks to accommodate all the World Cup horses. The entire town turned out to watch Malaysia’s games.

When the RMPA asked for horse support from the patrons of the 14-goal RMPA International League, pledges for 120 horses were received. Estimating that 210 horses

The FIP World Cup Zone D qualifying tournament was avidly watched, reports Peter Abisheganaden

would be required to mount the teams, the lending patrons were then asked if they would buy the other 90 horses needed. They were given the incentives of a soft loan of up to US$20,000 per horse, repayable over four instalments, and free freight for the newly bought horses, which amounted to US$9,000 each. Every horse purchased under this scheme had to be approved by a panel of selectors.

The Horse Loan and Purchase Scheme was a resounding success. The association did not own or upkeep the horses used, while the patrons were given good incentives to buy horses. As a country, Malaysia ‘horsed up’ for the World Cup.

HRH Sultan Ahmad Shah, the Sultan of Pahang, opened the championships by receiving an impressive new championship trophy, The Malaysia Cup, a trophy that will be played for in future years as an international test series.

South Africa was an easy 13-5 winner over World Cup debutants Nigeria in the opening match. The Nigerians, who were returning to international polo after a

20-year absence, fell 15�-7 to a useful Pakistan team in their second match to go out after the zone stage.

Malaysia was also making their return to international polo. While their 9-8 defeat of New Zealand made for a euphoric start, they fell to the eventual champions, India, in their next match.

The Indians had edged Australia by half a goal in their first match. They qualified for the semi-finals by thoroughly outplaying Malaysia 12–5 in their second match. A

rm

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With the help of excellent government support and good sponsors the tournament was able to turn a remarkable profit

1

Australia came back from a �-goal first match loss to India to beat New Zealand 7–5 in a thrilling match.

Pakistan reaffirmed the superiority of the Indian subcontinent’s polo when they beat South Africa 12�-10 to join India with unbeaten records in qualifying for the semi-finals. South Africa, Australia and Malaysia finished the group stages with a win and a loss but it was South Africa and Australia that advanced to the semi-finals with better goal differences than Malaysia.

Malaysia, New Zealand and Nigeria were consigned to the play-offs for the wooden spoon.

In the semi-finals India dethroned defending Zone D champions South Africa with an impressive 9-5 win. Pakistan staged a remarkable fight back in the last two chukkas to beat pre-tournament favourites Australia 8�-8 after looking decidedly beaten when trailing by as much as 3� goals before half-time.

Australia showed they could finish strongly when they came back from 8-4 down to beat South Africa 12–10 in the match for third place, which also won them the third Zone D berth in the 2011 FIP World Cup Final that was at stake in this championship.

India and Pakistan knew they had already qualified for the San Luis final when they won their semi-finals. But the rivalry between these two nations is centuries old, and they were playing for the pride of the Indian subcontinent.

Pakistan started the final with a 2-goal handicap advantage. It turned out to be an excellent final, with the Indians playing catch-up against the nimble Pakistanis, which they did by half-time. They were always in control after that, winning 12-9.

Team captain Tarun Sirohi was presented with the Malaysia Cup by HRH Sultan Ahmad Shah, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, FIP President Eduardo Huergo and RMPA President HRH Prince Abdullah Shah.

‘This win is historic for us. India has never won an international polo tournament played outside of our country. Winning here against a world-class line-up means Indian polo has a bright future,’ said India team manager Vikram Singh Rathore.

There was more joy for India when Samir Suhag was voted the Most Valuable Player of the tournament. Suhag was in top form in the final, scoring seven goals to take his personal tally to 23 goals for the tournament.

The Best Playing Pony award went to Dato’ Harald Link’s Paton, an eight-year-old Argentinian mare that was played by Suhag.

In addition to medals, the champions each won a Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Grand Taille timepiece. Created in 1931 with a stainless steel side that flips over to protect the watch face when polo is played, the watches were hand-engraved with the FIP Polo World Cup Tournament logo for this tournament.

With excellent government support and good sponsors the tournament turned a remarkable profit. The investment in horses will stand Malaysian polo in good stead for the next few seasons. I am sure we will see more players from Zone D in our Malaysian leagues, and many new friendships were made.

The excitement of the World Cup captured the imagination of the Malaysian polo fraternity. Malaysian polo has awaked to the excitement of international polo. The organisation of the play-offs earned kudos from FIP leading Malaysia to bid to host the 2017 FIP Polo World Cup Final.

1 The victorious Indian team 2 Dato’ mohamed moiz, HH Prince

Badarulzaman and HrH Sultan Ahmad Shah 3 mVP Samir Suhag and family, FIP President Eduardo

Huergo and Asad Jumabhoy


2

3

Polo Club de Chantilly is an impressive 205-hectare facility located in the Chantilly forest just north of Paris, near the picturesque farming village of Apremont. Close to Charles de Gaulle airport, but also nestled in the heart of French countryside, its location is perfect for an easy escape from the bustle and stress of city life. There are also several hotels in the surrounding area, which provide the perfect accommodation as well as rooms for polo seminars.

Throughout the week, Polo Club de Chantilly runs a unique polo clinic experience that provides people of all ages and backgrounds with a taste of polo through a series of seminars and practical lessons. Groups vary in size from ten to 150 people, and give everyone a chance to partake in the sport of kings. We suggest that groups of up to 40 have a two-hour polo introduction, whilst larger groups are encouraged to sign up for three hours, in order that everyone has the opportunity to play. The initiation is split into eight different workshops, led by trained instructors, which include the history of polo, horseriding basics and a goal challenge, as well as being able to put what you have learned into practice on the field.

The clinics also offer the more quirky and unusual option of ‘Polo on Segway’. We began this with a friend who was developing the activity in France, and it is a great way to ur

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Polo Club de Chantilly clinics offer

polo basics as well as the more

quirky, Segway polo (top)

Polo clinics offer a superb introduction to the game of kings plus an unusual diversion, writes benoît Perrier

clinical approach

ninety-five per cent of guests at our clinics have never even ridden a horse before but after a taste of polo people become hooked

play a unique form of polo. Seminars in the Segway clinic include strategy, competitions and learning how to play with a smaller ball. For an additional fee, we can also help to organize a Segway polo competition. Both clinics are excellent for a first experience with horses and polo, and after the initiation clients can watch games while indulging in an asado and a glass of champagne with the club’s professional players.

As well as the polo clinics being a fantastic opportunity for visitors, it has also been a good way for Polo Club de Chantilly to promote the sport and create new income – the clinics now represent 10 per cent of our business. Luckily we don’t have to worry about the overheads associated with stabling and looking after ponies as they are all on loan. The clinics rent from my father, Philippe Perrier, who has 30 polo ponies, as well as from Thibault and Laetitia Guillemin from Esprit Polo, a company that runs polo schools in Paris and Chantilly. We avoid horses from the pro players, as they are far too racy for beginners.

The polo clinics first began in 2001, when we were approached by a company whose employees were interested in discovering more about polo. The first group to take part in the clinic included 150 people from all over the world, and was a resounding success. We realised that many varied groups of people visit the Chantilly area,

including guests of surrounding hotels, business seminar attendees as well as worldwide press, and so began to offer the polo introduction day as a package. It is the perfect solution to companies looking for a fun and unique team-building opportunity, as well as a break away from being indoors. Ninety-five per cent of guests who take part in our clinics have never even ridden a horse before, but after a little taste of polo people become hooked and want to learn more. Such is the addictive quality of the sport. Indeed, for a few hours through the polo clinics, people can abandon their simple pedestrian status and experience the thrills of being a competitive rider and a player.The polo initiation, including eight workshops, costs 171¤ (three hours) or 133¤ (two hours) per person (+VAT). Minimum of 10 persons required.Segway polo (including six Segways with instructor) costs 1000¤ (+ VAT) for half a day.

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unlike the majority of equestrian sports, polo helmets do not have to meet mandatory standards for protective headgear, writes Herbert spencer

head and safety

When, if ever, will the polo world join other horse sports in adopting mandatory standards for protective headgear? Polo still remains without any compulsory certification for helmets after the US Polo Association (USPA) dropped its planned mandatory rule due to come into force this January.

The American plan would have marked the first time any polo association had made the wearing of approved helmets mandatory. By contrast, the governing bodies of other equestrian sports, including racing, show jumping and cross-country, have long had rules requiring competitors to wear protective headgear that meets certain standards.

As originally formulated, the new USPA rule would have required any player competing in a USPA event to wear a helmet that has polo-specific certification by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE). Barely three months before the rule was due to take effect, however, the USPA’s ruling Board of Governors scrapped it and opted instead for a new member’s declaration leaving the choice of helmet to the player and absolving the association and its clubs of any legal responsibility in the case of head injury.

Chuck Weaver, the new USPA chairman, explained the change of heart: ‘Although we initially targeted January 1, 2012 as the commencement date for our membership to mandatorily wear a NOCSAE certified polo

helmet, the USPA ultimately decided to not impose enforcement of the policy but rather determined a better policy was personal responsibility after an education programme. This decision was made for a number of reasons including what we considered to be a lack of sufficient product availability in the marketplace as well as the need to conduct further research and analysis.’

Last year the USPA commissioned a study by Dr Lola B Chambless, a neurosurgeon specializing in head trauma. Chambless, a member of the safety committee of the US Equestrian Federation, wrote: ‘My review of the subject has led me to conclude that the best standard for polo helmets currently available is the NOCSAE Polo standard. While correct use of helmets of this type does not eliminate the chance of head

injury in this inherently risky sport, this represents the best available technology for minimising the risk of severe traumatic brain injury in polo players.’

Thus far only two helmets on the market have passed the stringent NOCSAE tests, the Casablanca C6 (above) and the Falcon FFA.

Weaver declined to elaborate upon other reasons for the USPA’s change of direction, but it appears clear from the wording of the new member’s declaration that legal liability, as seen by the association’s attorneys, was an important consideration. In the UK and Ireland, the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) rules only require the wearing of protective headgear properly attached, without specifying standards. In a note, however, it recommends that players take note of British Horse Society advice, that helmets complying with one of several recognised UK, EU or international standards ‘offer the best protection’.

HPA chief executive David Woodd said he was ‘not surprised’ that the USPA had dropped its planned mandatory rule for certified helmets. ‘Among other things,’ he said, ‘is the question of who would verify helmets at polo. In racing, jockeys’ skulls are checked in the weighing room and competitors’ headgear is checked at the starting gate in other horse sports. But it would not be feasible for us to check every player’s helmet before every club chukka at every club.’


The Casablanca C6 is one of only two polo

helmets to be passed by the US’s stringent

sports equipment certification board

so far only two helmets on the market have passed the stringent noCsaE tests

hurlingham [ talk ]


Any player on a bad horse has to keep it very simple and, as the game develops and the horses get better, so should the team

Being asked to coach England for the FIP IX Polo World Cup in San Luis, Argentina, was both a surprise and an honour. It is not very often that one gets a chance to inflict one’s polo theories on others as there always seem to be more ‘experts’ around a polo field than one can ever get on it. Ha! At last!

The team of Nick Britten-Long, Ed Hitchman, Max Charlton and Jack Richardson had done extremely well to qualify from the European zone played in Italy in September. Two teams qualified from the zone and it was a very unlucky French team that got left behind by narrowly losing to both Italy and England. The French players must have been miffed to be beaten by an Italian team featuring three Argentines.

Huge thanks to Alan Kent for coaching in Italy and to Richard Britten-Long for helping with some of the huge costs involved in taking the team to Italy. Also to the team themselves as at the end of a very long season there are many good reasons for not sending one’s tired horses to Italy.

The 10 teams to qualify were Argentina, Brazil, Chile (holders), Pakistan, India, Mexico, USA, Italy, Australia and England. These were separated into two leagues playing over two weeks for a spot in the final. We drew, in order of play, Chile, USA, Australia and Brazil.

Strings of horses were drawn from a pool of 300 horses and, all in all, our string was not too bad. How do you mount 10 teams to play a minimum of four games each? Huge thanks to Miguel Amieva and Juan Ruiz Guiniazo and team, who were tasked with getting this huge string ready and also for giving all the teams an idea of which horse did what. As teams are only allowed one stick and ball session and one practice before the tournament starts, this was crucial information. To mount one

As the England team coach at the FIP IX Polo World Cup, Antony Fanshawe recounts his first-hand experience of the excitement and disappointment of international events

illustration PHIL DISLEY

Antony Fanshawe

player from 10 horses in this time frame would be testing, to mount four can be a nightmare. How do you divide up a string of horses between four players and not lose the team spirit? It is easier to ‘borrow’ a player’s girlfriend than his best pony! Arguments and resentment thrive: ‘who’s going to play that mare?’ etc. Not great for team spirit at all, but this is the coach’s most important job: to ‘umpire’ what the players do when they are sorting out the individual strings (with seven horses each). Nick volunteered to play the worst seven horses, which was crucial, as the better players must have the better horses. I

did not envy Nick’s challenge, but he acted without complaint.

One big advantage both Italy and England had was that we had played to qualify the week before and so already knew how we would ideally line up. Now we had to work out which horses would best suit each position and player. We played with Nick as a combination of number 1 and blocking on our set plays and on their set plays as a 4 and blocking whoever he was told to. There are no 10-goalers on great horses so man marking is possible. We thought that Ed (captain) had better have easy horses, to play fairly deep and remind everyone that he might lack

speed for any long plays. Also that the team should try to dive on the ball, leaving it to Ed to sweep up, and that he should cut out any attacks early especially if we forced the other team into playing backhands. He should not get too deep as this would enable the other team to bring the ball up behind him. A very talented horseman, who rarely made mistakes, Ed had a great tournament.

We also agreed that Max should have as much power as possible and play at 3 – not as a playmaker but more as an old-style number 2 breaking up any rhythm the other team found and making goals. He was comparatively well mounted and made a huge contribution throughout the tournament. It is truly a blessing to coach talented players who have to be told to slow down! But it was also important not to use up horses for any other reason than winning the ball and then using it well.

Jack would have a combination of good and bad horses. His ‘job’ on the field would be to keep it simple on the worst horses and then bring the skills when he had a bit of horse under him. A difficult job especially for young players, who see the ball big often, but on the wrong horse end up losing a play they can do with their eyes shut on their own horses. Jack played great with growing maturity, pulled out some wonderful goals and crucially did not sulk when Max and Ed got the better strings.

I think the practice match did leave us a little nervous of the team’s abilities as we only cruised the horses, but in reality this level of polo is extremely even throughout the polo-playing world. Any team at this competition could have beaten any other team on their day. So it is a shame that FIP does not take the issue of handicapping seriously enough

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to organise an on-site handicap committee, as this is where the difference is really made between countries. It is fundamental to handicapped tournaments that someone polices the handicaps. At San Luis there was no one. Both teams that eventually played the final could easily be, and probably are by now, over 20 goals.

To be fair there is little incentive among young Argentine players to stay down as all of their important tournaments require players to have at least six goals. The handicapping of players up to six goals happens at club level, which does create problems at low-level tournaments as players may have three or four goals abroad and still be a 0 in Argentina. Also new players may have years of farm practices/club practices etc under their belt and have no handicap at all until they start tournament polo, where after one season they could go from 0 to 3 or 4.

Perhaps the biggest problem is cultural. In USA, England, France etc we play 100 per cent handicap tournament polo. Our greatest tournaments are not played open, which in turn encourages players to stay down. The best under-handicapped players get the teams but it is very difficult to beat the handicappers. The sad part is also that Argentine young players aspire to play the Open in Palermo, which requires a high handicap. English young players want to play any polo they can, however good.

At a pre-tournament meeting a suggestion of playing five chukkas instead of six was laughed out of the room by the committee, but judging by the amount of crashes in the coming games it would probably have been wiser and safer. If polo is to continue, horse welfare is paramount!

So to our opening game against World Champions, Chile. We decided to play as

many bad horses early as we could especially at the front of the team. Any player on a bad horse has to keep it very simple and as the game develops and the horses get better, so should the team. It is very important to remember the lack of superstar players and that if you play with good discipline, and a big dollop of willpower, no team is too good to beat. Many mistakes are made yet the most important rule is not to let one mistake multiply into three. How many times are goals scored while we argue about who did what wrong and why? A goal against is just that, one goal, so get to the next throw in and concentrate on what you have to do to win it.

The players had already organised themselves a selection of set plays from hit- ins and 5b and these worked well throughout the tournament. Using Nick as a battering ram often created a lot of space for either Jack or Max. The only time these set plays go


wrong is when the players have not agreed exactly what they are going to do, so as the play develops and does not go to ‘plan’, the other team gain advantage. They work best when whoever hits in keeps it simple and the runners make the space. At this level, on unknown horses, it is not easy to develop complicated plays out of defence. Putting the ball beyond opposition players and creating a horse race is extremely difficult to defend. While playing backhands at the gallop, it is not easy to pick a pass especially if your teammates are out of control!

We won 13-7. A flattering score as Chile missed several good chances but also looked like a team who had not played together much. Even so they had to be beaten and Max put in a shift that made me think that the English handicappers had been up to some tricks! A wonderful result which highlighted quite a few truths that we would have to take on board. Most importantly, do not dally on the ball. Hit it and chase it!

Next, the USA, who had been beaten by Brazil in their opener. Based around the experienced pro, John Gobin – lowered from six goals last year – this team was always going to be difficult to beat. We played a little too loose and compounded this with too much indiscipline on the ball whilst USA fought hard. It was a very close match, with neither side able to get out in front by more than a goal. We entered the last chukka at 5-5. It was not an easy game on the eye but scoring the sixth and then getting a 40-yard penalty with two minutes to go should have been enough. Max had the dubious pleasure

of taking this on a horse snaking and changing leads. Bang! Straight over the top for 7-5.

I was worried by Nick’s evident lack of horse power, producing a player who was trying too hard to get, unsuccessfully, too many plays. This in turn caused a loss of confidence. Our playing habits learnt on our own horses back home are not what we need in these games. To get more from him required him to do less. He was only to pick plays where he was sure he would win, and for the rest of the time cruise around causing trouble. Most importantly he had to relax a little so as to concentrate better. The adrenalin will come as you disappear off the end of the field on a runaway!

Next we faced Australia, who had also opened against Brazil and lost but looked well organised and mounted. The game against the USA had shaken us out of any misconceptions of our skills and confirmed to us that a strong desire to win and better discipline, plus the good use of set plays, was our way forward. We started slowly and although we had the majority of the possession we were unable to pull out a convincing lead. After a couple of ‘discussions’ we began to pull together and as the better horses started to appear, so did our goals. In particular some fantastic ones from Jack, who came alive towards the end of the game as his horses improved. Victory at 10-5 sounds easy but going into the fifth chukka we had only been up by two goals.

We now came up against an unbeaten Brazilian team, based around the very talented 5-goaler, Pedrinho, aka Pedro Zacharias, for a spot in the final. In the other league there had been some ferocious battles, particularly India vs Pakistan, which ended as Pakistan’s only victory in the tournament. Some very dangerous play saw one player off to hospital and another lucky not to have been flattened.

One particularly great game was India vs Italy. Both teams had a chance to go top of their league. The Indians would have been a little more aggrieved at their treatment by the referees were they not so polite. Umpiring is extremely difficult and the issue of nationality should be removed. Two Argentine referees with Italy playing was a bad call, and the conspiracy theories post-polo thrive on this.

This is not good for the game or the atmosphere surrounding the tournament. Mind you, Fran Elizalde played fantastically well for Italy and must feel a little sad not to have been on the Argentine team. He was the best player at the tournament.

So the big game in this league was Argentina vs Italy. A very strange game which Italy dominated throughout. They should have been home and hosed by the last chukka but lost their goalscoring abilities and were only two goals up entering the last. Then some curious decisions by players and officials saw Argentina snatch victory on the bell.

England has never beaten Brazil in a World Cup game, so the scheduling of this match two days before the final was bad luck. The horses would be flat for the final unless one team managed to win easy. Argentina’s last game was the previous day to ours. How to play this team? Stop Pedrinho and trust our own game? In the end, it was a great game of polo – bar the result – played with good spirit by both teams. Neither team could pull out a significant difference so we entered the last chukka with England leading by one goal, and with our best horses to come. To me, Brazil looked beaten until disaster struck when Max’s best horse pulled up lame after one minute and he had to mount Jack’s spare. Brazil then had the advantage, as the horse we lost was a guarantee of goals for us. There was no repetition of horses until extra time and all our good horses were either playing or played. We fought on, first going down by one goal, then levelling through Max, then going down again only to get level again through a fantastic goal by Nick. With seconds to go we miss the chance to clear our lines and Brazil pounce on the hesitation to win. It was very sad way to go as I feel had Max’s horse not broken down, the game would have been ours for the taking. A standing ovation as we entered the players’ and sponsors’ marquee was lovely but could not take away the bitter feeling that the World Cup was over.

Congratulations to Argentina for beating Brazil in the final. Italy beat England to third place. So the Argentines took all the silverware, which is probably fair as their polo is streets ahead of the rest of us!

At this level, on unknown horses, it is not easy to develop complicated plays out of defence. Putting the ball behind opposition players and creating a horserace is extremely difficult to defend

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Summerfield Key ‘Skey’ Johnston was raised in the mountains of Tennessee, riding horses, playing polo, foxhunting and competing in rodeos. He has played polo in Argentina, Aiken and all over the United States. Johnston served as Chairman of the United States Polo Association from 1984-1988 and was inducted in the National Polo Hall of Fame for his contributions to the sport in 2001. He was one of the last left-handed players in the game.

With his late son Skeeter, he started the Flying H Polo club on his ranch at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains in Big Horn, Wyoming and also Everglades Polo in Florida. Skey has promoted Team USPA, to develop young American polo players. His daughter Gillian and grandson Will are both active in the sport. Sam Morton spoke with him at Bendabout Farm in McDonald, Tennessee.

As a long-standing polo devotee and former Chairman of the USPA, Skey Johnston shares his insights on how the sport is progressing and developing

Skey Johnston

How did you get into polo?

My father got to know some of the Army officers at Fort Oglethorpe and they talked him into playing polo. He built a field and bought horses from the Barrys, hired some country boys here and hired an Army lieutenant to teach them how to play polo and they started playing here back in the early Thirties.

I rodeoed, I showed jumpers, hunters, saddle horses, driven horses. I like anything associated with a good horse. [Polo] is a game with enough danger to get your blood pressure up a little bit, [combined with] speed and teamwork. It’s a game with a little of everything, and I was never that good, but I enjoyed doing it and in addition to that, I did it with the wrong hand which was even more difficult.

There were several left-handed polo players when I played. I think if you are left-handed and start the game early, you will learn the game, but if you are left-handed and try to start the game in your thirties or forties you will have a difficult time. I had some experience playing before I really started playing. I had stick-and-balled and ridden and understood the game. I think one of the problems is, that after the war a lot of people began to play polo in their late thirties or forties and fifties

Polo is a game with enough danger to raise your blood pressure a little bit

Opposite Skey at Bendabout

Farm, Tennessee This page Skey

(middle) suited up for polo with his

mallet in his left hand



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even, and that is difficult if you are naturally left-handed. If you never played and are trying to learn a game that the rules are basically for right-handed players, it is probably more dangerous. Truthfully, I played with one or two of them and it confused the hell out of me (laughs).

What are your feelings about the new handicap system?

I hate to say it, but I think the new attempt to even out the handicap system appears to me to be too complex. It’s another thing that’s going to be hard to explain to people. Polo is a very complex sport. It’s not that well understood and has never been able to attract real media attention.

Polo changes rules constantly like most sports do. I really believe that if they’d left the original rules alone as they have [in] most every other country, and mainly concentrated on interpreting them and making sure the umpires interpret them properly then we wouldn’t have to do this. The handicap

system itself obviously doesn’t fit the game any more; it needs to be broadened; I admit that. Nobody wants to be a negative anything. I don’t think too many people want to be a half of anything (laughs), so I think this is going to complicate it and be very hard to explain.

I think they [USPA] should have gone to 12 goals long ago. They are lowering many of the American polo players. To me I think it’s disheartening to drop players to get them jobs. These players work hard, they are proud of their handicaps [and] their polo, they are trying to get to 10 and all of a sudden they cut the legs out from under then and they find themselves back where they started five or six years ago. It makes some sense in trying to balance things up, giving these guys a chance to play, but on the other hand if you work your hardest for 10 years trying to get to a reasonable handicap and buy good horses and spending the money you have to spend to get there, and all of a sudden someone says, ‘wait a minute, you’re not that good, we’re going to cut you back down to seven goals,’ you might get a little more work but any time you try and tell people that you’re not as good as anybody else, it discourages them.

There is only one 9-goal American player now, nobody else is over seven. I think it would have been much more positive to raise the handicaps by two goals and have a 12-goal handicap. The argument against that point is that it would be an insult to all the old 10-goal players. But why? It’s a different world, different times, they can still be counted as the best players of their time and maybe the best players of all time. You need a new handicap. All sports have faced this, one way or another.

The basic rules of polo are for safety purposes and that’s what they should be. It’s a dangerous game. I know that better than most people. It’s like car racing. It’s always going to be a dangerous game and the rules are made to protect the participants but there are too many nebulous rules that affect the conduct of the game which affects the spectator. Nobody ever thinks about the spectator any more.

People watch sports because they like to watch skilled people play the sport and they understand what they are doing. The more complex you make it and the more nit-picking rules you make when you blow the whistle and stop the game and the length of time in which it’s stopped each time, it makes no sense in trying to promote the game. Blowing a relatively non-dangerous foul on the attacking team’s 30- or 40-yard line, and taking the ball somewhere else, just takes time in setting it down, makes no sense. A

I hate to admit this, but I feel polo has to go professional. It’s what happened to golf

penalty five to me, for non-threatening fouls, ought to be used all the time. Pick it up and set the ball down and hit the ball and play. People don’t understand it, [they are watching the game and saying,] ‘what they are doing now?’ People don’t understand it and they don’t like it. No other sport has that draconian set of rules. All sports have penalties, but unless someone does something terrible and gets thrown out of the game or runs over someone, there is no need for draconian rules.

I think we do things in the sport that makes it a mystery to most people and a pseudo-sport which will never attract media attention and will bring money into the sport. They are bringing in money in by selling clothes and watches, well, that’s fine too, but [in] every other sport that is ancillary to the main source of income which is media.

I think it’s the polo association’s duty to try to get media involved. I hate to admit this, but I feel we have to go professional. It’s what happened to golf in the PGA which lifted golf in all areas. The amateurs hated it but when it happened it certainly may have put golf on the map. I don’t think the type of polo we play now, unless it’s handled differently, will ever put it on the map. Nobody can go watch a 26-goal game and all the skill that’s attached to that with the Cambiasos and the Merloses and the great players that can go out there and do wonderful things without noticing there’s somebody riding around out there that is about to fall off his horse. To really attract media attention it’s got to have balanced teams where everybody plays.

One of the ways to broaden polo’s appeal would be better viewing facilities. The Flying H Polo Club has elevated berms above the field. You can see the lines, and what goes on.

One thing that makes the Argentine Open so unique is sitting up in the high stadium so you are looking down on that big field and you can see everything that goes on. That’s the reason the Argentines are well educated in the game and they don’t even need an announcer; they understand it.

Unfortunately people don’t build

stadiums high enough and too far from the

field. It’s almost impossible from field side

for a neophyte to have a clue what going on.

When two horses race down the field, they

can understand that, because it’s a race, but

Left Three generations of players: Skey

Johnston, Summerfield Johnston Sr.,

and Summerfield ‘Skeeter’ Johnston III

Below left Awards ceremony with

Skey (daughter Gillian in front), Skeeter

Johnston (brother Robert in front)

and Mrs Gil Johnston with the trophy

Below right Skey and Skeeter in Africa


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the other manoeuvres that go on, and the

skill of the riders, and moving the ball

around, they can’t see that, which hurts

the ability to sell the game.

American polo is at a crossroads now;

whether it’s going to be a backyard game or

whether it’s going to be a real sport. It’s a

coin toss right now to where it’s going, as

far as really high-level polo. I don’t know

where it’s going to go.

Polo is a funny game. The owners of

major league baseball, football, basketball

teams get their egos satisfied by watching

their teams. Kind of like the old Roman

circus. Unfortunately the owners of polo

teams feel like they have to get on a horse

and get out there and play. A lot of them,

especially nowadays, look uncomfortable and

out-of-place in high-goal polo. If I couldn’t

have played, and I was playing, and no one

hit me the ball, I would never have played. In

Chicago, when I played open polo if I’d have

gone in there with some hotshot players and they’d have said, ‘you go over here and get out of the way and we are going to play this game’, I’d have said, ‘well boys, I’ll tell you what, ya’ll go home!’ But everybody that had teams up there could play. I think they were all at least two goals. We’ve given up our standards, for money, for teams.

I think if you want to play 26-goal polo, you have to be at least two goals, and these guys will either get better or will sponsor the kids of someone.

On the television, there are one hundred stations all desperate for content and we can’t get polo on there in any form. We can’t get anybody to pay us to sponsor a game. I realise that it is a big field, it is difficult to film, but on the other hand I think if the Polo Association wants to spend some of their money, they have two things they can spend it on: one is to take a select group of young American players and really give them an opportunity to play by sponsoring them and putting them on teams or sending them to Argentina or doing something to give them an opportunity and putting them in the hands of competent professionals like Owen Rinehart, Julio Arellano or Adam Snow and say ‘take these guys and make polo players out of them.’ Don’t try to do it to everybody, don’t try to broaden it out and put people in it that are never going to get there. Pick out the people that will, and give them means to buy horses and find patrons for them and encourage them to sponsor them.

The second thing is, I think they ought to hire a really high-calibre public relations person and have them work full-time in trying to get television coverage for polo. Once you get it started you can roll a lot of

stuff off it like golf has done and other sports. But get it started to put on the right kind of polo to get these people to put on polo on television and try to get some interest in it. If you don’t do those things you are going to have a backyard sport and that’s kind of the direction we’re headed unfortunately.

Why are there no high-goal players coming up in this country?

We don’t have high-goal polo year round. The English send them [their young players] to Argentina to play where there is good polo year round. We didn’t win a game in the FIP tournament. I think until we find a way to develop some players it’s going to be very difficult; we’re going to be playing low-goal, amateur polo with American players.

Unless someone takes an interest in one of them and gives them horses and gives them an opportunity to play, they are not going to get any better, or much better at least. It takes money to do this, to have the facility to do things like that. One of the things I tried to do [as USPA Chairman] in Lexington is to have the association control fields so you don’t have this big pull by patrons who want to play on their field. The Argentine association has their own fields, the British don’t have their own fields, but they do have Cowdray and that area that they

pretty much control. I’m not sure there is a good solution for it. But at any rate, I’m too old, and been here too long, so I don’t go around beating the drum. (Laughs) I have enough things to do other than that.

What was the motivation in starting The Flying H Polo Club?

Skeeter was playing high-goal polo then. He wanted to have a place to play in the summer and persuaded me that we could build a couple of polo fields and bring some pros out to improve the polo. We dropped it to 12- and 14-goal polo and tried inviting people to play and bring a 4- to 7-goal player with them. We play for six weeks and now have three tournament fields and two practice fields and we’ve built polo barns where we rent facilities.

There’s polo six days a week in Big Horn. In all, the Flying H polo has worked out very well. We had 48 players out there last summer. It’s been a successful formula; we have three or four players buy ranches out there. I think the fields are good, the climate is good and people enjoy the area and the people there. It’s good for the local club and a lot of people have sold a lot of horses out there. There is no place in the country that you can raise a better horse than Big Horn, Wyoming, maybe in the world, and having some control of it and the people who come out there, keep it what we want it to be, which is a place where you have fun and enjoy the game and have as little controversy as possible. I think Skeeter would be very pleased with it. We intend to continue as long as we are able to, and other members of the family are happy with it.

There’s no place in the country that you can raise a better horse than Big Horn, Wyoming

Opposite top Flying H Polo Club,

Wyoming Below Skey with the

winning Coca-Cola team (daughter

Gillian, far right) at the Joe Barry

Memorial Cup, Palm Beach 2012

This page Skey and Gil with Gillian

Johnston - winner of the US Open 2002


located in a buoyant north chinese city, the Tianjin Goldin metropolitan Polo club offers its members outstanding facilities in an unrivalled setting, reports herbert spencer

The polo world’s most iconic venue is the Campo Argentino de Polo at Palermo near the centre of Buenos Aires, home to the sport’s highest-rated tournaments. This national polo stadium is an unforgettable city venue with high-rise commercial and residential buildings of the Argentine capital forming a dramatic backdrop to the action.

City polo venues are few and far between, but halfway across the world, a good 12,000 miles from Buenos Aires as the eagle flies, is one with a cityscape even more impressive than that of Palermo: the Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club in China.

Like those at Palermo, the Metropolitan’s polo grounds in Tianjin’s booming Binhai New Area have a backdrop of high-rise buildings completed or under construction. The difference is that, like so many things in China, the buildings are bigger – like the skyscraper Goldin Finance 117 that, when completed in 2015, will soar to just under 2,000 feet.

The Goldin Finance 117 tower and the polo club are both part of a mega-development of Goldin Properties of Hong Kong. Goldin’s 2,600-acre site will eventually be a complete city-within-a-city with office blocks, high-end shopping malls, luxury apartment buildings, town houses and villas, and extensive recreational facilities. The polo club was the first part of this massive development to be completed and it is obvious from Goldin’s promotional material that it is meant to be a sporting and lifestyle flagship to help attract the crème de la crème of China’s new business elite and international companies to the Binhai New Area complex.

The city of Tianjin is 70 miles south of Beijing by road, but a 200mph bullet train takes only 30 minutes to and from the capital. In 2010 the GDP of Tianjin’s fast-growing Binhai New Area exceeded that of Shanghai’s landmark Pudong New Area for the first time. Goldin’s polo club is by far China’s wealthiest

eastern promise

and most ambitious project in restoring polo to the country in the 21st century. Polo was first played in China in the Han dynasty some 2,000 years ago, the Chinese having learned the game from Persian visitors. It flourished in the Tang dynasty during the seventh to 10th centuries. One can find artefacts from these periods in China and abroad, such as a colourful wall mural in Shaanxi and terracotta tomb figures of polo players.

Westerners played the modern sport in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the Japanese invasion, World War II and the Mao-led revolution. There was a polo


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ground in the middle of the Tianjin (then known as Tientsin) racecourse at the beginning of the century; the grandfather of George Knowles of the UK’s Bailey’s Horse Feeds played there.

In 2005, after some 70 years out in the cold, polo finally returned to China with the establishment of the Sunny Times Polo Club in Beijing and the Nine Dragons Hill club south of Shanghai. Then Goldin’s Metropolitan opened in 2010, followed by the Tang Polo Club, Beijing, in 2011.

Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club covers 222 acres and currently features two

Clockwise Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo

Club; Tientsin racecourse, 1904; George

Stanley Knowles on horseback, 1904;

terracotta player from the Tang dynasty


The Metropolitan has been exceptionally clever at creating international interest in the club

standard-size polo fields, state-of-the-art stabling for 157 horses, all-weather training facilities, a riding school and a clubhouse like no other in the world.

The clubhouse is part of the 167-room, resort-style Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Hotel, a massive neoclassical building with sculptures of galloping horses and polo players splashing through a fountain in the forecourt. The hotel has more than a dozen restaurants and bars offering a wide variety of cuisines including French, Italian and Japanese as well as Chinese. There is a gym, spa, Roman-style indoor pool and a grand ballroom that can accommodate 1,000 diners. With such luxurious facilities, the Metropolitan appears to be targeting high-end individuals in China’s new economy. Joining fees for the club are reported to range from the equivalent of $58,000 for ‘social’ membership to $1.5 million for polo team patrons.

As it planned and constructed the club, Goldin brought in polo experts from abroad. These now include Derek Reid, former captain of Australia’s national polo team, as director of polo operations; from England, John Fisher as director of stable operations, and Isabel Branch, senior equestrian instructor; and instructors Shane Boyd from New Zealand and Edward Judge from Australia.

The Metropolitan has also recruited

experienced horsemen from regions of China famed for horsemanship: from Inner Mongolia, Mongolians from Xinjiang province and a Hasake (or Kazakh) from the China/Russian border region once known for its fearless cavalrymen. These were hired as grooms, but are also being taught polo to form a nucleus of staff players for the club.

The club has imported 132 polo ponies from Australia and New Zealand and 52 from England for use by its members and to mount visiting players from abroad for its international events. Almost 50 aspiring equestrians have been learning to ride and then to play polo in the Metropolitan’s riding school.

Meanwhile, as there are currently no tournament-level players of Chinese nationality at the club, the Metropolitan has been bringing in professional players and teams from abroad for their events. This has given the club an international image beyond the current state of play in China, a country that may have great potential in polo but still has a long way to go.

In February 2011 the Metropolitan staged Asia’s first snow polo tournament, an imaginative venture that cost the club millions. Tianjin doesn’t often get snow, but this did not deter the high-spending owners. Having first protected the turf with extra nutrients and a blanket of sand, the club


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After expenses, FIP is expected to be left with a significant surplus as a net income to apply to other federation activities

Opposite Brian Hammond, Director of Field and

Facilities, checking the snow quality This page,

clockwise from top Clubhouse interior; Derek Reid,

Director of Polo Operations; Wellington College

were invited to play a demo game; a trained groom

brought in two giant machines that for a month worked to lay down an ice base and 25 inches of snow on an arena-sized area of the main polo ground and a surrounding area for spectators and hospitality.

For its landmark International Snow Polo Challenge, Goldin paid the travel expenses and fees of professional players who flew in to form national teams that represented England, France, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. England defeated Argentina in the final to take the trophy. As with other events at the club, the snow polo show combined polo action with spectacular on-ground and après-polo entertainment and hospitality for Chinese and foreign guests.

The Metropolitan has been exceptionally clever in creating international interest in the club. Goldin has flown in and hosted a raft of polo VIPs including representatives of the Federation of International Polo (FIP) and national polo associations as well as polo journalists. Vintage wines from the Metropolitan hotel’s 10,000-bottle cellars have flowed like water and a good time has been had by all.

This international hospitality paid off in a big way last year when FIP, eager to help with polo in China, agreed to stage a new ‘World Cup’ at the Metropolitan: FIP Snow Polo World Cup Invitational.

FIP invited 12 three-man national polo teams to compete in the tournament, which took place 4-12 February this year. Eleven of the teams were fielded by their respective national polo associations: England, the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, France, Italy, India, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. The federation waived its nationality rules to enable Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region), part of China since 1997, to field the 12th team, made up of foreign pros.

Malaysia’s Peter Abisheganaden was appointed Tournament Director of the FIP event, with Argentine former 9-goaler Benjamin Araya as Horse Master. As FIP had never before held a three-man, arena event before, the federation drafted new rules and tournament conditions for snow polo based upon arena polo rules of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA).

According to FIP president, Eduardo Huergo, Goldin Metropolitan paid the federation just over US$2.5m ‘for endorsement and development, the costs of running the tournament and sponsorship for the participating countries’.

FIP paid each of the 12 participating associations $100,000 to cover their teams’ expenses and fees to players where appropriate, with any surpluses being ploughed back into polo in those countries.

Another six-figure sum was earmarked for individual awards and, unusually, cash prizes for winners. After all expenses, FIP is expected to be left with a significant surplus as net income to apply to other federation activities.

Meanwhile, Goldin Properties, the owners of the Metropolitan Polo Club, are planning a return of the sport to the firm’s headquarters city, Hong Kong. Polo was played there during the 19th and much of the 20th century, but urban development swallowed up the polo ground years ago.

FIP lists Hong Kong as an entity separate from the rest of China and last year granted conditional full membership to a new Hong Kong federation established by Goldin.

The Hong Kong Polo Promotion and Development Federation is headed by Pan Sutong, Goldin’s chairman and CEO, with two other Goldin executives, Harvey Lee and Rowland Wong, as vice-presidents.


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class activityDespite its venerable history, Yale Polo has had to adjust to the loss of its campus facility, writes Henry Grabar Sage


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Yale University, one of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, is also home to the country’s most decorated polo team. But to reach their stables, you must drive some 25 minutes from the tight-knit campus, out where the gothic towers sink below the horizon, out through the sleepy residential neighbourhoods of New Haven, past the strip-mall suburbs, down winding country roads without stoplights, and finally onto a gravel drive that smells of horses. Beneath an A-frame roof is a dirt arena and a row of stables. Alongside the building is a small outdoor playing arena, bounded on the far side by the Connecticut woods. You wouldn’t know it, but you’ve arrived at the home of one of the most successful collegiate polo programmes in the country.

One Thursday evening in October, while other students hit the books or the bars, four varsity polo players, two boys and two girls, rode horses here under the white lights of the barn. Liz Brayboy, a former Yale Polo captain and the volunteer alumni advisor of Yale Polo, barked tactics from the sideline. Then Seppi Colloredo-Mansfeld, the team captain, briefed the squad on the upcoming game against Harvard as they squatted on the concrete floor next to the stables. He pointed to Rebecca Smith, a fellow junior and the team’s president. ‘You mark Albany,’ he said. ‘Take him out to lunch, whatever.’

Brayboy, an insurance consultant by day, likes to say this place – the C&S Ranches in Bethany, Connecticut – is a world away from Yale. Riding horses at the barn, schoolwork is a distant reality. But the polo team is disconnected from the university in other ways. Few students know the team exists and fewer come to their games. And yet, polo has been one of Yale’s most successful athletic programmes, turning out some of America’s best polo players and making Yale an

Black and white prints of the Armory

are available for sale to support the Yale

Polo program. Contact Liz Brayboy at

[email protected] for more information


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important part of the history of the sport in America and the world. Yale still commands a charitable respect in the world of polo – the patron of the elite Black Watch team recently donated ponies and equipment, and British retailer Jack Wills flies the players out to Guards each summer to share the field with Oxford and Cambridge.

Within the university, polo’s place is more tenuous, culturally and financially. Since they receive little support from Yale, the players work and pay to play. They scrub saddles, clean equipment, and trailer their ponies down to Yale for home games. It’s a far cry from the sport’s patrician image, and from the glory days of polo at Yale in the early 20th century. But the surprising thing is not that the programme is a shadow of its former self: it’s that it exists at all.

The Yale Polo team was founded in 1903, and quickly gained a following at the college. By 1906, the team was drawing hundreds of enthusiastic spectators to games like the Quinnipiac Cups contest against Rockaway: ‘society was out in force,’ wrote The New York

Times. It was the beginning of a long era of dominance for Yale polo, driven by a series of stars like Winston Guest, America’s first 10-goal player in indoor polo. Polo historian Frank Milburn credits Yalie Harry Payne Whitney with changing the nature of the sport, popularising long passes, fluid positioning, and hard riding: ‘Modern polo is an American game, a power game, and Harry Payne Whitney invented it.’ The team was a training ground for the US National team, sometimes supplying three of its four players.

By 1923, polo was a varsity sport at Yale, joining baseball, football and other spectator sports in that pantheon. The team won nationals four years in a row, from ’23 to ’26. Their games were at the Armory, a building built in 1916 by the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), which supported Yale Polo because of the sport’s military ties – it was often used to train cavalry. At the height of the Roaring Twenties, which were as close to a heyday as polo has had in America (sometimes 30,000 people attended big matches), an old Yale family called Phipps


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gave a grant to the university to ensure the future of polo at the school.

Even as crowds flocked to games, polo at Yale was generating controversy. In 1915, Devereux Milburn, one of the best Americans ever to swing a mallet, wrote in the Yale Daily News that polo was undemocratic and not appropriate for college play: ‘The expense of the game was so great that very few could afford to play it… My idea of a college game is a game in which all can compete on an equal footing. This is true of baseball, football, rowing and the other college games. It could not be true of polo.’ The team tried to reassure the student body via a Yale Daily News editorial, urging that ‘everyone who has ever ridden should try out for the team. Inability to afford more than one pony should not hinder any one from competing.’ (Obviously, the standards of collegiate wealth were a bit different in those days; at Princeton, two polo-playing brothers from Colorado arrived with a string of 13 ponies. This was typical.) But as horses disappeared from everyday life and retreated to the stables of the rich, polo

grew more exclusive, its reputation more tainted. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald had the reprehensible Tom Buchanan play polo at Yale, and Gatsby slyly and repeatedly refers to him as ‘the polo player’, a nickname that Tom tries to reject: ‘I’d a little rather not be the polo player.’

With the exception of a few well-attended matches in the coming years, such as the annual game against Harvard, popularity declined and costs mounted. The ROTC, which funded the Yale team through World War II, and whose presence was responsible for a number of Yale’s ponies and the upkeep of the Armory, was kicked off campus in 1969, a casualty of the burgeoning anti-war movement. The team lost its varsity status in 1967. Since then, Yale’s financial contribution has amounted to what one player called ‘gas money’. Coach Lou Lopez and a polo alumnus named Bill Ylvisaker brought life to the programme in the mid-Eighties, engaging alumni with events like the Harriman Cup, expanding the squad, and renewing the relationship with the athletic department.

But the resurgence was short-lived. In 1986, Yale Polo won the national championship; they haven’t won since.

Meanwhile, the original, explicit purpose of the Phipps donation seemed to have been forgotten even by the team itself. Yale Polo played inside, and the fields had for decades hosted more popular and accessible sports like soccer and baseball. When Ylvisaker brought this issue to the attention of the University in 1979, it provoked a flurry of internal memos. Faced with the fact that there was no polo on the Phipps fields, Assistant General Counsel Linda Koch Lorimer, who is now the University Vice President, went looking for 98-year-old Howard Phipps to discuss a revision of the terms, apparently without success. General Counsel José Cabranes, who is now an Appeals Court Judge, wrote to Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti that ‘it would clearly be advantageous to have a “tidier” record’, but in the end, the administration felt it was in little danger of being sued. One memo read: ‘After all, are there not rooms throughout the

From left Harry Payne Whitney;

10-goal players, Michael Phipps

and cousin, Winston Guest; Annie

Phipps presenting the Open Polo

Championship trophy to her

grandsons, Raymond Guest,

Winston Guest and Michael Phipps

at Meadow Brook Club,1934.

All played polo at Yale.


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University which were given in someone’s name to be, say “a reading room” and may now be a microfilm area or a catalogue area?’ With the exception of odd outdoor games during the summer, the fields remained the host of more popular sports than polo.

For Yale Polo, the worst was yet to come. In the summer of 2009, the Yale administration announced without warning the closure of the stables at the Armory. The quality of the team had declined from the high-water mark of the Eighties, and the programme sometimes finished in the red, with Yale covering its debts. With the financial crisis eating away at its endowment, amid hiring freezes and larger cuts, the university said it could not spare funds for long-overdue renovations to the Armory. Some polo alumni saw the decision more cynically, as a move by a university to eliminate a lingering vestige of Old Yale, that stomping ground for the blue-blooded aristocrats of Andover and Exeter. Was polo at Yale a proud tradition or an embarrassing, expensive and exclusive anachronism? What determined the value of a sport to Yale? History? Popularity? Uniqueness?

The more pressing concern was to figure out where the 30 homeless ponies would go. The entire team was on summer vacation: Captain Jessica Glass, for example, was doing

bird research in the Colorado wilderness. The task of saving the programme fell to the team’s fiercely devoted alumni, who met with the administration several times that summer. ‘We talked about getting fundraising to renovate the Armory, but that wasn’t really the issue,’ said programme director Liz Brayboy. ‘They didn’t want polo on campus any more.’ She and the other alumni convinced Yale to let them take control of the team. By that point half the horses had been sold or given away, and by October 2009, four months after the closure of the Armory was announced, they had found room for the 15 remaining ponies at the C&S Ranches, half an hour outside New Haven.

The athletic fields that serve most of Yale’s 33 varsity and 49 student-run sports sprawl across several acres on the edge of New Haven. The complex includes the famous Yale Bowl (football), as well as a cavernous brick track building, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, baseball, soccer and softball stadia, and a wide expanse of grassy fields. In the middle of all this there is a large building with a sloping roof that looks like it might serve as a haunted house come Halloween. This is the Yale Armory, the historic home of polo at Yale. The team is still allowed to play here, but they must truck in their ponies from


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Top left Yale vs. Princeton at the Eastern

Collegiate Championship, Governors Island,

1937 Bottom left George C. Sherman Jr,

aged 14. Later captain of the Yale Freshman

team and one of the founders of the

Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame in Florida

Opposite Yale University Polo Team, 1924


By the time the fourth chukka starts, i stand in awe of a sport played so cleanly and well

Bethany, which makes a home game an all-day commitment.

I go out to see a game on a Sunday afternoon in November. The early afternoon sun is low in the sky. I take a Yale shuttle bus from campus out through a rundown neighbourhood to the city outskirts. There is only one other person on the bus.

Around the hulking stillness of the Armory, the Phipps fields are playing host to a high school lacrosse tournament. Sticks and pads swarm the grass and parents and coaches shout advice and encouragement. Aside from the shiny steel donated horse trailer parked outside, the only indication of what’s going on in the building is a plastic sign with ‘Yale Polo’ handwritten in blue marker, propped up against the open door of the Armory and repeatedly tipping over in the wind.

Inside the building, the Yale women quickly take a 12-0 lead over the University of

awe of a sport played so cleanly and wellDeAngelis, who is the chief financial officer

of a company in New York when he’s not coaching Yale Polo, has settled in as a spectator, and is giving tips to Fikrig’s parents about potential Christmas presents – a helmet, a face mask, a mallet. After a foul by the Penn team, Smith smacks the ball from the line and it flies straight and fast like a baseball, smack into the metal door painted with a Y that serves as the goal. The final score is 41-0.

Though not entirely unexpected – Penn’s team is only a year old – it might be the most emphatic victory a Yale team has had over an opponent all year. But it’s unlikely that anyone will be talking about this in the dining halls on Monday. The Yale Daily News hasn’t written about a polo game in decades, and aside from the odd Facebook update, this result – the final home game of the semester – will fade into the memories of the players and the spectators, conversation fodder for Thanksgiving dinner with aunts and uncles, a simple figure in the long history of Yale Polo.

But this is no time to be daunted. There’s beginners’ practice on Monday night. From 6:30 to 10pm, Colloredo-Mansfeld and Smith will be back at C&S Ranches, preparing eight recruits for the prospect of one day inheriting the responsibility for the team.

Pennsylvania. It was at Yale that women officially entered the world of polo, and the first female USPA member was a Yalie, Amoret Cardeiro, who was admitted – legend has it – because the USPA assumed her name was a male one. The captain of the women’s team, a junior from Paris named Lucy Topaloff, had never played polo before coming to Yale – which is not evident during the afternoon’s game. But this is fairly typical of today’s Yale polo players, some of whom have never ridden a horse when they show up to practise for the first time. Jim DeAngelis, Yale’s coach and a former pro, is something of a specialist in turning amateurs into the kind of people who will, later in life, spend their disposable income on ponies.

There are about a dozen players here, and as many spectators. I am joined in the stands by the family of Kara Fikrig, a freshman playing her first Yale polo game; a postgraduate research fellow from Germany, guided by curiosity; and a freshman from Jacksonville, Florida, who wanted to play but whose parents thought the sport too dangerous. Couples wander in and out of the Armory, straying from the afternoon’s sports headliner, lacrosse, for a chance to see more exotic sporting fare.

By the fourth chukka, when Topaloff and Smith (the team’s president) are on, I stand in

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the action [drama] catch up with all the latest action from around the world

48 The Triple Crown despite several team line-up changes, the finals of all three events are dominated by a pair of very familiar names

52 French Openrain fails to dampen the spirits at chantilly where exciting action unfolds

53 Formosa Cup south africa’s plettenberg bay christmas season concludes with a lively 12-goal final

54 Klostersplayers and locals pull together to ensure record snow falls couldn’t stop the action

56 Royal Salute Cupthe 10-goal tournament climax of the Jodhpur polo season sees central academy outshine yuvraj Knights in a spectacular final

57 Calcuttathe world’s oldest polo club heralds its 150th anniversary with eight days of polo and partying

58 Thai Poloasad Jumabhoy and his la sarita team defeat favourites thai polo in a close final

60 FIP World Cupargentina is the host nation of the ninth edition of this 14-goal tournament

64 Baja Gold Cuptowering cacti, rugged mountains and the majestic pacific ocean are a spectacular backdrop to mexico’s annual baja Gold cup

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Despite the majority of teams changing their line-ups, the finals of all three events were dominated by familiar names, reports Héctor Martelli

The Triple Crown

Analysing the world’s three highest rated polo competitions we can see that the Argentine 2011 season was particularly unusual when compared with past ones. Unusual, because only two of the eight teams maintained the same line-ups as in 2010. Here is an outline of the changes in each team:

La Dolfina (39 goals): The existing line-up, Adolfo Cambiaso and Uruguay’s David Stirling Jr were joined by 10-goalers, Juan Martín Nero and Pablo MacDonough, who left Ellerstina.

Ellerstina (37 goals): After the departure of Nero and MacDonough, Gonzalito and

Facundo enlisted their younger brother Nico (8) and hired Ignacio Heguy (9).

La Aguada (36 goals): The line-up of this team has comprised of the four Novillo Astrada brothers since 2003.

Estancia Grande (36 goals): A brand new team comprised by former La Dolfina and Pilará members, Bartolomé Castagnola and Lucas Monteverde, and brothers Sebastián and Agustín Merlos.

Pilará (34 goals): A completely new line-up of two former Chapa Uno players: Bautista Heguy and Hilario Ulloa; newcomer Cristian Laprida Jr, and British player, Luke Tomlinson.

Indios Chapaleufú II (33 goals): The remaining members of this line-up, captain Eduardo Heguy and his brother, Alberto ‘Pepe’ Heguy Jr, were joined by Alejandro Novillo Astrada (8) – who replaced Ignacio Heguy – and American Julio Arellano (9).

Joining the ‘big six’ were two 32-goal teams coming from the qualifying tournament, who happened to be the same as in 2010: Alegría and Chapa Uno (formerly Sao José). The first remained with the same line-up: Fred Mannix, Francisco Bensadón, Mariano Aguerre and Francisco de Narváez Jr. As for Chapa Uno, the newest man was Guillermo Caset Jr,

hurlingham [ action ]hurlingham [ action ]

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who filled in for Nicolas Pieres, to join Pablo Pieres Jr, Brazilian Rodrigo Ribeiro de Andrade and Chilean Jaime García Huidobro.

By the time the Tortugas Open started, there were some doubts about the new foursomes, as no one was really sure how they would work. As usual, the first competition of the Triple Crown featured the six highest rated teams – thus Alegría and Chapa Uno didn’t play this tournament.

In years gone by, teams rarely play their best in the first competition of the Triple Crown, especially the high-rated ones. This is because by this time of the year many players have just arrived from Europe or the US Pacific Coast, and lack practice time to adapt to the speed of polo in Argentina. Also, the players ride their second string of horses, and use the games to try new ponies – hoping to fit them into their main group.

In spite of this, it was a great tournament with many well-played matches. The two highest rated teams – and finalists – La Dolfina and Ellerstina, put forward the best performance. The final, with a total of seven chukkas, saw La Dolfina initially dominating the play. By the end of the fifth chukka they were leading by six goals. However, title-holders Ellerstina scored seven goals in the two last chukkas, winning by only one goal, 14-13. Sadly La Dolfina just slowed down, and Ellerstina showed no mercy and overwhelmed their rivals with their speed and goals.

With the end of the first Open, the second tournament of the Triple Crown, the 118th Hurlingham Open, began. Eight teams playing eight chukkas per game, for the Ayrshire Cup, the oldest polo trophy in Argentina.

La Dolfina overwhelmed everyone in the qualifying stage. They won their league with strong scores over every rival; playing skilled and fast polo, with ease, and already riding some of the horses they would be playing in the Argentine Open. The winner of the other league, Ellerstina, took much more narrow wins, mainly because the line-up didn’t fit as expected. They reached the final only because of some moments of good polo. Once again, the final featured La Dolfina and Ellerstina. Without a doubt, their rivalry has dominated polo this century. Others renowned polo rivals

By the time that the Tortugas Open started, there were some doubts on how the new foursomes would workE

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1 Argentine Open MVP Adolfo Cambiaso on BPP Buenaventura

2 Pelon Stirling (centre) was raised to 10 goals after the Triple Crown

3 Piaget players surround Sebastian Merlos 4 Nachi Heguy stretches in

vain to hook Juan Martin Nero


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include El Trébol vs. Venado Tuerto (Forties and Fifties), Coronel Suárez vs. Santa Ana (Sixties and Seventies), and La Espadaña vs. Indios Chapaleufú (Eighties).

Going to the second final of the Triple Crown, fans could enjoy the world’s best polo brought by these eight players, who played brilliantly. There are the champions, La Dolfina – a fabulous foursome, playing like a true ‘Dream Team’, even though sometimes they lose control of the match – and there are the losers, the heroic Ellerstina, who multiply in fearlessness when numbers aren’t on their side and always seem to play on the edge, although it is true that they often play below their true capabilities. Despite La Dolfina leading by seven goals in the fifth chukka, Pieres & Co suddenly awoke and showed no mercy. They almost sent the match into an extra chukka. But the final bell called La Dolfina the winner, 19-18.

Concerning the 2011 Argentine season, it is right to say there are two teams who are two steps above the rest

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1 The three Pieres brothers with Nachi Heguy 2 One player is not entirely convinced by coach Mia Cambiaso’s tactics 3 40-goals on the field – and 80 off the field!

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The world’s most anticipated polo competition, for both players and fans, then arrived in Palermo: the 118th Argentine Polo Open Championship.

There were not many problems in the two first days of the league matches. La Dolfina played the opening match and scored a heavy win over Chapa Uno. And La Aguada beat Pilará, despite not having their main man, Miguel Novillo Astrada, who missed the Open due to a torn muscle. On the second day, title holders, Ellerstina, made their debut with a hard-fought win over Alegría by only three goals, and Estancia Grande scored a very important victory over Indios Chapaleufú II.

In the crucial second weekend of the Open, the surprise was Chapa Uno’s brilliant win over an erratic La Aguada, a defeat that put them in a very complicated situation towards the league decider. Meanwhile, Estancia Grande took a tight victory against Alegría by only two goals scored at the end of the match, this was due to the losing team’s many disagreements and fouls. Alegría was leading by a 5-goal average at the start of the sixth chukka, but Estancia Grande outscored them 8-1 in the last two periods, a result that led them to victory. In the following match, on Field 1, the four members of Ellerstina displayed sublime play to defeat a helpless Indios Chapaleufú II by seven goals.

Following a seven-day pause, the next weekend brought the league deciders. The winners of each game would gain a place in the final – a place that went to the season’s favourites, La Dolfina and Ellerstina. La Dolfina played a fantastic game to defeat La Aguada, with only 50 per cent of their line-up due to injuries: Miguel Novillo Astrada missed the entire Open, and Javier didn’t play on this occasion. But despite La Dolfina playing with two replacements, La Aguada faced a powerful rival until the fourth chukka, when La Dolfina were leading by only two goals, 5-3. After half-time, Cambiaso’s team made a strong comeback, and with a better horse string, they sealed the match with an advantage of eight goals.

In the second semi-final, Ellerstina, with their usual speed and an easy play, defeated Estancia Grande by four goals. Throughout the whole season, Estancia Grande’s play was not as ‘big’ as their name would imply; but in the Argentine Open they improved a lot.

Friday 9 December was the big day; the finals of both the Open and the Triple Crown. And just like in the last five consecutive finals, the rivals were La Dolfina vs. Ellerstina.

The match wasn’t necessarily a good one, with only a few great plays and goals that were celebrated by the audience. La Dolfina’s key man was the fantastic 10-goaler Juan Martín Nero. He can be compared with

maestro Daniel Barenboim, the conductor of a symphony orchestra comprised of three musicians who followed his directives to perfection. Nero showed no mercy in both attack and defence, and was the man Ellerstina had to avoid to get into La Dolfina’s goalposts. Looking at the score, we can see that out of the 26 goals (16-10, the heaviest result in recent years) scored by both teams, half of them were the result of penalty shots – thus the winner’s man-to-man mark was decisive.

Ellerstina didn’t feature their usual speed – the main weapon of this team – lost 90 per cent of the throw-ins and committed many unnecessary fouls.

The big question is, did La Dolfina avoid Ellerstina to spread their playing? Or, did Ellerstina not know how to unblock their playing? I think both are true.

Concerning the 2011 Argentine season, it is right to say that there are two teams, those who played the three big finals, who are two steps above the rest.

Without a doubt there will be many changes in 2012, in particular brought about by players leaving the high-goal competitions. So it will be a year for the young guys to emerge and be incorporated into the best teams. Visit www.hurlinghampolo.com for video

highlights of the finals of the three Opens

of the Triple Crown, courtesy of ESPN.


Despite the weather, an exciting final made this a truly remarkable contest, writes Pascal Renauldon

French Open

Black Storm was an exciting formation, but they hit a wall in the semi: Murus Sanctus

This year’s French Open took place from 2-18 September on one of Europe’s most beautiful polo sites in Chantilly. Ten teams produced three weeks of pure sport. Pure sport with a talented line-up that included Swiss team, Marquard Media, with Marcos di Paola and Martin Aguerre Hijo, the nephew of eight-time winner of the Argentine Open, Mariano Aguerre.

André Fabre, after his double in the Silver Cup and Gold Cup in Deauville, showed his determination to win back the French Open that has eluded him since his 2005 victory. This year, he prepared for the Open by bringing together Pancho Bensadón, undefeated on French turf since the beginning of the season, and Great Britain’s no.1, Luke Tomlinson, in his In the Wings team. Despite playing against each other in Deauville, the two players became great accomplices and paved the team’s way for the final at Chantilly. Disappointment came with Bensadón's collision with Marquard Media’s Gaëtan Gosset, which resulted in two broken ribs and the Argentinian’s return to Buenos Aires. Team manager Diego Zavaleta hastily formed a revamped team with Tomlinson, French no.1 Brieuc Rigaux and Argentinian Ernesto Trotz Jr. It almost worked, but Fabre’s players were defeated in the quarter-final by Gaëtan Charloux’s team, Cheval des Andes, with the efficient Juan Ambroggio.

Another exciting formation was that of Black Storm with the flamboyant Zavaleta cousins, Juan Gris and Clemente, as forceful as ever. But Black Storm hit a wall in the semi-final: Murus Sanctus, with the phenomenal Facundo Sola. The team in black’s horses were tired after a month in Deauville, whereas those of the Parisian team were as fit as a fiddle.

Dario Musso and Alexandre Starkman, finalists in the Gold Cup, had also been worried about their horses’ energy. The two pillars of Polo de Deauville felt they performed badly in the French Open. ‘We did not play well,’ they repeated at the end of every match. Perhaps so, but Polo de Deauville were heading for the final and were the only team to have beaten Murus Sanctus in qualification. Thus the final turned out to be more balanced than expected.

In fact, nothing had seemed certain to Murus Sanctus captain Corinne Ricard and her talented Argentinians, despite a favourable start to the match with two goals, one of them a first-period penalty scored by Sola, followed by a third goal at the start of the second period. But Musso rallied Polo de Deauville and by the end of the second chukka his team were ahead. From then on, the match developed into a kind of life-or-death-struggle between the two best teams of the Open. It was a beautiful final match with many twists and – in

spite of the unfavourable weather conditions – a great audience. The rain did not disturb the players at all, and the grounds were of superb quality. Argentinian ace Sola praised the high standard of this 11th French Open: ‘We were a bit lucky to win by half a goal, but it was a great final that concluded a beautiful tournament. In my opinion, this French Open is the world’s best “16 goals” and I am particularly happy to end my European season with this victory with Corinne.’

‘Facundo is more than an “average professional”,’ said Ricard. ‘This young man is not satisfied with just sitting on a horse: he works the horses, he is active in the stables and he organises my team. And it was Facundo who convinced me to participate in the Open. He’s a blessing: well-educated and perfectly capable of organising a team at the age of 21.’

In Great Britain Sola was raised from his Argentinian handicap of 6 to 7 after a memorable quarter-final in the Queen’s Cup, scoring no less than 12 goals, as well as a victory in the final with Edouard Carmignac’s Talandracas. Sola anxiously anticipates the Argentinian Open in the ‘Cathedral of Palermo’: ‘Of course it’s my dream, I hope to be a part of it next year. This year, I will play the Cámara and next year, I’m counting on playing the qualifications for the Open.’ This year, he has already been successful at the ‘Cathedral’, where he won the Abierto Juvenil and the Cámara Cup and Ellerstina named the gifted young man as a substitute player for the Argentinian season.

After this, the ‘world’s best 16 goals’, Chantilly hosted the French Championships. The Argentinians then packed up their mallets to return to BA or Córdoba, leaving behind many fond memories of the 2011 winter season. Translated by Caroline Mlynarcik R

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Although the 12-goal contest provided plenty of fast, exciting polo, there was just as much competition for the 2-goal trophy

1 Black Bears vs. Mablestone 2 Formosa Cup winners Alfonso

Pieres, Jean du Plessis, Guy Schwarzenbach and Dirk van Reenen

The Plettenberg Bay polo Christmas season concluded with the high-energy Formosa Cup 12-goal final at Kurland. The 2011/2012 season is already proving to be a huge success with both team numbers and rays of sunshine back up to the high levels that Kurland became so popular for. Just to raise the competition levels, Black Bears entered the fray for their first excursion in South Africa with seasoned ‘Bear’ and Plett local, Jean du Plessis.

Black Bears got off to a bad start with a loss against the home team Kurland including some exquisite play from Gonchie von Wernich. However, this proved to merely be jet lag as the Bears then went on to win their next three games to reach the final against Mablestone. The local team featured Buster MacKenzie and youngest son, Mike, and though they were only an 11-goal team facing a 13-goal team, it soon emerged this would be no one-sided affair.

South African sunshine provided the perfect illumination for the Black Bears, writes Clive Peddle

Formosa Cup

The first two chukkas were not pretty polo as Mablestone tried to prevent the Bears from unleashing their quick attacks. Mablestone went into the second half 3½-3 up and looked to be a well-drilled squad, however, a turning point in the third finally brought the game to life. From the line-out Mablestone’s Brad Mallet took the ball to goal to stretch the lead, when du Plessis hit a huge backhand off the goal line and the remaining Bears each took turns bringing the ball up field to score. This seemed to be just what the players needed to keep producing nail-biting polo. The advantage kept swinging by half-goals and it was only in the last 30 seconds that Jean du Plessis scored a 40-yard penalty to put the game away. The Formosa Cup 12-goal was played in place of the South African Open which has now been moved to Easter 2012 and raised to an 18-goal level.

Although the 12-goal provided plenty of fast, exciting polo, there was just as much competition for the 2-goal trophy with five teams battling it out. Just about all these teams included one or more children, ranging from eight to 16 years of age. The two youngest of the group were Tom Richardson and Marek Kanigowski, weighing in at eight years apiece and although not the strongest on the ball their marking and riding off abilities were remarkable. For some it was the graduation up from practice chukkas to proper tournament

conditions. Such was the competition a penalty shoot-out had to be held to determine finalists between team 2 and 3. Ironically, both teams finished their round robin sections with the same number of points and the same net goal differences and both had equal goals for and against! The shoot-out attracted more spectators than many of the 2-goal matches, with Marek Kanigowski achieving an 80 per cent record – his two 60-yard shots failed to travel the distance but his accuracy was bang on target.

The final between Tshwene Lodge and Jaeger Polo was a close encounter with the latter gaining revenge on their pool round defeat at the hands of Tshwene. MVP Sbu Duma tried his best to keep Tshwene in the hunt but Jaeger with Freddie Horne and Shaun Brokensha managed to secure a well-deserved victory.

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The annual Klosters Snow Polo tournament came to a dramatic close with team Maissen/Parmigiani winning the Alpine Trophy in a final held on a freezing Sunday in the Swiss mountain resort. But it wasn’t the only drama during this unique tournament, which witnessed everything from British pop stars Duran Duran and Annie Lennox singing in the VIP tent to

Despite the Alps being hit by one of the biggest snowfalls in memory, a supreme effort by all involved resulted in a brilliant tournament

Klosters Snow Polo

400 lorry-loads of snow removed from the arena after record-breaking winter snow falls.

The all-English team for new tournament sponsor BMW, with Sebastian Dawnay, Gavin Turner and David Lewis, presented itself as a worthy opponent, reaching the final of the tournament which went into overtime. In a dramatic final that was very even to the last

second. After a tie at the end of the fourth chukka, Swiss player Simon Luginbühl scored the decisive ‘golden goal’ in the fifth, to give Maissen/Parmigiani a 10-9 victory and the title. The atmosphere was electric, with record numbers of spectators crowding around the arena edge, shouting out the names of their preferred team right to the final second.

After six months out of play due to an injury, Luginbühl has shown he has returned to top form. But the Polo Club de Veytay player gave credit to teammates Mark Hänni and Pedro Llorente for their combined fighting efforts that brought them to such an exciting victory. This was a satisfying victory for team G

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Four hundred lorry-loads of snow had to be removed from the arena after record-breaking winter snow falls

sponsors Maissen/Parmigiani, who have long wanted to win the tournament, and the players and sponsors were ecstatic at this highly anticipated moment.

Klosters Snow Polo Tournament Director Daniel Waechter, his daughters, Dayna and Jill Waechter and Marcel Geser with Oscar Mancini were team Duran Duran. They took fourth place after defeat in the third-place play-off to Tim Bown, Charlie Wooldridge and Paul Knights of Team Hackett 9-15. Henry Brett, former England captain, alongside Switzerland’s Cédric Schweri and Stefan Locher of team How To Spend It lost the fifth place to the Davos Klosters team of Jamie

Morrison, Simon Arber and Spencer McCarthy who won with 14-9. Chris Kiesel and Dominik Velazquez, who lined up with the Swiss Martin Vogt for team CheapTickets.ch lost a hard-fought battle for seventh place to the Peaches Property team of Dr Thomas ‘Tuti’ Wolfensberger, Peter Sander and Francisco Podesta who won 10-6.

This year’s tournament saw great excitement away from the games too, with the organisers bringing in a new level of entertainment events for spectators. The Altitude music festival was launched as a sister event to Klosters Snow Polo and featured British pop stars Duran Duran in

concert, right next to the snow polo arena itself. Right after the concert was a polo tournament and evening dinner event in aid of the charity Sentebale, founded by HRH Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso of Lesotho to support children who are badly affected by the HIV/Aids epidemic in South Africa. Team Parmigiani/Hackett/BMW with Tarquin Southwell, Jonny Good and Gustav Rausing played against Oscar Mancini, Roy Moed and Pedro de Lamare in team Sentebale, just before guests sat down to a charity auction hosted by Christie’s.

The bidding quickly became highly competitive and soon two tables were vying for the British pop legends to sing live in exchange for a large donation to the charity. Duran Duran went up first to sing a beautiful reindition of their hit ‘Ordinary World’, cheered on by lead singer Simon Le Bon’s supermodel wife Yasmin Le Bon and their daughter Amber. Their performance was quickly followed by another British pop music icon, Annie Lennox, who sang ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)’ thanks to Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s generous donation.

The attendees went wild with delight and everyone quickly realised they had been lucky to be there on such a memorable evening. Whilst HRH Prince Harry couldn’t join the festivities due to last-minute military scheduling, his friend Tara Palmer-Tomkinson left a voicemail message for him with Annie Lennox singing to make sure he knew what a great night he missed!

Tournament organiser Daniel Waechter has never faced quite so many challenges as he did this year. Around midnight on the Friday during the tournament the high levels of snow threatened the safety of the horse stables and Daniel made some quick phone calls to rope in the Mayor of Klosters Markus Haltiner alongside the local fire brigade to help out. The team worked right through the night to make sure all the stables were safe from the heavy snow, with a second shift starting at 5am. On another occasion Paul Knights – a polo patron – drove a tractor up and down the pitch for several hours to compress the snow.

Polo patrons queuing up to help out with heavy work sums up the spirit of Klosters Snow Polo; a tournament that really is about a passionate community of players, patrons and the public.


Team Peaches Property (in light blue) take on Team CheapTickets.ch at the

Klosters (huge amounts of) Snow Polo

‘There is no event quite like the Royal Salute Maharaja of Jodhpur Golden Jubilee Cup’

Royal Salute, the world’s leading luxury Scotch whisky, marked its third year as title sponsor of The Royal Salute Maharaja of Jodhpur Golden Jubilee Cup, with its largest and most international crowd watching the Central Academy team win the 10-goal tournament. Set in the foothills of Umaid Bhawan Palace, guests of Royal Salute were hosted 26-31 December by His Highness The Maharaja of Jodhpur with guest of honour, Torquhil Ian Campbell, the 13th Duke of Argyll. VIPs from every continent enjoyed five days of world-class polo at the close of the Jodhpur season.

Neil Macdonald, Global Brand Director for Royal Salute, commented: ‘There is no event quite like the Royal Salute Maharaja of Jodhpur Golden Jubilee Cup. With a world-class 10-goal tournament and some stunning parties, our guests have enjoyed a spectacular few days.’

With a dazzling display that graced the grand occasion, Central Academy won the Royal Salute Maharaja of Jodhpur Golden Jubilee Cup by outshining Yuvraj Knights in a final that demonstrated scintillating polo at its best. The climax of the Jodhpur polo season inspired memorable performances from Niall Donnelly and Manupal Godara, who both scored hat-tricks in a thrilling exhibition. The

Royal Salute Golden Jubilee CupA spectacular setting provided a superb backdrop at this cosmopolitan 10-goal event. By Jennie Norrish, Head of PR at Chivas Brothers

fledgling side, playing together in Jodhpur for the first time, trailed early in the first chukka but quickly asserted authority over proceedings and raced into a five-goal lead by the halfway stage. The Yuvraj Knights fought hard but were no match for a Central Academy side who clicked when it mattered most.

‘We came here with double determination and our hard work paid off,’ said Godara, deservedly named the ‘Taj Best Performing Player’. Godara cancelled out the Knights’ early advantage with a 60-yard penalty which sailed over the posts despite the stiff breeze. Donnelly added two more from close range to give Central Academy a commanding lead.

The real exhibition stuff came in the second chukka, with Godara and Donnelly both scoring spectacular goals within seconds of each other. Godara raced fully 200 yards to stretch his side’s advantage, before Donnelly showed exquisite control to cut in from the left flank and steer the most delicate of backhands through the posts from an acute angle.

‘Niall is a very talented player, and played much better than the three goals he scored today,’ said Godara. ‘It was a pleasure playing with him, and he will be one of the best players in the future. He’s an amazing team player.’

Trailing by 4½ goals at the start of the third chukka, Yuvraj Knights arrested their slide with a Vishal Singh penalty but they never got within sight of Central Academy, who put the gloss on their victory with a wonderful team goal in the final chukka. Donnelly’s backhand released Manupal, who showed power and poise to convert his fourth to the delight of a packed grandstand.

During the tournament a 19-goal exhibition cup match featuring Carlos Gracida was held – the highest goal game at Jodhpur since World War II. It was arranged by the Maharaja of Jodhpur as a tribute to the birth of Crown Prince Shivraj Singh’s daughter earlier that month. The tournament ended with the Royal Salute Golden Jubilee Ball attended by 150 VIPs, the Maharaja’s New Year’s Eve procession and celebration at the Mehrangarh Fort.


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Jodhpur’s Vishal Singh (in black) pursued by Angad Kalaan of the

RoW team in the Shivraj Cup

The world’s oldest polo club in existence hosted a series of spectacular events to mark its 150th anniversary, reports Herbert Spencer

Calcutta Polo Club

The Indian Polo Association (IPA), Indian army, international players, and VIPs from India and abroad joined the Calcutta Polo Club (CPC) in December to celebrate its 150th anniversary as the world’s oldest existing polo club.

The eight days of celebrations, with the finale on Christmas Day, were centred on the club’s historic Pat Williamson Ground in the middle of the Kolkata Race Course.

There were vibrant echoes of the earliest days of modern polo during the celebratory events, including an exhibition match by two traditional teams from the state of Manipur in northeast India, with the turbaned players barefoot and mounted on small ponies. Polo has been played in Manipur for more than 2,000 years and it was the Manipuri who first taught British officers and tea planters the game in the mid-19th century before the British formed the Calcutta club in 1861/62.

To mark its 150th year, the CPC staged competitive matches for the BFL Corp Ezra World Cup and the BFL Corp World Masters Cup. Title sponsor BFL Corp is the agro, real estate and rural media group run by Calcutta’s Bangur family.

Players came from the US, England, Italy, Indonesia, Argentina, and India to form five 9/10-goal teams. The home side, CPC, included 5-goaler George Meyrick, a member of England’s national squad. Carlos Gracida, former 10-goaler now handicapped at 7, was the highest rated player to take the field, playing for Carnoustie (USA). Indonesians played as Nusantara, that country’s leading polo club near Jakarta, and Italians formed the Rome team. The fifth team, made up of Indian army officers, came from the Army Polo & Riding Club (APRC) in New Delhi.

In the first of the matches played on handicap, Rome defeated APRC 9-5½. CPC played two matches against Nusantara, and won both 8-4½ and 7-3½. APRC beat Carnoustie 6½-5½, but then lost to Rome 5½-5.

On the penultimate day of play, CPC defeated Rome 6-4½ to take the BFL Corp Ezra World Cup. On Christmas Day, the home team triumphed again, beating a Rest of the World side 5-3 to capture the BFL Corp World Masters Cup.

The CPC celebrations were organised under the auspices of and with strong support from the IPA. General V K Singh, army chief of staff and president of the Indian association,

joined the Calcutta club’s president, Keshav Bangur, in presenting prizes.

The Indian army was much in evidence, providing players for some of the competing teams and units for the show. The army’s massed bagpipes and drums marching band put on an impressive performance, as did the mounted musical ride of the 61st Cavalry Regiment from Jaipur. Troopers from the 61st, the world’s last cavalry to see action, delighted the crowd with a display of daredevil riding.

National dignitaries attending the celebrations included India’s Minister of Railways Dinesh Trivedi; HH Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Jodhpur; Maharaj Narendra Singh and Maharaj Jai Singh of Jaipur.

Eduardo Huergo, president of the Federation of International Polo (FIP) flew in from Argentina to join in the celebrations. Also attending were Nicholas Colquhoun-Denvers, chairman of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA), and representatives of the South African and New Zealand polo associations.

As a welcome adjunct to the Calcutta celebrations, the president of the IPA and the HPA chairman agreed that the Indian association, after many years’ absence, would again become an overseas affiliate of the HPA. C

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The finals of BFL Corp Ezra World Cup 2011 between Calcutta Polo

Club (red) and Italy (blue)

Nine teams entered the BMW–B Grimm Thai Polo Open 2012, which was held in the stunning grounds of the Thai Polo & Equestrian Club in Pattaya, Thailand, from 11 to 21 January. The vast majority of the teams were made up of two amateurs and two pros which makes for a competive but friendly environment. It was the first of four RMPA (Royal Malaysian Polo Association) International League Tournaments to be held in 2012.

Five RMPA International League teams confirmed their participation in the tournament. They were: Royal Pahang Polo Club, Ranhill Polo, BRDB–Ibil, La Sarita–Jogo and Thai Polo. The non-league teams are EFG Bank–GTM, Axus, Troika and Macau Polo.

In the end it was La Sarita–Jogo who won the dramatic Thai Polo Open final, hanging on by a twist of fate to beat Thai Polo 8½-8. The final was a superb game of polo, full of great plays and spectacular goals. Thai Polo had the chance to win it in the dying seconds but could not convert, leaving La Sarita–Jogo, who had led for most of the match, worthy victors of the event.

La Sarita–Jogo started with a half-goal handicap as theirs was a 13-goal team made up of Quzier Ambak, Pablo Dorignac, Benjamin Araya and Asad Jumabhoy. Claudia Zeisberger stepped in for Caroline Link in the Thai Polo team, as Caroline had to attend the wedding of a very close friend. Thai Polo was a 14-goal team that consisted of Dato’ Harald Link, Guillermo Terrera and Lucas Labat as well as Claudia Zeisberger.

It was Thai Polo who scored first with a quick goal by Terrera, but La Sarita–Jogo fought back with two goals by Araya. Labat got a penalty to make the score 2½-2 to La Sarita–Jogo at the end of the first chukka. At the start of the second chukka Terrera stormed through to score a super solo goal to give Thai Polo the lead. It only served to ignite Dorignac, who scored consecutive neck shot goals to put La Sarita–Jogo back in front by 4½-3 going into half time.

Terrera capitalised on a botched defensive play to reduce the deficit but it was only momentary as Araya made amends to restore

Pattaya saw some thrilling action – with the final decided in seconds, reports Peter Abisheganaden

Thai Open

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match with four minutes remaining. Labat took it all the way to bring the Thai Polo team within half a goal of La Sarita–Jogo with two minutes to play. Thai Polo were awarded two penalties in quick succession but La Sarita–Jogo repelled them each time.

With nine seconds left on the clock, Thai Polo were awarded an undefended 30-yarder. It looked all over for La Sarita–Jogo. In an incredible finish, Labat hit his 30-yarder along the ground but the ball deflected off a divot onto the goalpost and refused to go in. The umpires called it dead and there was only time for a restart by La Sarita–Jogo before the final bell sounded.

It was a more dramatic finish than any of the spectators could have imagined.

Thai Polo were gracious losers. Dato’ Harald Link refused to be despondent: ‘The better team won. They were the only team to go through the whole tournament unbeaten. Congratulations to La Sarita–Jogo.’

For La Sarita’s patron, Asad Jumabhoy it was an emotional win, having missed the last two Thai Opens as he battled cancer. The last time La Sarita played the Thai Open, they lost in the 2009 final to BRDB-Elevation by half a goal in just as dramatic circumstances.

It was great to see Guillermo Terrera back in top form as he also missed last season due to a battle with cancer.

In an earlier match, Royal Pahang beat Troika 8-6 for the third-place spot. HRH Prince Abdullah was unable to participate in the match as he had injured his back in earlier play. However he was in attendance to support and watch as his team controlled the game for an easy win. Troika were without Hissam Hyder, who was earlier admitted to hospital with suspected dengue fever. His place in the Troika team was taken by Horatio Etcheverry, who played a good game.

All in all, it was a spectacular final day at the Thai Open, with about 2,000 spectators enjoying a great afternoon of skilled polo and thrilling play. As ever, the event ended with an impressive fireworks display that mirrored the polo that had been played earlier.

the 1½-goal cushion. Terrera was the driving force in the game and was starting to take charge. He released Labat with a perfect pass from which the Argentine scored spectacularly, taking the ball on the bounce.

Just when it seemed Thai Polo were in the ascendancy La Sarita–Jogo came back with their own great team play. From their own back line, Jumabhoy stroked it up to Dorignac, who in turn released Araya, who strode onto the ball at the half-way mark in full flight and took the ball majestically to goal. Not content with a 1½-goal lead, Ambak then joined in on the fast play, scoring to put La Sarita–Jogo ahead 7½-5.

Labat converted a 60-yarder at the start of the final chukka to reduce the deficit to 1½ goals again. La Sarita were awarded a 40-yard penalty that Araya took. Terrera stopped the ball just off the line. Labat could not clear and with the ball perilously close to the goal, Thai Polo were penalised for a player coming out from between the posts. Jumabhoy converted the spot hit to take his team 2½ goals ahead. The umpires started to call technical penalties as tempers began to fly.

Terrera created a breakaway that no one could catch to bring Thai Polo back into the

‘The better team won. They were the only team to go through the tournament unbeaten’

1 Harald Link in flight 2 Pablo Dorignac (in blue) and Lucas Labat 3 Benjamin Araya in front of Guillermo Terrera


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San Luis was the venue for a thrilling tournament and an exciting final, reports Nicholas Snow

FIP World Cup

San Luis was a wonderful venue with four world-class polo fields and stabling for more than 300 horses

The Federation of International Polo (FIP) World Cup came full circle in its ninth edition as the 14-goal international tournament returned to Argentina where it was first played in 1987. The host country produced the same result this time around as Argentina won the Championship for the fourth time, defeating Brazil 12-11 in an exciting final which was aired live on ESPN. Estancia Grande Polo Club, located in the province of San Luis, 700 kilometres west of Buenos Aires, hosted the event. It was a wonderful venue with four world-class polo fields, stabling for the more than 300 horses transported in for the tournament, and beautiful scenery with rolling hills leading into the Sierras.

The World Cup, last played in Mexico City, is hosted by a different country every three years with no player over 5 goals allowed to compete. Teams qualify from their geographic regions, much like the World Cup in soccer. Chile, last time’s winner, and host Argentina were each granted positions in the final without having to qualify. Italy and England qualified from Europe, Mexico and USA from Central/North America, India, Pakistan and Australia

from Asia/Oceania and Brazil coming out of South America. Ten countries is the most that have ever competed in an FIP final as eight has been the standard in past tournaments.

The opening proceeding of every World Cup is the all-important horse draw to determine which string of 28 horses the teams will be allotted. Each team is then given a stick and ball session and one practice to test the horses before the first match with the rule that no horse may play more than seven minutes. The 10 countries were split into two leagues of five teams each; League 1 (Argentina, Italy, Mexico, India, Pakistan) and League 2 (Brazil, England, USA, Chile and Australia). The top team from each league qualified for the finals and the second-place teams played for a third-place game.

The opening match on Field 1 was a grand spectacle as a marching band preceded the Argentina versus Mexico clash and the Governor of San Luis and then presidential hopeful Alberto Rodríguez Saá was in attendance. The quiet area surrounding the club was teeming with thousands who had come to watch their national team compete.

Strong fan support is what makes international matches so entertaining and this was no different with loud cheers erupting throughout the afternoon as Argentina emerged victorious 13-6. Italy dominated Pakistan in their opening game 17-6 and Brazil and England were victorious over USA 11-5 and Chile 13-7, respectively, the next day.

Both England and Italy were pushed to the limit in their second game but England was able to pull away from USA 7-5 and Italy staged a late game comeback to defeat a determined India squad 13-12.

Entering the second week of competition, it was apparent that Brazil and England would decide League 2 while the winner of the


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1 The main field of Estancia Grande 2 England’s Ed hitchman (in red) hooks Nick Snow (USA) 3 Mexico’s Valerio Aguilar (in green) and Italy’s Juan Jauretche


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Bringing together young talented players from across the globe showcases different styles of polo

Argentina and Italy affair would have a clear path to the final from League 1.

Italy was led by three Argentines carrying Italian passports (brothers Manuel and Francisco Elizalde and Arturo Jauretche), making the match-up with Argentina ever more intriguing. It was a fast-paced game but after leading early on 5-2, Argentina struggled to contain the Italian attack that took a 7-5 advantage with only minutes left in the final chukka. Argentina’s World Cup hopes were nearly shattered but a mis-executed knock-in by Italy and ensuing goal out of the throw-in by Argentine captain Martin Inchauspe tied the score up with just over a minute left. The game appeared destined for overtime but two late fouls blown against Italy gave Argentina a ticket to the final.

The other semi-final showcased a strong Brazilian side which had picked up relatively easy victories over USA 11-5, Chile 12-7 and Australia 11-8. England’s foursome was playing well together also, surprising the reigning champions Chile 13-7, edging USA 7-5 and defeating Australia 10-5. The much anticipated semi-final lived up to its billing with the teams trading the lead throughout the

match and notching a tournament high 29 goals between them. The game drew even 14-14 with a minute remaining and Brazil was awarded a hit from mid-field. One of the outstanding players of the tournament, Pedro Zacharias, took the ball through the English team for the goal to send them into the final against Argentina. Brazil are no stranger to World Cup finals as they have played in six of the nine finals, winning three of them.

Culminating League 1 play, a heated battle took place in front of a good crowd on Field 1 as Pakistan defeated India by a score of 12-10, giving them their first win. Italy was able to regroup after the devastating defeat to Argentina and hold off a tough Mexican side

8-7 to secure themselves a place in the third-place game against England. In League 2, both Chile and Australia got by the USA by a goal each, 6-5 and 10-9, but Australia proved the better of the two with a 12-11 overtime victory to secure third place in the group.

For the final, the best horses from the eliminated teams were randomly assigned to Brazil and Argentina which helped the level of play considerably. In the early going, Argentina did not have an answer for Brazil’s standout player, Zacharias, who converted some brilliant field goals, helping to give Brazil a 7-4 advantage going into half-time. Argentina came out in the second half with a reorganised team as 14-year-old Salvador Jauretche was moved to the front and big-hitting Alfredo Capella moved to back which frustrated the Brazilian attack. A well-played fifth chukka from Argentina, in which they outscored Brazil 4-2, found them ahead 10-9 heading into the last. Two penalties from Capella were all Argentina needed as a late goal by Brazil to put them within one was not enough and Argentina emerged victorious 12-11.

The victory gave Argentina four Championships in total, ahead of three for Brazil, one for Chile and one for the United States. Italy was able to take third place, the first time Italy has finished in the top three, with a 9-7 victory over England. The next World Cup will be played in either Malaysia, Canada, or Italy.

As a member of the USA team, I can say that the experience of competing in the World Cup is like no other in the sport of polo. Bringing together young talented players from across the globe showcases different styles of polo and pushes each of us to play well above our handicap to win. It is also a unique opportunity, for those not able to come to Argentina each year, to play four-man polo where teamwork trumps individual skill and where money is not a central focus and pride is. I would like to thank the United States Polo Association for supporting our team throughout the qualification process as well as FIP and all those at Estancia Grande who put a tremendous amount of work in making the event the success it was.

More importantly, I would like to recognise and sincerely thank all of the grooms who helped with every detail at the palenque as well as those who lent their horses to make this tournament possible. M

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The winning Argentinian team with FIP President Eduardo Huergo

Mexico’s Club Polo Cabo was the setting for a memorable weekend, writes Melanie Vere Nicoll

Baja Gold Cup

Cabo San Lucas sits at the tip of Mexico’s 1000-mile long Baja California peninsula, nestled between the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Sea of Cortez on the other. Originally a magnet for actors such as John Wayne who came for the deep sea fishing and writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck who were inspired by the region’s astonishing natural beauty, the development of Cabo began in the early Seventies with the inauguration of a major highway that now runs the entire length of the peninsula.

The outstanding geography combines pristine sandy beaches and remote rugged mountains with the desert in-between, dotted with towering cacti and all overlooking the majestic – albeit somewhat forbidding – Pacific Ocean. The weather is dry and sunny with only a few days of rain per year, letting the area flourish as a sports lover’s playground where the fishing and surfing are as good as anywhere in the world. For culture lovers the Baja Peninsula also boasts a fascinating history, having been inhabited for well over 10,000 years. Shortly after colonisation in the 1530s by Spanish explorer and conqueror of Mexico Hernán Cortés, the area became a haven for pirates who used the many safe harbours as bases to attack the Spanish galleons filled with riches from California and sailing back to Europe. If all of the above are

not enough to make Cabo a must-go destination, the resort now has the lure of polo.

Club Polo Cabo is seven miles north of Cabo San Lucas with views of the Pacific and ridges on both sides, and an abundance of cacti. It was founded in 2006 by four partners: Dagoberto Gil, a Mexican lawyer with extensive contacts and experience in Mexican real estate law and permits, and three Americans; landscape contractor Jose Alexander, builder Dennis Withsosky and Tony Yahyai, who has extensive marketing and sales experience. The club sits on 130 acres of land and will soon offer three polo fields – created by world-renowned polo field designer, Alejandro Battro – an arena, stables, two club houses, and a boutique hotel surrounded by 65 villas.

During the action-packed weekend of 19-20 November 2011, the club hosted the fourth annual Baja Gold Cup sponsored by Piaget. Participating in the event were four 8-goal teams made up of players from Mexico, England, USA, New Zealand and Argentina. The teams played three-a-side games on a recently seeded 150-by-80-yard grass field with an indoor ball. Games were played with pooled club horses at 11am and 3pm each day. The first game of the tournament saw host team, Club Polo/Piaget, beat Wildcat Polo Club. Several impressive goals were scored by Wildcats patron Ryan Gilbertson, who has only

ridden and played polo since January 2011. In the second match, Capella Hotels fought and beat ME/Nikki Beach, setting the final for Sunday with Club Polo/Piaget versus Capella Hotels. Resident 5-goal Polo Director Gaston Von Wernich was well mounted and scored several decisive goals for Club Polo/Piaget to lead them through to victory, 6-4. Third place was taken by ME/Nikki Beach in a sudden-death goal shoot-out over the Wildcat Polo Club.

Between games on both days spectators were entertained with Mexican food, tequila and non-stop mariachi music in front of the breathtaking backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. On Saturday night a charity dinner auction was held in aid of the Equine Therapy Foundation, which raised $7,000.

Participating in the fourth annual Baja Gold Cup were four 8-goal teams made up of players from Mexico, England, USA, New Zealand and Argentina


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1 Jesse Bray (in blue) on the ball, tailed by Wildcat’s Joseph Stuart 2 The Capella Hotel’s team (in white) vs Piaget (in black) 3 Capella Hotel’s Carlos Galindo

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hurlingham [ archive ]


John P. Smail, David Shepherd, Adam Smail, Howard Hipwood and Julian Hipwood receiving a Pony Club award c.1961

Pony Club Now in their ninth decade, Pony Clubs have introduced generation after generation to equine sports and care, writes Herbert Spencer

Male members of the Pony Clubs may cringe at this suggestion, but one of the humorous cartoons of the late Norman Thelwell (1923-2004) could well serve as an unofficial logo for the world’s largest young riders’ organisation.

Pony Clubs started in the UK some 80 years ago and have since spread to more than 30 countries with more than 100,000 members, with hundreds of thousands of adult volunteers supporting them.

The ‘Thelwell pony’ cartoons are much beloved by the horsy set. Young girls desperately try to control mischievous, pot-bellied little horses as they engage in gymkhanas and mounted games. As the vast majority of Pony Club riders are female, one of these charming cartoons would be an amusing brand image for the clubs.

On a more serious note, however, the Pony Clubs have been impressively instrumental in early development of youngsters’ skills in horse sports. Many an Olympic equestrian competitor got his or

her start in a Pony Club and most of Britain’s leading polo players have received their earlier training in Pony Club Polo.

A quintessentially English concept, the worldwide Pony Club movement grew out of the English fox hunting community’s desire to encourage riding among the young. In 1928 the Institute of the Horse (later amalgamated into the British Horse Society) started a sub-branch scheme in different parts of the country organising paper chases and gymkhanas for children.

On 1 November 1929 the Institute of the Horse formally founded a ‘junior branch’ to be known as ‘The Pony Club’. By 1930, the British Pony Club membership was 700 and the first overseas club had been formed, the Royal Calpe Hunt Pony Club in Gibraltar. The following year membership in the UK jumped to 4,442 at 59 branches.

Today there are some 50,000 British Pony Club riders, aged six to 21, in 345 branches and 560 centres. Around 85 per cent of the

members are female. Activities include all the equestrian disciplines – including polo.

Pony Club Polo, now supported by the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) and Audi UK, started in 1959 with its first tournament at Aldershot. Today there are some 400 children and young men and women playing polo in more than 30 branches of the Pony Club. Over the years scores of Britain’s leading players have come up through the Pony Club, from 9-goalers Julian and Howard Hipwood to 7-goalers Luke and Mark Tomlinson, mainstays of England’s national team.

British Pony Club riders demonstrate their skills, including polo, at major equestrian events such as the Horse of the Year Show and the Royal Windsor Horse Show and every year feature in the opening parade at the HPA’s International Polo Day.

The global spread of Pony Clubs began in the Thirties. After Gibraltar came Australia in 1938; Pony Club Australia now has the world’s largest membership, just under 55,000 riders at 980 clubs. The Euro Pony Club was founded in 1989 and lists 12 member countries from Sweden to Turkey.

The US Pony Club was established in 1954 and now has 10,000 young riders, 90 per cent female, in 600 clubs. Starting in 2012, it will finally include polo in its activities, supported by the US Polo Association.

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