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hurlingham polo association magazine
SPRING 2008
polo association magazine
Q1 SPRING 2008
CAMBIASO’S TRIUMPH [riding to victory in Palermo] ROBO-KARB [polo’s globetrotting peacemaker] TROPHY LIVES [precious metal memories] FIP FOR PURPOSE [25 years of international co-operation]
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Jaeger-LeCoultre partner of
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SPRING 2008
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Ponylines
polo association magazine
News from around the polo world, plus interviews and the Chief Executive’s column
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Talk
Bezant trophies, John Wright and Argentina’s World Cup absence CAMBIASO’S TRIUMPH [riding to victory in Palermo] ROBO-KARB [polo’s globetrotting peacemaker] TROPHY LIVES [precious metal memories] FIP FOR PURPOSE [25 years of international co-operation]
On the cover: Adolfo Cambiaso on his Triumph Speed Twin. (See page 10)
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Interview
Phillip Karber on his life of international diplomacy and polo
26 Heritage Big Horn’s historic tradition of horsemanship and polo
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Design
Polo is an inspiration for interior designer Alice Harvey
COVER IMAGE ALINE COQUELLE THIS PAGE TONI RAMIREZ WWW.IMAGESOFPOLO.COM
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Sponsorship
How Sir Allen Stanford became a major player
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Leadership
FIP celebrates a quarter of a century at the helm
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Action
Reports and pictures from around the world, including the Argentine Triple Crown, Aiken, Argentine Diary, China, FIP play-offs, Sardinia, Carayes, St Moritz, women’s polo and California
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Archive
New York’s golden age of arena polo
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foreword By Roderick Vere Nicoll, Publisher
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This issue of Hurlingham brings news of the worldwide polo community. In Ponylines, we run the gamut of experiences. Lucas Monteverde tells what it was like to score the winning goal in the Argentine Open in extra time. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, an 11-year-old girl experiences the thrill of hitting balls in the snow of St Moritz. In Talk, we visit the Bezant workshop, where beautiful trophies and replicas are created. I have had a few replicas made and it is certainly less expensive than winning the tournament! On a more serious note, John Wright, who is head of the HPA disciplinary committee, describes the challenges he and his committee face. Finally, Herbert Spencer explores the question of why Argentina did not send a team to the FIP play-offs. In Features, we learn how Phillip Karber, USPA Governor-at-Large, is beginning to exercise the kind of influence in the polo world that he is known for in international politics. Sam Morton tells the story of the Flying H in Wyoming and we see why Sir Allen Stanford, who doesn’t play polo, is becoming one of the sport’s biggest sponsors. His company is the type that polo needs. Finally, it’s amazing to think what FIP has accomplished after 25 years. The two past presidents and current president should be congratulated for their hard work, vision and devotion to the sport. In Action, we look in detail at the Argentine Open and Clare Milford Haven shares her Argentine diary, giving an insight into how one can spend time watching polo and discovering the spirit of the country. We take in China’s first polo tournament – could this be the beginning of a new era for polo in one of world’s most dynamic economies? Next we visit Careyes in Mexico for the Tequila open. This is a great place to holiday and play polo in a fun yet competitive way. At St Moritz, New Zealand star John Paul Clarkin made his debut in the snow and helped Brioni win the trophy for the second year in a row. Speaking of prizes, www.Hurlinghampolo.com has been running a competition to win a pair of handmade Lucchese polo boots. The lucky winner was Raphael Alland of Sarasota, Florida. Visit our website for the next competition. Last but not least, as ever, I would like to thank all the people involved in the magazine for their efforts in making it come to life.
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. HURLINGHAM (ISSN 1750-0486) is published quarterly by Hurlingham Media, distributed in the USA by DSW, 75 Aberdeen Road, Emigsville PA 17318-0437. Periodicals postage paid at Emigsville PA. POSTMASTER: send address changes to Hurlingham, c/o PO Box 437, Emigsville PA 17318-0437. Hurlingham magazine is designed and produced on behalf of Hurlingham Media by Show Media Ltd. Hurlingham magazine 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: hurlinghammedia@hpa-polo.co.uk
contributors Catherine Gordon is a journalist based in London. Her pastime of choice is sailing, but this is in danger of being superseded by her latest obsession – scuba diving. During her recent trip to Mexico she did 20 dives in 10 days, which resulted in a rather painful ear infection. Her interview with Alice Harvey is on page 30.
Sam Morton was raised on a cattle farm in Southern Pines, North Carolina and has been a horse trainer for over 30 years. He is also a horse dentist and a writer. On page 26 he writes about the equine history of Big Horn, Wyoming, where he lives in the summer.
Ming Liu is the sub-editor for Hurlingham and has also written for the Financial Times, Quintessentially and SL (Shanghai-London) magazines. Ming spends her time in London and Beijing, and she writes about the Chinese polo scene on page 48.
Aline Coquelle is a Parisian photojournalist who enjoys a ‘nomadic polo lifestyle’. She shot Adolfo Cambiaso for the front cover. She describes her next project as ‘a photo book on polo from breeders to horse breakers, players, estancias, clubs, polo aficionados, rituals and ways of life, portraits and challenges from Argentina to India, from Mongolia to Palm Beach, from Dubai to Sotogrande, from Saint Moritz to Windsor to Deauville, Morocco…’ HURLINGHAM MAGAZINE Publisher Roderick Vere Nicoll Editor Ed Barrett Deputy Editor Herbert Spencer Contributing Editor Sarah Eakin Sub Editor Ming Liu Hurlingham Media 47-49 Chelsea Manor St, London SW3 5RZ +44 (0) 203 239 9347 hurlingham@hpa-polo.co.uk www.hurlinghampolo.com SHOW MEDIA Editorial Managing Director Peter Howarth 1-2 Ravey Street, London EC2A 4QP + 44 (0) 203 222 0101 info@showmedia.net www.showmedia.net
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ponylines [news] Rock stars, England teams, bright young things and much more
ONE TO WATCH: BEST AMATEUR
SERGIO LLAMERA
Canada’s Fred H Mannix IV, 24, is the world’s highest-rated amateur player. He has held a 7-goal handicap since he was 20. In 2007, playing for Park Hyatt Alegria, he qualified for the Argentine Open Championship; in previous years, he reached the semi-finals and finals of the Camara de Diputados Cup in Buenos Aires. In 2002, playing for a Rest of the Commonwealth team against England, he won the Coronation Cup at the HPA’s special Cartier International celebrating the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. In 2004 he was on the Labegorce team that captured the Queen’s Cup in England. He has competed for the USPA Gold Cup and US Open Championship. At home in Calgary, his Millarville team has won the Canadian Open five times and he has led Team Canada in several international tests overseas, including the 2001 FIP World Cup in Melbourne, Australia. He works for the Sapphire Group, a Calgary-based water treatment company.
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Chief executive
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During the English closed season, it appeared that we forwarded our rain to Argentina where the polo was badly affected as a result. However, polo suffered far worse in Australia where virtually no polo has been played due to a flu epidemic. This was one reason why there were more English players in Argentina this winter than previously, but it was good to hear reports of English players taking part in tournaments at all levels from the Open downwards. Congratulations to Luke Tomlinson, Ruki Baillieu and Jaime Huidoboro, all of whom went to 8 in Argentina, and to an all-English team of James Beim, Malcolm Borwick, Mark Tomlinson and Ed Hitchman which reached the final of the 23-goal Provincia. It is not easy for the players to establish themselves in competitive teams in Argentina, and the HPA is looking at ways in which it might help. At home cold winds have blown through the country and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not filled individuals with financial optimism for the future. Nevertheless, Arena polo has been busy and, with the financial support of the HPA, the all-England Polo Club Hickstead hosted an international test match between England and South Africa in January. This is the first time in many years that England has hosted a visiting arena team and after a warm-up in Ireland, the South African team acquitted itself with great style but England won comfortably 18-13. The day was a great success with an excellent turnout and good weather. In early February an England team of Mark Tomlinson (captain), James Beim, Malcolm Borwick and Tom Morley will play New Zealand at Kihikihi and at the same time a Young England team will spend just under three weeks playing matches on both the South and North Island. Later in February an England team is due to play the South African 14-goal FIP team in Cape Town in preparation for the FIP World Championships in Mexico towards the end of April. This is not an ideal time given that the English season is starting just then and the HPA is extremely fortunate that so many players have made themselves available then. Having been semi-finalists in 2001 and finalists in 2004 it is hoped that we will go one better this time but the competition is very tough even though the Argentines have sadly absented themselves from the tournament. Looking forward to this season we are delighted that Australia have accepted the invitation to play the Coronation Cup on Cartier International Day and that Audi have agreed to continue to sponsor the England team for a further two years. In addition, both Cadenza and Crew have agreed to continue their support and we welcome Virgin as an additional sponsor for the England team. Williams de Broe has also agreed a three-year sponsorship of the Gloucestershire Test Match. A new sponsor, St Regis Hotels, have agreed to sponsor the second Test match which is due to be held at Cowdray at the end of the season. I would also like to take the opportunity to mention the commemorative match which will be held at Guards Polo Club on 29th May to raise funds for 2012 when a match will be played between England and Ireland to commemorate the 1908 Olympics, when the finals were played at Smith’s Lawn between Hurlingham and Ireland.
APES HILL MAKES HISTORY WITH ARGENTINE SUCCESS Sir Charles Williams’s Apes Hill Club Barbados team made history in December when they beat Don Urbano 14-11 in the Provincia de Buenos Aires semi-finals – becoming the first all-English team to reach an Argentine domestic final. Ed Hitchman, Mark Tomlinson, James Beim and Malcolm Borwick (pictured above from left) went on to meet Cuatro Vientos at Palermo, with Pelon Stirling controlling much of the game. Despite Cuatro Vientos leading 10-4 midway through the fifth chukka, a determined Apes Hill team came back to 12-8 at the final whistle, including a spectacular 5b penalty from Malcolm Borwick. ‘It was always going to be tough playing against Pelon, especially when he was so well mounted. Reaching a Palermo final has given the team a lot of confidence and a base to build for the future,’ reflected Mark Tomlinson. Tomlinson will rejoin the Apes Hill team this summer after recovering from his June 2007 hand injury. He is joined by his brother Luke, Tom Morley and Ed Hitchman. The team has been training in Argentina this winter in the buildup to the Queens and Gold Cups.
BAKER MAKES BREAD (FOR CHARITY) Cream legend Ginger Baker has just completed a labour of love that took even longer than one of his famous drum solos. Over the past four years he has singlehandedly created a field at his South African home where he can host polo and jazz events to raise money for local charities. Ginger reports, in his own words… ‘the first event was an enormous success... huge crowd... cars from all over western cape without a lot of publicity... everyone looking forward to the next one... sponsor extremely happy!!... “beautiful gate” did really well... we played one 4 chukka game... i actually played [first time for 5 years] we did o.k... gave the other side a goal [played on the flat] and lost 8-7... great trophies for players... lots of music after....local dance group [hip hop] did a great show in front of new grandstand/clubhouse... there was a steel band and a cape town jazz group led by a girl singer... and to cap it all i did a 17 minute drum solo....a truly great event... after more than 5 years hard work my dream has finally come true... great feeling... though it pissed with rain all morning the field played marvelously... fantastic evening… regardens... ginger.’
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hurlingham [ ponylines] CHUKKAS
ADOLFO’S TRIUMPH
Steve Orthwein, former Chairman of the US Polo Association, is reviving the longdormant Camacho Cup International between the USA and Mexico. It will be played at 26 goals on 15 March at Orthwein’s new Port Mayaca Polo Club north of Palm Beach. The USPA has sanctioned the revival of the series that started in 1941, named after the then Mexican president, General Manuel Avila Camacho, himself a polo player. The USA won the first five of the series, then Mexico triumphed in the next three, including the last in 1988. Mexican-American Memo Gracida is organising the Mexico team.
Triumph Speed Twin Horsepower: 25 Cool rating: 100 per cent Adolfo Cambioso owns two Triumph motorcycles – one in the USA and, in Argentina, the vintage Triumph Speed Twin pictured on the cover, which his wife Maria bought and had restored for his birthday. The Speed Twin is a true thoroughbred and a biking legend: it was designed in 1937 by Edward Turner who began working for Triumph the previous year following its acquisition by Jack Sangster, the owner of rival marque Ariel.
Sangster bought Triumph when it was in poor financial shape as a result of the Great Depression of 1929. It needed a dramatic pick-me-up, and that came in the form of the light and powerful 500cc, twin-cylinder engine that was at the heart of the Speed Twin. The throaty roar from its two exhaust pipes has epitomised British motorcycling ever since, and the model’s engine formed the basis of every two-cylinder Triumph through to the 1980s, including the Thunderbird (as ridden by Marlon Brando in The Wild One) the TR6 Trophy (as ridden by Steve McQueen in The Great Escape) and the legendary Bonneville (as ridden by The Fonz in Happy Days). SIMON DE BURTON
Construction has started on a new clubhouse at Guards Polo Club in Windsor Great Park. It will be a white, timber-framed, tile-roofed building like the Royal Box on the Queen’s Ground at Smith’s Lawn.
California teenager Santiago Torres won Most Valuable Player in Argentina’s December Potrillos tournament for under-14s. ‘Santi’ was Hurlingham’s amateur player of the Winter 2006 issue.
America’s televised series Triple Crown of Polo, sponsored by Lexus and Tiffany, has dropped Santa Barbara from its 2008 schedule in favour of San Diego, California. The other two venues for filming are Sarasota, Florida, and Aiken, South Carolina.
THE LOVE OF MY LIFE… USPA Properties Inc, the multi-million dollar marketing arm of the USPA, has expanded into Europe and the Indian sub-continent with licensees in Italy and India.
John Goodman, owner of the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, Florida, has bought Outback Farm from Tim Gannon. Gannon, whose Outback team won five US Opens, has joined the board of directors at Hobe Sound Polo Club, north of Palm Beach.
The US Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame in Lake Worth, Florida, is offering commemorative bricks at the museum’s entrance. For a $250 tax-free donation, it will add an 8” x 8” brick inscribed with up to 90 words.
Britain’s Pony Club Polo has its first-ever female chairperson. Teresa Hodges, who replaces David Morley, was manager of PCP’s Jorrocks division. She once played in the Pony Clubs herself and now has children who compete in the programme.
Pony’s name Age Sex Colour Height Origin
Hale Bopp 16 Mare Dark brown 15h USA
Adam Snow is a 9-goal professional who resides with his veterinarian wife, Shelley, and three boys – Dylan, Nathan and Aidan – in Aiken, South Carolina. Adam won US Opens in 2002 and 2006. Hale Bopp was an integral part of both these victories – and many others over the years. I purchased Hale Bopp in 1998. She had been bred and raced in Michigan by Kathy Womack and then trained to polo by Roger Redman in Detroit and Sarasota. When Roger showed me the mare in Wellington, he suggested that Bee Bop (as he called her) was probably too small for me but could suit a woman player. I rode her once, practiced her once and purchased her. Four days later she went as a back-up spare in our Gold Cup match against Outback. I played her about 30 seconds at the end of an early chukka and had planned that this would be it. But she felt pretty good and I asked to keep her on the line. Next time, I played her
1½ minutes, and she felt very good. And I finished playing her the last half of the sixth chukka in a one-goal game that bounced our way. Barely six years old, this was a mare I had only known five days and who had only played up to 12-goal polo, yet she was already probably my best horse. The next game she started a chukka – the fourth, which is usually where I play her. Since then she’s never looked back, playing with me in every important high goal season and, so far, winning six Best Playing Pony prizes along the way. She is unique for her turned-in ears, daisy-cutter stride and sassy attitude. She’s the shortest horse I own, maybe 15h with shoes on, and about as wide as she is tall. Her width and her heart are the reasons size doesn’t matter when she goes up against bigger animals. Her greatest strength is that she decelerates, turns and exits quicker than any horse I’ve ridden. It’s this kind of collected energy that gives me the feeling that, ‘if I think it, we’re doing it’. And she keeps playing! She’s going on her 10th straight year of high goal polo, thanks largely to the help of Shelley and her acupuncture. This October, at age 15 she won her latest BPP prize in the Silver Cup finals. She doesn’t know how old she is (or how big) – and I’m not going to tell her.
DAVID LOMINSKA
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HOOKED ON POLO Paris-born Cyrille Costes, 44, is based in Geneva, Switzerland, as Vice-President for Business Development for Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. Mercuria was presenting sponsor of the 2007 Movistar Argentine Open Championship at Palermo in Buenos Aires.
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‘I’ve ridden since I was seven years old and have been in the saddle wherever I’ve been based during my business career, just pleasure riding and a bit of jumping for fun, but never in competition. When I was based in New Delhi in the Eighties, I rode at the Army Polo & Riding Club, but I never paid attention to the polo there. ‘After moving to Switzerland, a Swiss friend, Pierre Louis Chardier, invited me to take up polo at Veytay Polo Club outside Geneva. My son Edouard, now 13, started playing at the same time. When I was in Argentina I played chukkas with the Pieres family at Ellerstina and met some great players there, as well as Frankie Dorignac, president of the Argentine polo association. ‘My company was already into sports sponsorship with tennis in Poland, a German show-jumping team and a marathon in China. In 2006 Mercuria entertained South American clients at the Argentine Open Championship and last year we became presenting sponsor for the event. I also presented the new Mercuria Cup to winners of one of the semi-finals. The Argentine Open represents the pinnacle of the sport and we now consider it the jewel in the crown of our sports sponsorship. ‘After just a couple of years, I’m really hooked on the game, as is my son. Its appeal for us is the close relationship between man and horse, the team spirit in competition and the adrenalin rush of the action in a match. I guess it’s now time for us to start buying ponies and get really stuck in.’
For more information on hurlingham magazine, visit www.hurlinghampolo.com
US TRUST CHALLENGE CUP ‘It was a great match, and they would not go away quietly,’ said Kris Kampsen, who scored eight goals and was named MVP as Catamount beat Tamera 14-12 in the finals of the US Trust Challenge Cup at the Grand Champions Polo Club in Wellington. ‘We thought we had it under control early in the game, but they made some great adjustments at half-time and we barely withstood their charge in the last three chukkas.’ Tamera’s Alejandro Poma picked up the Tournament’s Amateur MVP and consistently played above his 1-goal handicap. Teammate Luis Escobar’s mare, Emma, won the professional Best Playing Pony while Catamount’s Melissa Ganzi’s mare Tora won recognition as best playing amateur. There was a $25,000 prize for the winners, and the same amount is on offer for another US Trust Challenge, at Port Mayaca in March. This time it’s an 18-goal event supported by the Grand Champions League and Port Mayaca.
PILARA LAUNCH On 19 November 2007 the Pilara residential community, near the Argentine polo association fields just outside Pilar, was launched at a ceremony led by Pancho Ibanez. Also present were Jack Nicklaus (above, whose Signature Golf Course graces the development) and Gabriela Sabatini. A few days later, the two new polo fields played host to the Ambassadors Cup. (See the FIP feature on page 38 for the history of this event.)
To arrange your private tour, please call
877 POLO 888 (877 765 6888) hobesoundpoloclub.com
Adolfo Cambiaso, member of the Hobe Sound Polo Club
Hobe Sound Polo players. Located Treasure Coast. estates dedicated
Club is a world class club designed, built and operated by polo just minutes from the beautiful beaches of South Florida’s Hobe Sound Polo Club is an intimate community of 20 acre to those who are passionate about the game of polo.
Phase One is sold out. Accepting reservations for Phase Two. • Five Championship Fields • Two Stick and Ball Fields • Track • Clubhouse • Miles of Bridle Paths • Connected to Thousands of Acres in Atlantic Ridge State Park
• 7 Miles to the Beach • 30 Minutes to Wellington • 10 Minutes to Designer Shopping • 20 Minutes to Palm Beach International Airport
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SADDLE UP WITH...
England have changed their line-up for the FIP World Championships in Mexico in April. They will be giving away half a goal on handicap to the seven other finalists. The 14-goal England team that qualified in the Europe zone play-offs at Sotogrande, Spain, last spring was comprised of (l to r) Tom Morley (5) and 3-goalers George Meyrick, Ed Hitchman and Nina Clarkin. Since then, Meyrick’s handicap has gone up to 4. Now the England selectors under John Tinsley, chairman of the International Committee of the HPA, have decided to drop Clarkin and bring in another 3-goaler, Henry Fisher, bringing the team up to 15 goals. Under FIP rules, a team may exceed the 14-goal limit so long as three players remain from those who competed in the qualifiers. Alternates for England have yet to be selected. They will fly to Argentina for a week of practice before going on to Mexico City. HS
ENGLISH HIGH GOAL
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The season starts in May, with more than 20 teams expected to play in one or more of the ‘big four’ 22-goal competitions. Around a third of the patrons are English. The Milford Havens will field two teams for the first time: George is back with Broncos and his wife Clare leads a new team. Another newcomer is Australia’s Spencer Young with Yindarra. Just three teams are expected to keep the same line-ups as last season: Lovelocks, Talandracas and the allEnglish Apes Hill. Both finalists in the 2007 British Open, Venezuelan Victor Vargas’s Lechuza Caracas and Italian Alfio Marchinin’s Loro Piana, are making changes because of raised handicaps. Veteran Argentine pro Alejandro Diaz Alberdi will rejoin the Albwardy’s Dubai squad after a year’s absence. Four professionals rated at 10 goals in the UK will be in the line-ups: Adolfo Cambiaso, Facundo Pieres, Sebastian Merlos and Juan Martin Nero. For the first time in several years an American professional will be playing in England: 8-goaler Julio Arellano is joining Frenchman Jean-Francois Decaux’s Brittany team. HS
A DREAM COME TRUE When 11-year-old Caroline Dreesmann’s parents planned to take her to St Moritz for the Polo Championships, she told them her dream was to stick-and-ball in the snow. She persevered, despite her father’s admonitions that this was a high goal tournament played by professionals and there was no possibility of her setting foot on the field. Undeterred, she packed her riding boots and polo helmet. Fortunately, a knight in shining armour – in the form of Cartier captain Jose Donoso – heard about the young lady’s determination to play. After his stunning victory in the semi-final match the field cleared and a lone Cartier pony remained saddled-up and waiting on the sidelines. Jose gallantly helped Caroline up onto her mount, walked her onto the pitch and threw in the ball. There followed half an hour of pure polo fun. Who says dreams don’t come true? MELANIE VERE NICOLL
LUCAS MONTEVERDE Nationality Argentine Age 31 Handicap 10 in Argentina, 9 in US and 8 in England After his third Argentine Open win, Lucas deservedly went to 10 in his country. He started playing polo as a family tradition. In 2005 he joined La Dolfina. Did you expect to reach the 10? Honestly, yes. Not only as a result of my work, but also due to the great performance of the team during the Argentine Open. We won the tournament unbeaten in Palermo, as happened in the last three years, confirming we deserved the 40 goals. There were no more excuses. How did you start playing polo? My grandfather, father and uncles gave me my first polo lessons when I was a boy. When I grew up, I moved to Pilar to |improve my play, helped by my uncle Fernando Monteverde and Gonzalo Pieres. From them I learnt most of my polo. After that, Lolo Castagnola invited me to join La Dolfina. Who has been the biggest influence on your polo career? I have no models for my polo. I learnt from many great players, but I do not try to copy or imitate them. Have you always played as a number two? Always. I have done since I was a boy. I am very used to playing as a second forward and I like it very much. How did you feel after scoring the decisive goal in the final of the Argentine Open? A great satisfaction! Nobody expected me to score, given that I play with Cambiaso, whose ability to define important matches is well known. God wanted it to be me! Will you play for La Dolfina in 2008? Of course. Many people said there should be changes in my team, but I can confirm we will all play together this year.
TONY RAMIREZ WWW. IMAGESOFPOLO.COM;
ENGLAND FIP TEAM
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silver service Triumphant players turn to bespoke trophymakers Bezant to replicate their prizes, says Edwina Ings-Chambers
The winning trophy: it’s what polo teams work months towards, but once they’ve held it aloft, what then? A year later it’s handed back to the organisers and that beautiful prize is just a memory. But for some players it’s a memory worth replicating. And that’s when they call Steven Sanson at Bezant. Sanson, you see, not only makes bespoke trophies but also replicates cups for those seeking to relive their triumphant moment. Sanson prides himself on discretion and will not name his clients – but rest assured they include top names in sports such as golf and, of course, polo. (He’s so discreet, in fact, that clients very rarely visit Sanson at his office: instead, he visits them at their homes.) And though he has some corporate clients for whom he’ll design and make trophies from scratch, on a personal level his customers are really seeking mementos. ‘For private clients it’s like having family picture in a photograph frame on the desk in the study or office as a reminder of an achievement,’ he says.
Sanson has a luxury background in such matters. He was in charge of special commissions at Garrard for 12 years before striking out on his own in 1998 to offer ‘an experienced bespoke silver service’ to the polo and sports communities. Today he supplies trophies for the Heineken Cup in rugby as well as for the annual Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews. All of Bezant’s trophies are made in precious metals, either silver or gold. To deliver the top-notch quality he is after, handcraftsmanship is an integral part of the Bezant service. There are four people in the workshop, which is housed in a Dickensian building in East London which Sanson visits every day from his own Hatton Garden office. All work is carried out using traditional methods,
‘It’s like having family picture in a photograph frame as a reminder of an achievement’
with old-fashioned tools and hammers. Most of the skills required at any stage in the process of a cup’s production – including engraving – are available in-house. ‘The silversmiths and other artisans involved in a project have anything between 10 and 40 years experience,’ says Sanson, who is proud to be part of London’s longstanding tradition of silver work that goes back a thousand years. In true traditional style, no computers are used in any of the design or production processes. If you want a mass-produced computer-generated product, argues Sanson, then you’re better off going to China. Acutely aware of the importance of archives, Sanson keeps all pattern work designs for each commission undertaken. For him it’s about old values, and he believes in the true and traditional meaning of bespoke. The work is ‘very labour-intensive’, he emphasises, with commissions taking anything from two months to two years to complete and costing anywhere between £2,000 and £40,000, which is the most expensive commission Sanson has undertaken.
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1 Bezant has made several replicas for past Gold Cup winners (seen here with the 2007 champions Lechuza Caracas) 2-4 The Bezant workshop in East London 5 Julian Diment (left), Marketing Director for Dunhill, with Nick Dougherty, winner of the AD Links 2007 tournament 6-7 Bezant supplies trophies for various sports, including rugby’s Heineken Cup and cricket’s NatWest trophy
If you want a massproduced computergenerated product, argues Sanson, then you’re better off going to China
‘Having been involved in the supply of bespoke trophies and objet all my working life I find it surprising that people are not at all familiar with any of the production processes,’ he says. ‘In today’s fast-paced world, where computers have reduced lead times and simplified production and business in many industries from media to banking, producing a one-off trophy is still a labour-intensive process and the skills used are unaffected by modern technology.’ Of course, in the end, this is all part of Bezant’s charm. Once a player has scored his way through countless championship chukkas, the trophy is well earned. So there’s no reason why anyone should expect that the replica, which is every bit as good as the original personal commemoration, should be any easier to come by than the original trophy itself. The spoils of battle – or even just the evidence of them – should always be hard-won. Bezant, Suite 16, 88-90 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8PN Tel: 020 7404 0487 www.bezantltd.co.uk
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standard bearer HPA Disciplinary Committee chairman John Wright shares his views INTERVIEWER ED BARRETT
How do you see the role of the Disciplinary Committee? Our main role is to help clubs keep polo clean and disciplined within the Rules and Regulations of the HPA at whatever level the game is played. Subject to a normal appeal procedure we provide the court of last resort, but this does not mean that we must always act with the greatest severity. People sometimes forget that our polo is still largely an amateur sport played by friends for fun. What is your role? The great majority of the legwork is carried out by the Chief Executive and the Disciplinary Steward. My most important job is to ensure that a sense of balance is maintained in every case and that justice prevails. By its very nature our game is full of big egos – but high goal or low goal, very rich or not so rich, patron or professional,
British or EU or Argentinian, the individual is just a player like the rest of us. What is your view on international co-operation and consistency? The HPA leads the efforts to obtain closer agreements. But countries continue to guard their independent polo cultures, and I do not see much wrong with that. For most of our members, it is simply not an issue. And your attitude to discipline? I believe that individuals are responsible for their actions and that, hot or cold, they must accept the consequences of their actions. I also believe that the purpose of every rule and regulation is perfectly obvious and that there is something rather dishonorable about trying to finesse ways around them – worse than shirt-pulling or ‘diving’ in football. Rather old-fashioned of me, I suppose. For all of us who love our polo, being publicly banned from playing a match, for a week, a month, a year or forever is a worse punishment by far than being fined £50 to £50,000. Would you say there has been hesitancy in the past, for fear of offending individuals? Yes, but not necessarily in the sense I think you mean. The most common ‘hesitancy’ is at club level where either friends are loath to bring a case against an offender, or the offender is such a benefactor to the club that there is a fear that it would be counter-productive to bring him to book. Sadly the situation poisons the
atmosphere and always ends up with a much more serious offence. The solution is for clubs to stick up for their values and high standards of behaviour. What do you think about getting the local club disciplinary committees to play more of a role? I am strongly in favour of it. In every case a club can turn to the HPA for advice and in every case the club deserves our full support. However, a club’s disciplinary committee must itself act within the rules and regulations of the HPA. It must act justly and proportionately. Let’s also remember that the best discipline is that meted out by umpires during play! How would you assess the current position regarding discipline? Much better than it was five to 10 years ago. And all power to the clubs and players who have made it so. There are of course still individuals, even teams, who regularly behave badly. The solution, however, is quite simple: don’t allow them to play in our tournaments. Every club has the right to refuse an entry or not accept a member. On a positive note, I would like to wish all our members an enjoyable season. Tough maybe. Challenging, certainly. But as clean and beautiful as the lines of a favourite pony. John Wright (left) with John Tinsley, chairman of the HPA International Committee
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absent friends Argentina has opted out of the FIP World Championships, citing scarce resources. Herbert Spencer wonders how the greatest polo-playing nation came to be absent from this year’s World Cup
From left: Juan Manuel Durante, Frankie Dorignac, Patrick Guerrand Hermès and Peter Yunghannns
Of all the polo-playing nations, Argentina has by far the greatest number of players with appropriate handicaps for the 14-goal World Championships of the Federation of International Polo (FIP). This enviable strength has enabled the country to field highly competitive teams in the FIP World Cup, winning gold in three of the seven previous championships and silver and bronze in two others. It was not surprising, therefore, that eyebrows were raised when the Asociación Argentina de Polo (AAP) failed to enter an Argentina team in the eighth World Cup, which reaches its final stage in Mexico City in April and May this year. This is the first time in 20 years that Argentina has been absent from the championships, since the first World Cup in Buenos Aires in 1987. Had the AAP powers-that-be become so absorbed with the country’s international prestige in high goal polo – the top end of the sport – as to become disenchanted with the lower-goal FIP championships? When questioned, officials of the AAP and FIP – the former which had been instrumental in founding FIP 25 years ago – closed ranks and insisted that Argentina’s absence from the current World Cup should not be taken as an indication of a cooling towards the federation or its competitions. FIP President Patrick Guerrand-Hermès praised AAP president, Francisco ‘Frankie’ Dorignac, for his support of the federation’s Silver Jubilee celebrations in Buenos Aires last November. FIP Founder Marcos Uranga, himself a former AAP president, reviewed the ‘strong support’ the Argentine
association had given FIP over the years. And Mauricio Fernandez-Funes, the AAP’s executive director, gave reassurances that Argentina’s absence from the 2008 championship did not reflect any change in his association’s attitudes towards the international federation. Fernandez-Funes cited the pressures of Argentina’s home season as the main reason why the AAP did not select and enter a national team for this year’s World Cup. He said it was ‘literally impossible’ to find the players to compete in the international competition, even at what Argentina classifies as a ‘low goal’ level. Yet the fact remains that the polo associations of a score of other FIP member countries, including smaller ones like The Netherlands and Costa Rica with a limited number of eligible players, found the time to select teams and send them to the World Cup play-offs, and at venues and on dates agreed by a majority of federation members. The eighth FIP World Championship has not been without its problems, which first arose after the federation, in 2005, named Mexico as host country for the final stage of the competition. The FIP World Cup is scheduled every three years; the last was at Chantilly in 2004, so 2007 was the designated year for the next. Pablo Rincon Gallardo, president of the Federación Mexicana de Polo, was the driving force behind his country’s bid to host the World Cup, and his commercial group, ProPolo, was assigned the task of organising the event. Sadly Rincon
POLOLINE
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Gallardo died in May 2006, throwing the organisation into disarray. As a result, FIP agreed with the Mexican polo association (which took over planning) to postpone the World Cup final stage to 2008. Meanwhile, two zone play-offs for the championships went ahead early in 2007, with New Zealand and South Africa qualifying at Auckland, and England and Spain qualifying at Sotogrande. There were hiccups in organisation of the zone playoffs for North and Central America and the Caribbean. Originally scheduled for the Mexico City area, play-offs were moved at relatively short notice to Costa Careyes on Mexico’s Pacific coast. After sub-zone playoffs in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic was due to compete at Careyes, but were unable to obtain Mexican visas. Canada won at Careyes, qualifying for the zone to join Mexico with a bye as host country for the final World Cup stage. That left only the all-important South America zone play-offs to be sorted. This Latin American grouping, in which nine countries have competed over the years, has produced more World Cup winners than all the other three zones put together. In previous championships, Brazil had matched Argentina’s three wins and also picked up a silver and bronze; Chile has also won silver and bronze. Uruguay was originally considered as the host country for the South America play-offs, but negotiations between FIP and the Uruguayan polo association broke down, leaving the play-offs without a venue. The AAP, meanwhile, made it clear
Suggested dates in November were not convenient - it is springtime in the Southern Hemisphere and the middle of Argentina’s biggest polo season that suggested dates in November were not convenient. November is springtime in the Southern Hemisphere and it is in the middle of Argentina’s biggest polo season, with scores of tournaments being played at all levels of the sport. In other countries, association selectors choose national teams, the best 10 to 14-goal sides they can manage from 1 to 5-goal handicaps, the maximum allowed in the World Cup. The AAP, on the other hand, traditionally stages a countrywide tournament to select its entry for the FIP championships; in the past, as many as 76 teams have competed for the honour of representing Argentina in the World Cup. By the end of the first quarter of 2007, other countries had chosen their teams for zone play-offs in New Zealand, Spain and Mexico, and several South American countries were gearing up to compete in the last of the play-offs. Over the next six months, however, the AAP made no move
to select a team. The date and venue for the South America zone play-offs were left until the 11th hour while FIP officials negotiated with the AAP, trying to agree a date acceptable to the Argentines. In the end, however, the play-offs went ahead without Argentina. FIP Founder Marcos Uranga, with loyalties to the international federation and to his own country, estimates that Argentina has around 400 appropriatelyhandicapped players from which it could have chosen a team for the 14-goal federation competition. He expressed a hope that a way could be found for the AAP to select and enter a team in the next World Cup in 2010. Meanwhile, says Uranga, the Argentine press has asked why the country should participate in a ‘world championship’ restricted to 5-goal players and 14-goal teams, when Argentina has almost 50 players rated 8, 9 and 10 and could field a team up to the maximum 40 goals. Argentina’s Adolfo Cambiaso said last year that his country should be allowed to put its best players into global events. And the AAP’s Fernandez-Funes referred to the need to protect the ‘prestige’ of Argentine polo. One has to wonder if this is why Argentina turned its back on the FIP World Cup this time around. From left 1987 Argentine team: Pablo Sirvent, Esteban Panelo (hidden), Francisco Braun, Martin Vidou (holding cup), Bautista Heguy, Alberto Pedro Heguy, Diego Dodero and Marcus Uranga
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the player Globetrotting political advisor Dr Phillip Karber is one of the most interesting polo players around. Herbert Spencer meets the man they call ‘Robo-Karb’ ILLUSTRATION PHIL DISLEY
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Sitting in on one of Dr Phillip A Karber’s classes at Georgetown University, I was reminded of Robin Williams’s character as the professor in the film Dead Poets Society. Karber doesn’t leap onto the table or invite his students to call him ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ but he does have them on the edges of their seats. With aviators pushed up onto his forehead, a short-cropped beard and leaning on his bone-handled cane that doubles as a pointer, Karber is lecturing on the dangers of nuclear weapons: ‘If you think the Cold War between two rival blocs was scary, just wait ’til your generation faces more than a dozen nuclear powers around the world!’ This professor is not just drawing from academic research, but from hands-on experience. Many polo players are at the top of the heap in the business or entertainment worlds, but Karber is the only player I know living today who has been so prominent in affairs of state – albeit often as an éminence grise behind the scenes in the corridors of power. At the height of the East-West tension during the Cold War, he was Director of Strategy Development in the Pentagon, reporting directly to Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But this is no caricatured, simple-minded Washington hawk. When President Reagan went to the summit at Reykjavik, he and his Secretary of State carried a ‘Top Secret’ report authored by Karber advocating ‘A World without Nuclear Weapons’. When Gorbachev announced in 1988 that he wanted to quit the competition, much to the scepticism of Western defence experts, it was Karber, quoted on the front page of the New York Times, who took him seriously. The next month it was Karber’s report on a joint meeting of NATO political and military leaders that set a new course for the alliance; one which elicited the personal appreciation of the Soviet leader. Karber has appeared at numerous Congressional hearings and international parliamentary committees as well as serving
as an influential international advisor. He is famous for his directness and reporters love his sound bites, as when a Congressional inquisitor incurred his wrath: ‘That’s a stupid question and I’m not going to dignify it with an answer.’ After his class at Georgetown, we stop for a hamburger and I ask him about being an adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at a critical time in world affairs. ‘At Chequers [her official country residence],’ Karber recalls, ‘sitting directly across the table from me during that 1989 “think tank” session, the Iron Lady asked me straight out if I thought the Soviets seriously wanted an end to confrontation. I laid out the case for why I thought they did. The Chancellor of the Exchequer sided with me, but she was unbelieving; the next week he resigned.’ Ironically, within two months of that meeting the Berlin Wall came down. The unlikely subject of polo also came up at Chequers. ‘Over morning coffee I mentioned having gone to Harrods to buy a polo helmet and boots and Mrs Thatcher asked how I could play with my new artificial hip, then interjected before I could respond: “Sometimes we have to do what’s in our hearts.” Later she gave me an elegant blazer pocket badge with a polo motif, tufted and embroidered as only the Brits can do.’ In addition to a PhD in International Law from Georgetown, Karber holds three postdoctorate certificates including two from
Now USPA Governorat-Large, Karber heads two key committees and is beginning to exercise the kind of influence he’s known for in the world of international politics
Harvard. Despite his reputation as an intellectual and strategist extraordinaire, however, he has another, tougher side. A former Defence Department deputy recalls him ‘arriving to brief us in the Secretary’s office at 7am with his arm in a sling, a broken collarbone and a face that looked like a pizza – all from attempting to save a maiden’s honour in a bar fight from the night before.’ And after Iraq’s invasion, the Pentagon asked Karber’s company to recruit and train a ‘Free Kuwait Army’ to provide coalition forces with language and intelligence support for Operation Desert Storm. The White House was so impressed that they sent the Vice President to take the handover of the last unit personally from Karber. Whence tough? Adopted from an orphanage in Hollywood at the age of one by an elderly couple, Karber grew up riding in the High Sierras. There he played ‘pine cone polo’, a game taught him by his movie stuntman neighbour who had played polo with Will Rogers in the 1930s. The game entailed riding bareback and flicking a footlong pine with a three-pointed bamboo rake . ‘We landed in the dirt a lot,’ Karber recalls. ‘But, boy, did we think we were cool.’ As a teenager he played proper polo for a couple of teams around Bakersfield, California. Then a budding career as a CBS affiliate television cameraman and news reporter took over his time and earned him a full scholarship to Pepperdine University in Malibu. After a stint in the Marine Corps, cut short by a broken neck and back from skydiving, he shifted careers from the media to politics and was recruited to the staff of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in Washington – at the same time taking advantage of a PhD fellowship at Georgetown University. Over the years he also became a player in international corporate boardrooms. ‘In retirement I had only two ambitions: teach in the university and play polo, because they both keep you feeling young,’ he says. Unfortunately another sports injury left him with a shattered pelvis and an artificial hip. Unwilling to give up the sporting life, he taught himself to ski on one leg and worked for years to regain his equestrian seat. Later Karber’s team was competing in the US Arena Open when he was pulled off his horse as another pony stepped on his mallet. Carried out of the stadium, he remounted and finished the last chukka. (‘It was not heroic, I was so pumped full of adrenaline I didn’t feel a thing. It was easier to ride than walk.’) One of the early pioneers to play with an artificial hip, he made the record book as the first to break one. High goal teammate, Tommy Biddle, christened him ‘Robo-Karb’ and the nickname has stuck, with match commentators announcing: ‘Here comes Robo-Karb, he’s got more spare parts than a ’57 Chevy!’ So
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just how beat-up is his body? Twenty-six broken bones, six concussions, and fourteen surgeries. ‘The majority are not from polo’, he says emphatically. ‘Just an active life.’ Over the last decade Karber has increasingly given his attention to promoting polo. As chairman of New York’s new International Air Terminal at Kennedy Airport, he hosted Randy Russell’s polo statue exhibit, displaying polo art and photography throughout the passenger areas, and arranging distribution of polo magazines in first class compartments of more than forty airlines. As head of the Marketing Committee of the US Polo Association (USPA), he was responsible for the first significant survey of American polo players’ attitudes and images of the sport – with results that drove the association’s entire strategic plan of recent years.
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Elected as a USPA Governor-at-Large last year, he now heads two key committees – marketing and arena polo – and is beginning to exercise the kind of influence he’s known for in the world of international politics. ‘The USPA is fortunate to have greater financial resources than any other polo association in the world,’ he says. ‘And we should invest some of the association’s riches in marketing the sport, raising the profile and image of polo in the eyes of the American public. This would in one way or another benefit every club in the country, from the smallest to the largest, and every player from young beginners to high goal pros – a rising tide lifts all ships.’ Karber is in his fourth year as president of Great Meadow Polo Club in The Plains, Virginia, with its arena stadium and grass ground overlooking the steeplechase course
for the Virginia Gold Cup. Last year, 20,000 customers paid to watch arena polo there during 15 consecutive Saturday nights. This year, 2008, is the official Centennial of the founding of the first polo club in Virginia, and Karber is hoping to make this 100th anniversary a banner year for public appreciation of the sport. The Karbers’ Normandy Farm in Great Falls, Virginia is just 13 miles west of the White House. This unspoilt equestrian retreat, shielded from the surrounding suburbia, is the closest polo facility to the nation’s capital. As I prepare to depart after a week there, Robo-Karb is off to yet another meeting at the Pentagon; he won’t say about what. But I look down at the report he is carrying, entitled, ‘Nuclear War in the Next Administration’ and wonder: what does he know that we don’t?
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flying high Big Horn, Wyoming is home to one of America’s largest high goal summer clubs. Sam Morton traces the area’s rich polo history
Big Horn, Wyoming is a small town nestled at the foot of an isolated mountain chain. The sign located at the end of town reads ‘Population 217’, yet every summer twice that number of polo ponies are put through their paces every day here. Businessmen, kids, ranchers, trainers, breeders and professionals converge on two polo clubs joined at the hip, where 80 players enjoy the perfect climate and scenic beauty. Big Horn is a town steeped in polo history. In 1893 a polo team of Englishmen took on a team of cowboys and started a tradition that, over a century later, has culminated in the largest high goal summer club in America. In 2005, Skey and Skeeter Johnston formed the Flying H Polo Club on their ranch in Big Horn – and in three years it has grown to feature a 30-goal game, six teams and 11 polo fields. The Flying H ranch is located on an historic piece of land. Once a battleground for six mounted tribes of Native Americans, the nearby Little Goose Canyon is the site where the US cavalry bivouacked after being
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Mountain high Fordyce Field at Big Horn Polo Club, host of last year’s Goose Creek Cup to benefit a stream restoration project
defeated by Sioux horsemen. Outlaws of the frontier used the canyon as a hideout and later, Englishman Oliver Henry Wallop built an estate in the canyon which drew in other English ranchers. Wallop had played polo at Oxford and later owned a herd of 3,000 horses while ranching in Montana. He was followed by Captain FD Grissell, who had played in England’s inaugural match when polo was brought from India to England. Grissell moved to the area and raised polo ponies for sale back to England. In 1898, Scotsman Malcolm Moncreiffe came to Big Horn and built a polo operation next to Wallop’s at the edge of Little Goose Canyon. Moncreiffe raised thoroughbreds on his ranch in Big Horn, importing them by train and shipping them to England. At the turn of the century, Wallop and Moncreiffe teamed up with a crew of cowboys and scoured the West to purchase horses for the British in the Boer War. All in all 25,000 horses were sold to British buyers off Moncreiffe’s polo field. Some of the top horses were commandeered by British
officers for race and polo horses, and the culls that flunked the British inspection – western horses at the time had distinguished themselves as horrendous buckers – were rejected to become stars in the early days of rodeo. Locally, Moncreiffe’s Big Horn Polo team was making waves in the western United States. With Englishmen Bob Walsh, Lee Bullington and local cowboy Johnny Cover, Moncreiffe and his Big Horn team defeated several US Army teams and a strong Denver team at the turn of the century.
The Flying H ranch is located on an historic piece of land once a battleground for six mounted tribes of Native Americans
It was at a tournament at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs that 10-goal Foxall Keene watched cowboy Johnny Cover display his booming back shots, even remarking that besides Dev Milburn, Cover was the best number four in the world at the time. Little did Keene realise that as a young man both Milburn and 15-year-old Tommy Hitchcock used to study Cover’s back shots on Moncreiffe’s field to see how he hit such long shots. Cover was offered a spot on a Westchester Cup team but Cover, ever the cowboy, politely declined the offer because, as he put it, ‘I have cattle to tend to.’ Following Moncreiffe, the American couple Goelet and Edith Gallatin settled in the canyon and, after World War I, started the world’s premier polo breeding operation, the Circle V Polo company. Edith Post had been a horse enthusiast in New York and was close friends with the Hitchcocks, Milburns and Von Stades and also a cousin to Fred Post. Goelet Gallatin had played polo at Squadron A in New York and hunted big game in Canada. The Gallatins hosted everyone from
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the world of polo at their spacious ranch in Little Goose Canyon. In the 1920s the Gallatins built a polo barn in Aiken to finish the horses they started in Big Horn. Their polo manager Milt McCoy managed their stable both in Big Horn and Aiken and had a crew of the world’s top polo trainers. By then, the US Remount was in full swing, expanding polo breeders’ operations by providing a market for horses that did not make for polo. Army buyers provided free thoroughbred stallions to anyone with eight brood mares and a facility to keep them, paying $165 for a gelding four years old, green broke and sound. This was how Goelet Gallatin was awarded one of the top stallions, Mentor, adding to the Gallatins’s breeding operation that already had Black Rascal, whose sire had produced two Kentucky Derby winners. Later they acquired Kemano, a champion polo stallion in both England and America. From 1926 to 1929 the Gallatins hosted one of the world’s great horse festivals on their Circle V ranch in Big Horn. Polo, steeplechasing, roping, jumping and a flatrace card of 15 races a day for two days thrilled horsemen who travelled from 28 states to witness the event at the Gallatin’s private field and race track. It all ended with the 1929 stock market crash. But as luck would have it, Boston native Cameron Forbes – whose family had owned land in the area since 1898 – decided to back his niece in a polo operation similar to the Circle V ranch. A former 5-goal player, ambassador to Japan and a one-time governor of the Philippines, Forbes founded Neponset Stud Farm in Beckton, Wyoming. Starting with the Gallatin’s stallion Black Rascal, Forbes soon brought in the Argentine stallion Art Nouveau and later traded five polo horses for the Hawaiian stallion Aloha Moon. By 1931 Forbes had a private field where spirited matches soon sprang up between Neponset Stud Farm and Moncreiffe’s Polo ranch teams. Soon Neponset played host to over six visiting polo teams that spent the summer playing polo in Wyoming. Leading the players at Big Horn was Oliver Wallop,
son of Oliver Henry Wallop, who played on the Yale National Championship team with Michael Phipps and Winston Guest. The crowning glory of Neponset was when the team of Ken Schiffer, Bill Gardner, Mike Long and Merrill Finks won the national 12-goal at the Broadmoor Hotel – beating teams from California, Texas, Massachusetts and Colorado. With the advent of dude ranches in the 1930s, rivalries sprang up between ranches made up half of cowboys and half of dudes from the east. The crossbreeding of wealthy eastern women and local cowboys at the dude ranches produced offspring that were financially able to play polo. With father’s horsemanship and mother’s purse these youngsters did credit to the area as polo players well into the 1980s. The Big Horn Polo Club eventually moved from the old Moncreiffe field to the Big Horn Equestrian Center, a flat area that could encompass five overlapping fields. The club now also boasts the Full Moon Polo School that, as the most prolific
In the mid-1920s the Gallatins hosted one of the world’s great horse festivals, thrilling horsemen who travelled from 28 states to attend
1 The 8th Earl of Portsmouth, Oliver Henry Wallop 2 The Big Horn Polo team in the early 1900s, in two-colour waistcoasts, clockwise from top left: Johnny Cover, Guy Wood, Lee Bullingham, Malcolm Moncreiffe (kneeling) 3 Big Horn: small population; big players 4 Founders Skey (left) and Skeeter Johnston 5 Tiger Kneece (dark helmet) and Sugar Erskine race for the play 6 Goal!
WYOMING ROOM – SHERIDAN FULMER PUBLIC LIBRARY & THE BIG HORN CITY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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beginners’ polo clinic in the world with 17 future club members, two US Open participants and a club president, fluctuates between four and 40 members on any given week. This has added to the local membership, which has hovered around 45 over the last eight years. Like Moncreiffe, Gallatin and Forbes, Skey Johnston’s arrival in Big Horn gave a boost to the local polo scene. Shortly after Johnston purchased the Flying H ranch he expanded his polo breeding operation and before long, eight rated players from the Flying H boosted the level of play at Big Horn. Two of Johnston’s children, Skeeter and Gillian, played at Big Horn and, along with Flying H professionals Jeff Atkinson and Boone Stribling, all raised the level of play and soon players from all over the country travelled to the Big Horn Polo Club. In 2005, Skey and Skeeter Johnston founded the Flying H Polo Club, a world-class facility directly across from the Big Horn Polo club with five polo fields and a stick-and-ball area. Johnston brought in a sand machine,
which has given the club some of the best footing in polo. Over the past three years names like Heguy, Astrada, Hall, Rinehart, Arellano, Kneece and dozens of others have graced the fields that sit at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. Shade trees and raised sidelines give spectators a grandstand view without the steps. Not only did the Flying H bring high goal polo to the area, it also gave a tremendous boost to the Big Horn Polo Club, which it is part of. Wives, kids and grooms play at the
The Flying H has done Big Horn proud: several patrons have already purchased land in an area that has both the fields and the organisation to expand
Big Horn Polo Club while the Flying H offers a 30-goal exhibition game for the town of Sheridan. Barbeques, horse trades and the Last Chance Bar in Big Horn provide a blending of the two clubs. This year the Flying H became the first stop on the North American Polo League, where teams acquire points for winning tournaments in several locations across the country, culminating in the US Open in Florida. Several patrons have already purchased land in an area that has both the fields and the organisation to expand. Next year there is talk of bringing the Wyoming Cup out of retirement – a trophy that Harry Payne Whitney’s Cheyenne team and the Big Horn team competed for in the 1920s. In an area steeped in so many aspects of horse history, the Flying H has done Big Horn, Wyoming proud. Where The Rivers Run North is Sam Morton’s new novel, covering four eras in the history of Absaraka (now southern Montana and northern Wyoming). It is published by Full Moon Press.
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Polo saved Alice Harvey’s life. Or so it seemed when she was aged 13 and being dragged around ‘dreadful’ pony shows by her mother. When the youngster was offered polo as an alternative to ‘all that jumping’, there was no hesitation. ‘I saw polo as a way of getting out of Pony Club,’ she explains. ‘Polo is such a good buzz; it combines team spirit, hand-eye co-ordination, speed, adrenalin and danger. It’s fantastic.’ The 34-year-old interior designer grew up near Haslemere, Surrey. After enjoying an idyllic education at Frensham Heights and surviving a school in Switzerland where ‘there were so many rules and I got kicked out after five weeks,’ Harvey was dispatched to Argentina by her parents. Aged 16, the polo hopeful found herself living with family friends in Carlos Casares and playing farm polo. Instead of paying for university, Harvey’s family agreed to support her in polo until she was 21, and she moved to California to work for teacher Rege Ludwig. ‘I had such a good time. I worked really hard and I was playing my best polo. I was one-goal but I played slightly better. And when you have a cheap handicap you get given lots of polo. You don’t get paid to play, but you don’t pay to play either.’ So began six years of polo: summers in England and winters abroad, including a stint training youngsters in Zimbabwe for Johnny Campbell. But Harvey has no regrets about not following her friends to university – the polo circuit had plenty of its own lifelessons. ‘I had to deal with adults the whole time,’ she explains. ‘If you wanted to get on a team, you had to speak to grown-ups. At university, you sit around getting stoned, you’re not meeting wealthy and successful people. Now my circle of friends is amazing.’ But all good things come to an end, and eventually Harvey returned to the UK at 24 to take a break from polo and look for a ‘proper job’. She started edging towards interior design, working at various wallpaper and fabric companies, including Cole & Son. Then, at the beginning of 2007 came the call from FSI, the interior design company set up 30 years ago by Harvey’s late father, Julian, who passed away last year after a four-year battle with cancer: ‘My father used to play polo when we were kids, until his late 30s when the business was so busy that he stopped. Many of his clients were polo-related. His main client was the Sultan of Brunei, who plays polo, among others including HPA Chairman Christopher Hanbury.’
FSI had had their heads down for so long, going from project to project, that they had never done any marketing and now they wanted someone to come in to help them look towards the future. ‘It’s nice for me to carry on the work,’ admits Harvey. ‘Just like a mini-Julian.’ FSI provides a ‘turnkey’ service, offering everything from finding a property to sourcing the soft furnishings. ‘We start at the beginning, look at the fabric of the building and work out what can and can’t be done,’ says Harvey. But there can sometimes be a clash between what the client wants and what can realistically be achieved: ‘You have to be sympathetic to the building, and lots of people demand something which actually cannot be done.’ FSI’s nine-strong team is based in Fulham, west London, and has a collection of building teams and project managers who move between projects. ‘We recently finished
Girls have to read a game before a guy because guys will always be physically stronger. So if you can anticipate and get in front, then you’ve beaten them. Women have better intuition with horses. a house in Gloucester Square,’ recalls Harvey, ‘and the neighbours banged on the door and asked the builders: “Who do you work for?” They gave them our number and we literally moved the builders from one house to the next. Interior design is all word of mouth.’ One of FSI’s strongest selling points is the standard of finish the firm delivers. ‘Because we use original artisans, everything is done properly, and that is why we are expensive – you are getting the real thing. We work on anything from £500,000 refurbs to larger projects stretching into the millions.’ One such project is The Rutihof Equestrian Club in Zurich for the patron of the Black Bears polo team and three-times Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup winner, Urs
Schwarzenbach. Home to international show jumper Steve Guerdat, the Rutihof is a large wooden barn with clubrooms, bars and a viewing gallery. But contrary to what you might expect, FSI’s polo-related clients don’t always want their properties to have the classic ‘polo look’. Of course, there will be the usual collection of player bronzes and polo prints, but other than that, Harvey has to stretch her imagination. ‘People assume designers have a specific style,’ she explains. ‘But if you are a good designer, you can turn your hand to anything.’ Now that she is an established interior designer, Harvey has returned to polo, having failed to find anything to replace its unique adrenaline rush. ‘I play farm polo every weekend with Alan Kent in Cowdray,’ she says. ‘Alan was England’s best young player and someone I admired when I was young. He has around 350 ponies and I can play 20-goal chukkas there, which is a high standard of polo. I can have a seriously good time but with none of the seriousness.’ Harvey has clearly returned to polo with a new attitude. ‘I’m 10 years older now and more relaxed. When you’re 18, you’re playing polo full-time and it is your job. I took it very seriously. Now I can play for fun.’ In her eight-year break from polo, Harvey has seen the game become more popular with women. ‘Polo is more accessible, there were so few clubs before. When I started playing there were 250 playing members at Cowdray and only three were women,’ she recalls. But women still have to fight for their place on the field. ‘A lot of men don’t like women playing and I can understand why – it does compromise them, it is a physical game. If a man wants to ride me off as he would another man, he will hurt me. But I would like to think that I’m good enough to know that he’s coming in for a ride-off and I will either pull myself out of the way or deal with it.’ But on the other hand, women can be at an advantage. ‘Girls have to read a game before a guy because guys will always be physically stronger than you. So if you can slightly anticipate and get in front, then you’ve beaten them. I also think women have a slightly better intuition with horses.’ So what does 2008 have in store for Alice Harvey? ‘I didn’t play any tournaments in 2007, the season was a wipe out, my father was ill and the rain was a nightmare. I’m hoping that I might play a few more this year.’ The boys had better watch out.
VANESSA TAYLOR.
Interior designer Alice Harvey inherited her love of polo from her late father. Now the sport inspires her life, she tells Catherine Gordon
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1 Barn conversion, now Swiss private members’ club 2 Alice at Cowdray Park 3 Private residence, Belgravia 4 Concept for the Swiss private members’ club 5 Private residence, Kensington
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making a difference Stanford Financial Group is well known for its wide-ranging charitable work and sports sponsorship, including polo, reports Mark Palmer
Sir Allen Stanford has never played a game of polo in his life. But he and his company are stealing a march on others when it comes to sponsorship of the sport. Noting that the 2,500-year-old game combines the techniques of ‘riding like a Comanche, thinking like a chess player and hitting like a golf pro while four players try to break your kneecaps,’ Sir Allen’s Stanford Financial Group began its involvement in polo some 10 years ago at the Houston Polo Club. Since then, it has sponsored the Stanford Field at the International Polo Club in Palm Beach and, from 1999 to 2007, was title sponsor of America’s oldest and most coveted polo game, the USPA Silver Cup. It also continues to back the USPA US Open Polo Championship, the USPA Governor’s Cup and various local and regional polo matches throughout North America. ‘We manage money for a lot of athletes and so sports sponsorship helps strengthen that connection,’ says Jay Comeaux, who heads up Stanford’s sponsorship division. ‘But there is another element to it that is crucial, and that’s the chance it gives us to raise funds for good causes. In fact, if there’s one thing I am really proud of at this company it’s the way we give back to the communities we serve.’ In polo, that means supporting various charity days, including the Sandhurst Charity Polo Day, hosted by the Prince of Wales in aid of the British Forces Foundation, which is played at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Stanford’s approach to sports marketing mirrors its social responsibility objective ‘to strengthen every community we serve’. The company looks for opportunities that make sense from a local and regional perspective and which fit its clients’ interests. Comeaux believes that sponsoring these sports initiatives enhances local communities – both from an economic point of view and from a quality of life perspective. It gives what the company calls ‘outside the office’ opportunities to connect with its clients – and with prospective clients. To coin another company phrase, it is all about ‘doing well by doing good’. Sir Allen is Chairman and CEO of Stanford Financial Group, a role he took over from his father more than 20 years ago. He’s the third generation of family owner, and sole shareholder of the companies. Today he is one of the world’s leading investors in developing economies and an active
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member of the Caribbean Latin American Action, whose role is to promote privatesector-led economic development throughout the hemisphere. He also supports the Pan American Development Foundation and the InterAmerican Economic Council, through which the Organization of American States and private enterprise teams address development and disaster needs in the Caribbean and Latin America region. Sir Allen has made it a priority to support charitable, cultural, social and sporting events around the world. Stanford’s corporate charity of choice is the St Jude Children’s Research Hospital for children with cancer and its International Outreach Program in Central and Latin America. Two years ago, Sir Allen was awarded a knighthood by the government of Antigua and Barbuda. He was presented with his medal by Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, and in so doing became the first American to be knighted by the nation of Antigua/Barbuda. Sir Allen’s commitment to philanthropy mirrors his commitment to sport. His 2006 Stanford 20/20 Cricket Tournament – which
From 1999 to 2007 Stanford was title sponsor of America’s oldest and most coveted polo game, the USPA Silver Cup
1 Sir Allen Stanford celebrates victory in 2006 with Guyana Cricket Team captain Ramnaresh Sarwan (left) and Mahendra Nagamootoo at the inaugural Stanford 20/20 Tournament 2 The company sponsors Stanford Field at the International Polo Club in Palm Beach
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was broadcast before a wide international TV audience – united the region, reignited the West Indies’ passion for cricket and generated considerable profit for local businesses. It was so successful that it’s now an annual event. An American interested in cricket? Well, as anyone knows who has visited the island of Antigua, Stanford’s cricket ground is superb. The wicket and outfield are as immaculate as a golfing green and the ocean can be seen from the grandstand. More importantly, Stanford’s commitment to cricket has rekindled a love for the game in the West Indies, something that was under threat from American sports like basketball and baseball. ‘Cricket in the West Indies is a sport that is not in step with 21st century sports,’ said Sir Allen in a rare interview last year. ‘The entertainment factor has not been realised to the larger audience in Test cricket.’ By shortening the game so that it can be completed in three hours rather than three days, 20/20 sought to add what Sir Allen calls ‘extra sizzle, having players dressed in uniforms, mirroring the colours of the country’s flag and bringing in nontraditional cricket-playing nations’. Sir Allen began his business career in Houston, making his first fortune in housing in the early 1980s. By expanding the insurance and real estate firm that his grandfather started in the Great Depression, he built up Stanford Financial Group – a privately held, wholly-owned global network of wealth management companies serving private investors, institutions and emerginggrowth companies. Today it serves clients from 136 countries on six continents. The global group of companies has expanded from real estate and insurance to focus on private wealth management, including investment and merchant banking. By structuring Stanford Financial Group into four geographic regions (North America, Europe, Latin America and the Carribean), Stanford Financial Group
1 Stanford’s sponsorship of cricket has rekindled a love of the sport in the West Indies: (above) Narsingh Deonarine of Guyana hits the winning run in the final match of the Stanford 20/20 Tournament between Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago 2 Lodis B Stanford started the business in the
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manages assets exceeding $43 billion, while effectively initiating the community investment programmes that have become a focus for Sir Allen personally. In Antigua alone, Stanford Financial Group has created employment for hundreds of local people and instituted a management structure that provides those employees with training and tools they will take with them into their future. Also in Antigua, he has contributed more than $1.2 million to the construction of a modern public library, $25 million to the Secondary School of Excellence fund for youth, and made $10 million available in a revolving loan fund for small business entrepreneurs. Stanford and the Stanford Financial companies have established a footprint in the sports that resonate with their client base of institutional and high-net-worth private investors. In addition to polo, the company is title sponsor for the Stanford Antigua Sailing Week and golf’s PGA tour via the Stanford St Jude Championship. In tennis, it sponsors the Sony Ericsson Open and the Champions Series Tennis Tournaments featuring Jim Courier, John McEnroe and Pete Sampras. ‘Really, it’s a win/win situation for us,’ says Comeaux. ‘It makes business sense because we can reach an important demographic and the beauty of it is that involves such beautiful parts of the country, magnificent horses and some great people. Then you add in the worthwhile causes that we support and you soon see how all the dots are connected.’
Sponsoring sports initiatives enhances local communities, from an economic point of view and a quality of life perspective
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FIP for purpose Herbert Spencer reflects upon the progress made during the first 25 years of polo’s international governing body
For its first century and more as a modern sport, polo was without any worldwide organisation such as cricket, rugby and football had. The nearest thing to an international body was the Polo Committee of London’s Hurlingham Club and then its successor, the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA). The majority of polo-playing countries around the world – those of the British Empire and later the Commonwealth, from Australia to South Africa to Barbados – were affiliated to Hurlingham, participating in its councils and playing under its rules. Then along came one Marcos Uranga, an officer of the Argentine polo association, with a vision for a more all-inclusive global body. With the help of other like-minded
internationalists, his dream became a reality, and in 2007 the Federation of International Polo (FIP) celebrated its Silver Jubilee in Buenos Aires where FIP had been born a quarter-century earlier. The year 1982 was not the most auspicious one for the birth of a polo federation that chose Buenos Aires as its headquarters and an Argentine, Uranga, as its first president. The Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom, with almost 3,000 casualties including some 900 dead, had ended less than six months before the first organising meeting of the FIP in the Argentine capital in the autumn of that year. Because of the conflict, the HPA had banned Argentine polo players from
competing on British soil and neither the HPA nor the national associations of other members of the British Commonwealth were prepared to join FIP in the beginning. So the federation came into being with only 11 member countries. But, as Uranga says, ‘It depends on how you view life: was our glass at the start half empty or half full?’ Today, after 25 years under presidents Uranga, then Glen Holden of the US and now Patrick Guerrand-Hermès of France, the FIP glass is brimming with a heady blend of more than 80 nations, a well-established World Championship, scores of volunteer ‘Ambassadors’ who promote the growth of polo around the globe and recognition by the International Olympic Committee
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The inspiration for FIP came in a roundabout way from football
1-3, 7 Posters from championships in Chantilly-Apremont (2004), USA (1998), Chile (1992) and Berlin (1989) 4 FIP founder Marcos Uranga with Allan Scherer and George Haas 5 Relaxing at the first meeting
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6 Commemorative stamp for the Argentina championships (1987)
(IOC) as representing the sport worldwide. The inspiration for FIP came in a roundabout way from football. In 1978 Argentina hosted the World Cup of the Fèdèration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Argentina’s other national sport, polo, took advantage of the soccer fever gripping the country to stage its own international event, dubbed by the press as the mundialito – little world cup. Twenty-six teams from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay competed at the 24-goal level. Uranga’s team from the Jockey Club of Buenos Aires won the tournament, but his victory was less significant than the ideas engendered. ‘International sports competitions like
this create great friendships,’ says Uranga. ‘And this got me thinking: shouldn’t polo have a global organisation like football has with FIFA?’ Uranga was then vice-president of the Asociación Argentina de Polo (AAP), becoming its president from 1982 to 1986. Initially he discussed his concepts for an international polo federation with his colleagues in the AAP. ‘Their reaction was very positive, even enthusiastic,’ he remembers, ‘and the idea got strong support from our council.’ Contact was made with other national polo associations and the AAP invited them to send delegates to an organising meeting in Buenos Aires in the autumn of 1982.
Attending were representatives of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, the USA, France, Italy, Spain, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Argentina’s Jorge O’Farrell, an international lawyer, drafted constitution and bylaws, making the new federation a democratic body in which each country would have votes depending upon the number of active polo players registered with its national association. Membership would be open to all polo-playing nations. Thus was born the sport’s first truly global organisation. One of FIP’s early innovations was the appointment of ‘Ambassadors’, volunteer promoters of the sport from various countries around the world. In 1985 one of the first Ambassadors, Californian Glen
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Holden, organised the first of a series of Ambassador Cup tournaments at Eldorado Polo Club near Palm Springs. Over the years, there have been 61 FIP Ambassadors Cup events in various countries, including such exotic places as Mongolia. When it hosts an Ambassadors Cup tournament, a polo club provides all the ponies and two local players per side, teaming up with two Ambassadors. Ambassadors currently pay US$800 each to play in one of the competitions. The take from Ambassadors Cups in Brazil, England and Argentina in 2007 was just short of $60,000, more than 20 per cent of FIP’s income for the year. There are now more than 70 Ambassadors from some 20 countries, each contributing to the FIP’s coffers through participation in Ambassadors Cup tournaments. ‘Our group of Ambassadors is one of the federation’s fundamental strengths,’ says current FIP president Patrick Guerrand-Hermès of France. In its early years, FIP began organising modest international events, with junior competitions between teams from Argentina, the US, Brazil and Chile. Then, in 1987, the federation staged its first World Championship for a polo World Cup. Recognising that only a handful of countries could field high-goal teams, the top end of the sport, FIP fixed its championship at the 10 to 14-goal level, with a maximum player handicap of five goals. As a result, no fewer than 36 countries have been able field teams in one or more of the championships. FIP also took an innovative new approach to players’ mounts for its World Cup. As it would be expensive for national teams to bring their own mounts, sometimes halfway across the world, the federation introduced a ‘pony pool’ system. The host country provides ponies for all the competing teams, in graded pools from which each team draws ponies by lots. This system provides as near a level playing field as possible for mounts and also has the effect of emphasising the individual athletic skills of the players and teamwork over pony power. As host country of the first FIP World
Championship, Argentina pulled out all the stops to make it a success. The government even issued a new postage stamp to mark the event. AAP clubs arranged their schedules to leave a free day for the World Cup final in that ‘cathedral’ of the sport, the national polo stadium at Palermo. Five nations fought for the big trophy donated by India’s Maharajah of Jaipur. Argentina won gold, Mexico silver and Brazil bronze. Berlin was the venue for the final stage of the second World Championship in 1989. By then the federation had established geographical zones in which national teams engaged in play-offs to qualify for the finals: Zone A, North and Central America and the Caribbean; B, South America; C, Europe; and D, Africa, Asia and Oceania. England had still not yet joined FIP, but the federation nonetheless invited the HPA
The year 1982 was not the most auspicious one for the birth of a polo federation – the Falklands War had recently just ended to send a team to compete for the 1989 World Cup at Berlin’s Maifeld Stadium, where polo was last played in the 1936 Olympics. The USA narrowly defeated England to win gold, with Argentina coming third. The HPA’s then-president, Peter Thwaites, was so impressed with the World Cup organisation that, later in the year, he led his association to finally join FIP. The next World Cup finals were played in 1992 at Santiago, Chile, with Argentina, Chile and England as medallists, and in 1995 at St Moritz, Switzerland, with Argentina, Brazil and Mexico the three top teams. Marcos Uranga continued to serve as FIP president for almost 15 years. He retired, with the title Founder, in March 1997 when
the General Assembly elected Ambassador Glen Holden of the USA to succeed him. Holden, a former US Ambassador to Jamaica and Governor of the Pacific Coast Circuit of the US Polo Association (USPA), moved FIP’s HQ to Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. Uranga had already started discussions with the IOC about a return of polo to the Olympic Games. In 1998, with Holden as president, FIP consolidated its position by gaining the IOC’s outright recognition of polo as an Olympic sport, with FIP as its international representative body. FIP is now lobbying hard for inclusion of polo as a discipline in the 2016 Olympic Games. To comply with IOC regulations, FIP has established the International Rules of Polo under which all federation events are played. The federation is working towards adoption of its Rules by all its member associations for their non-FIP competitions. Three more World Cups were held under Holden’s presidency. Argentina, Brazil and England were the medallists at Santa Barbara, California, in 1998; Brazil, Australia and England at Melbourne, Australia, in 2001; and Brazil, England and Chile at Chantilly, France, in 2004. In addition to its three-yearly World Championships, FIP holds a European 8Goal Championship, last won by Italy in The Netherlands, with the next competition scheduled for Germany this year. Various federation members also organise FIP youth competitions each year. Holden retired as president in 2005, succeeded by Patrick Guerrand-Hermès, who moved the FIP headquarters to France. Currently serving under him as vicepresidents are the leaders of the three biggest national associations: HPA chairman Christopher Hanbury, USPA chairman Thomas Biddle, and AAP president Francisco Dorignac. Silvio Coutinho of Brazil is secretary of the federation and James Ashton of Australia its treasurer. In November 2007, federation officers, national delegates and Ambassadors gathered in Buenos Aires to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of FIP. The festivities, organised by Founder Uranga,
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1 FIP ambassadors at the 25th anniversary 2 (from left) Luis Olazabal, Antonio Juagerui, Emilio Granga, Jorge Garcia Arce, Pepe Valdez 3 (from left) Farouk Younes (Egypt), Francois Berger (Guatemala), Sylvio Coutinho (Brazil) 4 (from left) Glen Holden, Marcos Uranga and Patrick GuerrandHermès 5 The gala dinner
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kicked off with Ambassador Cup matches at the AAP’s grounds at Pilar outside the capital and at adjacent Pilara, a new sports and residential development opened in November last year. The climax of the celebrations was a grand Silver Jubilee gala attended by some 450 guests. During the FIP annual General Assembly, five new countries were welcomed to membership: Hungary, Panama, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, which rejoined after some years absence. This brought the number of full members to 53. Waiting in the wings as active prospective members were China, Bolivia, El Salvador, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Portugal. In addition, there are 26 ‘corresponding’ and ‘contact’ members being assisted by the federation in the development of their polo. Delegates at the General Assembly heard a report by Rogelio Igartua, president of the Federatión Mexicana de Polo (FMP), on organisation of the final stage of the eighth World Championship (21 April to 4 May). Eight teams are competing in the World Cup finals: reigning champions Brazil, Mexico, England, Spain, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Chile. Opening and closing ceremonies and some matches will be at
Mexico’s Tecamac club is closing its grounds to play two months ahead to ensure they’re in tip-top condition for the championship matches Campo de Marte in the heart of Mexico City; others at Tecamac Polo Club about 45 minutes drive from the capital. FMP’s Igartua and his organising committee have secured support from the title sponsor El Palacio de Hierro (a chain of up-market department stores) as well as other commercial firms and several governmental and national sports organisations. The FMP is in the process of identifying upwards of 300 ponies, mainly Mexican but with some from the US and Argentina, for pony pools to mount the eight teams. The Tecamac Polo Club is closing its grounds to play two months ahead to ensure they are in tip-top condition for the championship matches
and is planning a big World Cup ‘village’ with restaurants and shopping to help draw the crowds. Despite FIP’s successes over the past 25 years, the federation is still faced with serious challenges, not least a lack of adequate funding that forces it to operate on a shoestring budget – with just one paid secretary and ‘headquarters’ that currently floats with the presidency. Most member associations pay only $750 a year to belong to the organisation – less than an amateur player might spend on his helmet and a few sticks. Only the three largest associations – the HPA, USPA and AAP – pay the top rate of $4,650, which in the US in 2007 worked out to just over a dollar per registered player. Global administration of the sport could be improved in such vital areas as marketing and communications if funding for professional staff were to be forthcoming through increased membership fees and greater corporate sponsorship. For the time being, however, FIP’s team of dedicated volunteers around the world, from president Guerrand-Hermès down, continue to invest time (and their own money) into trying to improve the game and raise its public profile around the world.
ALEX PHOTOGRAPHY
Adam Snow is a USPA Player Member rated at 9 goals and team member of the 2006 U.S. Open Polo Champions Las Monjitas.
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the action [drama] Catch up with all the latest action from around the world
42 Argentine Triple Crown
50 FIP play-offs
60 St Moritz
Polo triumphed over the elements to provide a genuinely memorable climax
Chile emerged victorious from a hard-fought battle with Peru
Snow polo offers skill, excitement and romance in stylish surroundings
46 Aiken
52 Argentine diary
62 California
Whitney Field celebrated its 125th anniversary. Plus coverage of the Triple Crown of Polo and USPA Silver Cup
Clare Milford Haven falls in love with Argentina all over again
Fires couldn’t prevent the USPA Arena Championship from putting on a show
56 Sardinia
63 Women’s polo
Porto Cervo provided a glamorous setting for some seriously competitive action
The Don Manuel International Ladies Tournament goes from strength to strength
ALICE GIPPS
48 China The world’s most populous nation is poised to embrace a game with ancient national connections
58 Careyes The emphasis is on fun when the polo community meets to party and play
Above Trophies for the Hurlingham Open
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Argentine Triple Crown The standard of polo at the Tortugas, Hurlingham and Argentine Opens made up for this year’s poor weather, writes Jorge Andrades As was the case in 2005, La Dolfina JaegerLeCoultre beat Ellerstina Etiqueta Negra in the final of the Argentine Open and frustrated their dream of obtaining the Triple Crown in an amazing high-handicap season in Argentina. Most polo followers expected that Ellerstina’s Pieres and MacDonough brothers, who are cousins, would take revenge for their hard defeat of two years before. But Adolfo Cambiaso’s quartet again showed their skills, winning the decisive encounter and triumphing once again. La Dolfina did not play high-class polo during most of the season, but they won the matches they needed to and that was enough for them. Mariano Aguerre, who was by far the best player in the title match at the
‘Cathedral of Polo’ stadium in Buenos Aires, said at the start of the Argentine Open: ‘We never begin the season well in the fight for the Triple Crown. In the Tortugas Open we are always a disaster. Then we improve in Hurlingham, but we put our minds and efforts towards winning the Open at Palermo. This is our obsession. A triumph there means we are happy for a whole year. It does not matter if we win or not outside Argentina in the following nine months.’ Aguerre described the situation exactly, as La Dolfina lost their game against Ellerstina in the Tortugas Open semi-finals, which were played in Palermo due to the bad state of fields at Tortugas after heavy rain in Buenos Aires. La Dolfina put up an unexpectedly poor
performance and were soon eliminated. Ellerstina went on to win the tournament, the first stage of the Triple Crown. In the opening round of the Hurlingham Open, the team from Canuelas, La Dolfina, easily defeated debutants Santa Maria de Lobos who entered the tournament through qualifying matches. Then they outclassed El Paraiso to face Chapa Uno Toyota in the semi-final, putting in their best performance so far to win the game in the last chukka. Nevertheless, they lost the final to Ellerstina, who defeated them for the second time in the season. Cambiaso had to be replaced by Brazilian Rodrigo Andrade during a couple of chukkas because of a muscle injury in his right leg. For some reason, his team played better without the world’s best player and managed to narrow the goals difference. In spite of this, their opponents played excellent polo and deservedly prevailed in the second tournament of the Triple Crown.
ALICE GIPPS; TONI RAMIREZ
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A week after the Hurlingham final, Cambiaso was not sure if he would be able to play in the first match at Palermo. But he tried out his leg a few days before the start of the Argentine Open, and thanks to massage and therapy he was ready to face Alegria Park Hyatt whom La Dolfina demolished 14-7. They then won 15-14 against an El Paraiso Polo Team that badly missed Sebastian Merlos, but the difference between the teams was more than one goal. In the final game for the A zone, Cambiaso’s quartet had no problem defeating Chapa Uno Toyota 18-15, putting up a
Chapa Uno are surely close to the end – the former Argentine Open multi-champions seem to have lost the ‘sacred fire’ which made them so good
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convincing performance in the first six chukkas, during which they took a decisive lead. In this match the winners again showed that they play their best polo under pressure when they need a good result – and they became serious candidates for the final against Ellerstina. With ‘Dolfi’ (as Cambiaso is known to his friends) cured of his physical problems, his team looked good for the final. But the blackshirted Ellerstina had reached the decisive encounter unbeaten, making them favourites by the time they reached the finals. The team had scored brilliant triumphs against Chapa Uno Toyota and then, as mentioned previously, against La Dolfina in the Tortugas Open, after which, playing below form, they beat El Paraiso Polo Team in an extra chukka to capture the tournament. At Hurlingham, Ellerstina continued their unbeaten stretch, defeating Alegria Park Hyatt 21-9. A week later, they beat La Aguada Arelauquen 20-18 in an excellent
1 Regional band from Salta province below the new electronic message board 2 Adolfo Cambiaso being chased at speed by Gonzalito Pieres 3 Facundo Pieres (centre), playing No 3 for the first time, advances upfield followed by his teammates and the opposition
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match decided in the last chukka after tying 17-17 at the end of the seventh. Indios Chapaleufu II Culu Culu were their victims in the decisive game in the B zone with a 20-16 triumph, leading most polo followers to judge them the best team of the season. Bolstered by these results and their good play, the Pieres and MacDonoughs started to dream of the Triple Crown, as they had done in 2005, when they had been close to victory but lost to La Dolfina in the final of the Argentine Open in an extra chukka. Two years later, after a forgettable 2006 when they failed to repeat that spectacular performance, the Ellerstina players looked more mature, with their superb horses and improved individual skills that made them natural candidates to take revenge. Facundo Pieres, Ellerstina’s best player this season and the top scorer in the Argentine Open with 36 goals, admitted after the decisive Hurlingham Open win: ‘We won two important tournaments, but we want the glory at Palermo.’ The black-shirted squad started the championship at the ‘Cathedral of Polo’ by outclassing Santa Maria de Lobos 21-10 and
The stage was set for the Argentine Open final: Ellerstina were going for the Triple Crown while La Dolfina were playing for their third championship in a row to equal Indios Chapaleufu l’s record and gain their fourth title
then demolished La Aguada Arelauquen, who needed to win as they had lost their previous encounter against Indios Chapaleufu II. Nevertheless, Ellerstina gave the Novillo Astrada brothers a real polo lesson to win 18-11 in one of the season’s best matches. Inspired by their performances so far, Ellerstina easily beat Indios Chapaleufu II 16-11 in the last and deciding game in the B zone, and reached their third straight final. The stage was set for the Argentine Open final. Ellerstina were going for the Triple Crown while La Dolfina were playing for their third championship in a row to equal Indios Chapaleufu I’s 1991 to 1993 record and gain their fourth title since the team was born in 2001. The sold-out final was played in front of 17,000 spectators who never moved in spite of rain during the first chukka. Cambiaso’s squad did things better than their rivals and managed to stay ahead for most of the game. After a couple of level scores in the last two chukkas, it came down to an extra chukka, just as in the last three finals. Lucas Monteverde scored the decisive goal at the Avenida del Libertador end – curiously
the same end at which Lolo Castagnola and Adolfo Cambiaso respectively had scored their goals to give La Dolfina the titles in 2005 and 2006. There had been many rumours about changes in the tournaments. (By the way, Ellerstina officially announced Matias MacDonough’s replacement by Juan Martin Nero who will leave Chapa Uno.) There was talk of Bautista Heguy moving from Chapa Uno to La Dolfina, but after their great result at Palermo, would it be possible? According to early speculation, the ‘big six’ teams all seemed to have an equal and fair chance to win the Triple Crown, but finally Ellerstina and La Dolfina shared the titles. So what of the rest? The performance of La Aguada Arelauquen was far below that of 2003, when they won the Triple Crown. The Novillo Astrada brothers played below their handicaps and committed errors in defence (which had previously been one of their strong points). Miguel hardly found his rhythm and so they lacked an organiser. Their unconvincing performances led to one of their worst defeats at Palermo against
ALICE GIPPS
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Ellerstina, which eventually put them out of the tournament. Chapa Uno are surely close to the end. The former Argentine Open multi-champions seem to have lost the ‘sacred fire’ which made them so good. Except, that is, for Bautista Heguy, who again showed what a great player he is, together with brother and teammate Marcos. Although they combined well in some matches, they were unable to put in convincing performances. Meanwhile, Juan Martin Nero, playing most of the time as a lonely forward, did not have enough contact with the ball and therefore could not shine as he did when playing in the United States and England. Despite having played in the Argentine Open semi-final, the Heguys’ team played well below their former standard. Indios Chapaleufu II Culu Culu started the season with Lucas Criado replacing Milo Fernandez Araujo, who had announced his retirement in 2006. After some mediocre team performances in Tortugas and Hurlingham, Lucas was injured when falling from his horse in the first match at Palermo, and could not play in the rest of the tournament. Milo came back to the line-up at number three, but he proved to be short of high-handicap competition. This was decisive for the team, which showed its well-known fighting spirit but without results. El Paraiso Polo Team started the Tortugas Open with Sebastian Merlos suspended for three matches, but Ignacio Toccalino replaced him well and helped his teammates reach the final, which they lost to Ellerstina in an extra
chukka. Then Sebastian returned for the first game of the Hurlingham Open but was again sent off and suspended for three months. Toccalino, with only a six-goal handicap, made a big effort in midfield but could not show Sebastian’s skill, and the team lost its chance to fight for a championship. The polo season suffered from bad weather this year, which left the fields in a poor state. Indeed, the continuous rain during the Tortugas Open made the fields unplayable. On the other hand, the late cold spell and lack of rain conspired against Palermo, whose fields lacked good grass, thus preventing players from showing their skills with the ball. Despite all this, the overall standard of polo was good. Ellerstina put up the best individual and collective play, followed by La Dolfina whose quality cannot be denied after winning the most important polo tournament in the world. The ‘Cathedral’ stadium was refurbished with stands which replaced the old tents to give the teams, the sponsors and also the spectators more comfortable places to buy souvenirs, clothes and leather, or enjoy a drink after the matches. New stands were built at the number two field and VIP areas were installed for sponsors on top of the highest stands of the main field. Corridors were improved to make them more pleasant for spectators. Palermo looked prettier than ever, but the Argentine polo association authorities promised to continue improvements, so it can do justice to the best polo in the world.
Continuous rain during the Tortugas Open made the fields unplayable and the late cold spell and lack of rain conspired against Palermo whose fields lacked good grass, thus preventing players from showing their skills with the ball
1 Lucas Monteverde (left) shoots on goal watched by Pablo MacDonough and Adolfo Cambiaso (back) 2 On flying form: Pablo MacDonough went to 10 goals 3 MVP Mariano Aguerre receives the Argentine Open trophy from Juan Carlos Harriot 4 Coach Memo Gracida (in white hat) gives instructions to Ellerstina before the start of extra time
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Aiken Sarah Eakin celebrates the 125th anniversary of the famous polo field and reports on the Triple Crown of Polo and USPA Silver Cup
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Before the dust had settled following the departure of the USPA Gold Cup from the mushrooming polo facilities in Aiken, South Carolina, new tournaments had emerged to fill any potential void. Aiken was selected to host the third and final leg of the Triple Crown of Polo Championship series – a relatively new brand for polo that is televised worldwide on two ESPN channels. Furthermore, the 302 Polo team was awarded the prestigious USPA Silver Cup, a tournament played as part of the newlyformed North American Polo League (NAPL). Adam Snow and Owen Rinehart have been generally credited with the current renaissance of high-profile polo in Aiken. ‘Owen and I moved here some 12 years ago,’ recalls Snow about the area, where polo is now ‘bigger than any individual and has gathered a momentum of its own. To host tournaments like the Gold Cup and Silver Cup and bringing ESPN in [through the Triple Crown of Polo] brings interest and fans… Finally polo is getting into the sports pages where it deserves to be.’ Polo’s past, present and future were reflected in a season highlighted by Aiken Polo Club’s celebration of the 125th anniversary of Whitney Field – the field in longest continuous use in US polo history. As the historical legends of polo’s past graced the walls of the dedicated exhibition at the Aiken County Historical Museum – famous figures of the county’s polo legacy such as GH ‘Pete’ Bostwick, Tommy Hitchcock Jr, Devereux Milburn and Louis Stoddard – the next generation of American polo players was out on the playing field, competing in polo’s modern Triple Crown of Polo and the historic USPA Silver Cup. A strong showing of homegrown players included Tommy Biddle Jr (a protégé of the Aiken Polo Club), Nick Roldan and Jeff Hall (both aspiring young 8-goal players), Florida’s Kris Kampsen and polo’s modern-day US star Mike Azzaro, along with Rinehart and Snow. Four teams threw down the gauntlet for the Aiken debut of the Triple Crown of Polo in a tournament set at the 22-goal level. Host team New Bridge was spearheaded by 2007’s new Stateside 10-goaler, Argentina’s Matias Magrini. Virginia’s Maureen Brennan launched a campaign on the Aiken high goal scene with the much-heralded return of an on-field Snow-Rinehart partnership for the 22-goal Goose Creek line up. Tres Hijas – the team of Texan Andy Stack – entered the fray with a husband and wife duo after Tommy Biddle’s wife Yvette was drafted in at the eleventh hour to substitute for Stack,
confined to Texas on business. Christine Cato – a longtime supporter of the Aiken polo scene – entered her own team of Brigadoon, now the namesake for a new polo development in Aiken County (one of some 30-plus equestrian-related ventures). The contest went down to the wire with all four teams in the running for a place in the finals when league matches came to a close. New Bridge and Tres Hijas prevailed, although neither team escaped incident en route to the finals. Magrini had apologised in the Aiken press for hitting his horse with a mallet in a preliminary game. He was fined $5,000 at the time by the tournament disciplinary committee and later suspended and put on probation by the USPA – the suspension resulting in the Pony Express team pulling out of the Silver Cup. Tres Hijas’ participation had been touchand-go in the absence of their patron. They elected to play on without him and the decision paid off – their participation was rewarded with victory and TV glory. The Triple Crown of Polo final was to air in a first ever, two-hour polo special on ESPN2. Tres Hijas trailed early, with a 4-0 deficit in the first chukka. Supported from the sidelines by fellow American Rinehart, they pulled ahead in the final chukka to win 11-9 despite some late power plays from Magrini. ‘I asked Owen to be there as moral support,’ said Azzaro, whose team sported an all-American line up. ‘American players need to come out and support each other. We all gave 150 per cent and listened well.’ Azzaro was recently lowered to a 9-goal handicap after 12 years as a 10-goal player, but has six US Open wins, four World Cup victories and two USPA Gold Cup triumphs to his name. ‘A win’s a win,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make any difference playing one, two, three or four. Each has its own challenges.’ In Aiken, Azzaro was the commander – and he marshalled his troops to maximum effect. ‘The only way to have a champion team is to have one general,’ he said. ‘If the play doesn’t work, it’s my mistake. I talked a lot of discipline and defence into Kris [Kampsen] into shutting down Magrini.’ Arriving at the winners’ podium in the Lexus convertible, Azzaro emerged from underneath his three children and climbed on the podium for a family-themed presentation. Tommy and wife Yvette were joined by daughter Lauren as Tom Biddle Sr and his wife Linda looked on with pride. Kampsen cleaned the slate, taking Best Playing Pony and Most Valuable Player, and no one seemed happier for him than his former teammate Magrini, who had sold him the
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1 Yvette and Tommy Biddle congratulate each other 2 Cote Zegers dribbles the ball through the goal 3 Winifield/Camo’s Tom Uskup on the ball in the USPA Silver Cup finals, followed by teammate Willie Hartnett, as Goose Creek’s Martin Zegers and Maureen Brennan defend 4 Mike Azzaro enjoys victory and salutes the crowd
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BPP horse Averstruz – a name translating as ‘ostrich’ but who looked like a swan decked out in the Lexus Best Playing Pony blanket. After a slightly lacklustre Triple Crown of Polo campaign, the USPA Silver Cup gave Goose Creek their chance to shine. Chile’s Martin Zegers was joined by younger brother Cote for the 19-goal line-up and the fraternal element paid off when, spearheaded by Snow, they reached the finals with an unbeaten record. Two ‘member’ teams of the NAPL – Skeeterville and Bendabout – had come to Aiken from Wyoming to contest the tournament. But the second contender for the final was an ‘Aiken team’ with local colour in
The Triple Crown of Polo final featured in a two-hour TV special on ESPN2 its camouflage-decked supporters. Winfield/ Camo was a last-minute entry that filled the slot left by Pony Express. It featured 302 Polo’s Co-operative Manager Tom Uskup whose wife Barbara had her own team in the tournament – a unique and appreciated 50th birthday present. Tom was joined by Aiken residents Frankie Bilbao and Willie Hartnett and Tommy Biddle Jr, who, after the Triple
Crown victory, thought his Aiken season was over, but then got a call asking if he’d like to team up and join the impromptu team. He said yes and returned to the barn to get the ‘pulled’ shoes put back on his horses in time for his opening game. Goose Creek, who had planned their Silver Cup assault over the long term, were given a run for their money by their impromptu opposition, but they pulled ahead in the last two chukkas to win 11-8. Snow’s prized mare Hale Bopp played her part in the victory and earned Best Playing Pony honours for a professional, with Snow also taking the NAPL’s best string award. Goose Creek had narrowly missed out on the USPA Gold Cup in Aiken the previous year, so this year’s Silver Cup win was compensation. ‘The USPA Silver Cup is such an historic tournament,’ Brennan told the Aiken Standard. ‘And the trophy itself is so cool with all of the names written out and my thought was where’s my name going to go?’ The higher-goal end of the fall polo season in Aiken looks strong for 2008. Tournaments and clubs are combining to produce a 20-goal season, kicking off with the New Bridge 20-goal Challenge Cup, followed by the third leg of the ESPNtelevised Triple Crown of Polo Championship series (also at New Bridge), and culminating with the USPA Silver Cup hosted by 302 Polo – which has been awarded the trophy through 2008. Amidst these is the increasingly popular Aiken Polo Pony Sale, held annually each fall, as well as a plethora of low and medium goal polo provided by Aiken Polo Club and Edisto Polo Club.
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China The world’s most populous nation is enjoying a rebirth of polo. Ming Liu reports from Shanghai on the country’s first international tournament
It’s rare to see a polo tournament bring together both past and future, East and West. Last October, however, the sport experienced a rebirth and established its latest frontier: the Royal Salute Polo Gold Cup, held at a new polo club near Shanghai. Hailed as the event that would ‘return the sport of kings to its country of origin’, China’s first international tournament was a truly global effort. Both FIP and the China National Sports Council blessed the event, and a roster of professional and amateur players flew in from Argentina, Thailand, Australia, England, Scotland, New Zealand and, of course, China. Over 8,000 guests and 100 media representatives attended the three-day match at the Nine Dragons Hill Polo Club, generating such a media buzz that a fiveminute segment aired on China’s national television station. During the week of the tournament it was said to have been one of the most popular searches on Google China. Although polo may seem foreign to today’s Chinese, the sport was in fact played in the
country 2,500 years ago – most likely in the northern steppe areas, where abundant pastures make for good horse breeding. Indeed, some argue that China is polo’s birthplace. Whatever the truth of this claim, historical evidence shows that an early form of polo was played in China around 600 BC, introduced to the Tang Dynasty by the Persians. The sport then flourished into the Han Dynasty, where it was played by emperors, officials, generals and other men and women of the royal court. Polo’s origins and royal heritage were on display at the Gold Cup. The event’s aim, after all, was to showcase not only the sport, but also the world of polo. The 13th Duke of Argyll Torquhil Ian Campbell presented the winning trophy and, with proper fanfare, entered the field in a 19th century horsedrawn carriage. FIP President Patrick Guerrand-Hermès and ambassador Peter Yunghanns also presented several awards. A range of social activities entertained spectators and budding polo enthusiasts,
1 Opening ceremony 2 Polo action against the backdrop of China’s industrial cranes 3 The Duke of Argyll, Torquhil Ian Campbell 4 Betweenmatch entertainment: the Ministick Longest Hit Challenge 5 FIP President Patrick GuerrandHermès presented an award to the Chinese ‘ambassador’ players: (from left) Larry Lin, Michael Wang, Brian Xu, Tony Wang
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from contests for the most elegant hat, bestdressed couple and the event’s Polo Prince and Princess (for those under age 12), to the Longest Hit Challenge with a mini-stick and the Ferrari vs Horse Race. A spectacular opening ceremony combined Scottish bagpipers and marching band with a colourful dragon and lion dance. Chinese officials and businessmen, and the consuls and consul-generals of several countries, enjoyed fireworks and light gambling at a black-tie gala dinner held at the club’s marina. The match commentary was bilingual, with the Chinese translations slightly more ‘educational’ for the benefit of the majority of the crowd, who were seeing their first ever polo match. Four teams of 11 or 12 goals competed for the inaugural trophy: Royal Scotland, Thai Polo Club, Windsor Lions and Yalouk Australia, who eventually beat Royal Scotland 7-5½ in an exciting and crowd-packed final. Four chukkas were played in each match and all the horses came from Australia. Professional players included Malcolm Borwick, Brieuc Riguax and former England captain Andrew Hine, who scored the historic event’s first goal. The amateur players were equally well known, like New Zealander Greg Keyte and James Manclark, co-founder of the World Elephant Polo Association. But it was the seven ‘ambassador’ players that generated the most interest. Although
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new to the game – some had played fewer than 10 times before competition day – these Chinese players were hand-picked by the polo club’s president Steve Wyatt for their dedication and enthusiasm. The hope is that they will raise polo’s profile throughout China. The signs are certrainly promising. The rising affluence of the Chinese, interest in luxury brands and the polo lifestyle, together with the sport’s own attractions, make China and polo a promising fit. This year’s Gold Cup sponsors included several global, high-end
FIP’s President Patrick Guerrand-Hermès, who presented a special award to the ambassador players, confirmed that nine new polo clubs are already being built around the country. ‘We never thought this would happen some years ago,’ he told Hurlingham. ‘But things are moving so fast, and it feels like [polo] will really be a sport in China.’ Other members of the global polo community also see the country’s potential. Equestrian development company Gracida International Polo, headed by CEO Michael Brown and Carlos Gracida, have already planned two polo events in Polo’s origins and royal heritage were on China this year. This bodes well for display at the Gold Cup. The event’s aim, the sport in general. What after all, was to showcase not only the with the 2008 Beijing Olympics and polo being sport, but also the world of polo played for the first time at the 2007 South East Asian brands like Jaguar, Hermès and Citibank, Games last December, there are evidently and there were rumours that Cartier may high hopes for polo in the 2016 Olympic sponsor next year’s tournament. It’s precisely Games. With more polo tournaments staged the kind of international cachet the sport in China, and ones that bring internationallyneeds in order to properly develop in China, known professionals together with Chinese where pockets of polo can already be found. players, this should help attract more global ‘Polo is being played here and there, around attention. ‘Polo has to be one of the most Beijing for example,’ said ambassador Tony exciting sports worldwide,’ says an Wang, scorer of the Gold Cup’s first Chinese enthusiastic Michael Brown. ‘I think it’s lack of goal for his winning Yaloak Australia team. exposure, or maybe it’s such a niche market, ‘Butit has yet to be built up and supported at but these events can only help bring the sport an international level like this.’ to the forefront.’
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FIP World Cup play-offs Herbert Spencer watches the South Americans battle it out to qualify for the finals in Mexico
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1 Action in the final between Chile and Peru 2 Players leaving the field at the San Christobal Club before an Andes backdrop 3 Final awards ceremony with the victorious Chile team in red
The last geographical zone play-offs for the 2008 World Cup of the Federation of International Polo (FIP) were completed in November, and for the first time there was no team from the world’s greatest polo-playing nation, Argentina. In the South America zone eliminations, Chile defeated Peru to earn a place in the final stage of the World Cup to be held in Mexico in April and May this year. The other seven teams for this final stage, from a total of 21 competing worldwide, are England, Spain, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Brazil (with a bye as reigning champions) and Mexico (automatic qualifiers as host nation). An Argentina team had competed in all seven of FIP’s previous 10 to 14-goal World Championships and won three, but they were knocked out by Chile before the final stage of the 2004 event. This year the Asociación Argentina de Polo (AAP) declined to enter an Argentina team, having disagreed with the way the international federation was organising the championships [see page 20]. The South America play-offs began on the 9th of November in Lima with a sub-zone
competition between Peru, Colombia and Ecuador in Lima. The three-day event was hosted by the Federacion Deportiva Peruana de Polo under its president, Carlos F Rizo Patron, with Jose Klabin of Brazil as FIP’s tournament director. Matches were played at the Lima Polo Club and local players loaned ponies for a pool of 72 from which the teams drew their mounts by lot. Peru and Colombia fielded 13-goal teams; Ecuador, one of the smallest FIP countries in number of players, could only manage a 10goal side. The home team beat Ecuador 12 to 10½ in the first match and Ecuador downed Colombia 10½ to 9 in the second. The final day saw Peru and Colombia equal in goals scored, but the hosts had substituted one of their 2-goal players with a 1-goaler, so received half a goal on handicap. The match ended Peru 8½, Colombia 8, giving Peru victory in the sub-zone play-offs. Peru’s Jose Mulanovich, the only 5-goaler amongst the competitors, was named Most Valuable Player. The Best Playing Pony prize was awarded to Pachon, loaned by Juan Xavier Roca and played by Luis Fandino of
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Colombia. All the prizes were crafted from Peruvian silver. The Peru team then flew on to Santiago to meet Chile in the last of the South America zone play-offs beginning on 19 November and hosted at the Club de Polo y Equitacion San Christobal by the Federación Chilena de Polo under its president, Mario Pablo Siliva S. San Christobal, a big sports club with tennis, golf and equestrianism as well as polo, is considered one of Latin America’s most beautiful. It is situated near the River Mapocho just 20 minutes drive from the Palacio de La Moneda, a former presidential palace, in downtown Santiago. The Cerro Manquehue and Cordillera de los Andes mountains form a dramatic backdrop to the club’s five polo grounds. Chilean players generously loaned ponies for the tournament and organisers divided them into two pools for the teams, with a third in reserve in case of injury or illness. The FIP pony pool system places emphasis on the individual competitors’ playing abilities, none of whom have the advantage of playing on their own horses, as in most other polo. This time organisers took the system one stage further. In the first match, Peru played the ‘A’ pool string and Chile the ‘B’ group. Then in the second match the two teams swapped strings, creating the most level playing field imaginable, as far as pony power goes. Both Chile and Peru fielded 14-goal teams, but the home side were favourites to win. Chile, with more than 600 players, is second in size only to Argentina in South America and has a wide choice for FIP team selection; Peru has fewer than 100 players. As it turned out, however, Peru proved to be no pushover. In the first match, Peru held the lead for the first three of six chukkas, but Chile rallied in the second half and pulled ahead to win 14-9. The second match first looked as if it would go Peru’s way. After a tied first chukka, Peru dominated the game, leading 8-4 by half-time. Only in the last period did Chile come from behind to win the match 13-12 and secure a place in the final stage of the World Cup in Mexico. Chile’s No 1, 3-goaler Juan Eduardo Labbe, at 19 the youngest of the competitors, was named Most Valuable Player. The Best Playing Pony award went to Facundo, a Chilean horse of mixed blood loaned by Humberto Ortuzar and Francisco Chadwick; Facundo was played by Peru’s Iago Masias in the first match and Chile’s Matias Vial in the second. A special award for Fair Play went to Peru’s No 1, 2-goaler Rodrigo Pena. This is the fourth time Chile has advanced to the final stage of the FIP World Cup. When Chile hosted the championships in 1992, the Chileans came second, defeated by Argentina. They then came third in the most recent World Cup at Chantilly in 2004. Judging by their current form, they look likely to be a force to be reckoned with in Mexico City come April.
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Argentine diary Clare Milford Haven rediscovers the magic of Argentina with chukkas, steak dinners and an unforgettable final
Wednesday 14th November Still freezing cold, but need to ride as our first game in the Silver Cup is in two days and I haven’t sat on a horse for six weeks. Lunch at Bauti’s new restaurant, Mal de Amores, is good if not predictable. Steak and salad. Home for a siesta and chat with Nina Clarkin who is staying up the road. In the evening we go to Ellerstina for the annual ‘remate’. Everyone is complaining of the cold and we huddle inside the tent for red wine and… steak. We watch in amazement as prices reach over $100,000 for mares,
stallions and embryos. The total of the sale was over $2 million – key bidders included American patron Tom Barrack and Colombia’s Camilo Bautista. Thursday 15th November The cold weather is gone and we are finally able to have a practice at Yacare, the MacDonough’s ground near Centauros. It is fast, furious and a lot of fun. Off to Zapalla to collect my son Harry’s sticks. He has been asked to be ‘super sub’ for Frank Dubarry, the Technomarine patron, in the subsidiary semifinal of the Gold Cup at Ellerstina. Frank has an injury and doesn’t think he will be able to play. We spend hours racing around trying to
17th November: the new equine sculptures inside Palermo
22nd November: a five-goal win in the Silver Cup
locate Harry’s whites, boots and helmet but in the end it is all in vain. Monsieur Dubarry made a rapid recovery and not only managed to play the entire game, but also scored seven goals! Sadly, our first game that afternoon in the Silver Cup did not go quite so well. I didn’t score a single goal, let alone seven. We got a bit of a pasting to be honest. Our horses were heavy, Bauti (Sorzana) had a nasty fall and the patron insisted on calling me Christina throughout the game. Saturday 17th November As anticipated, I am stiff as a board and walking like John Wayne. Thank God we are not playing today. Off to Palermo to watch La
Dolfina Jaeger-LeCoultre v Alegria Park Hyatt. It was never going to be a close game but the Alegria boys play exceptionally well, particularly Pancho Bensadon. It is very hot and we are roasting in the stands. Palermo has changed, with extended concrete flooring, some bizarre new equine sculptures and a larger bar area under the stands. The second game is closer, between El Paraiso and Chapa I (who ended up winning). Drinks at the Chandon bar – the other ones are too busy and frenetic these days. Sunday 18th November Despite some rain last night, we finally manage to play at Don Urbano, the fields we
ALICE GIPPS; M&M PHOTOGRAPHERS
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Tuesday November 13th Arrive in Buenos Aires with hailstones hitting the plane as we land. The tarmac is wet and skiddy. I know there will be no polo today. Rob Cudmore is also on the flight and we wait for our bags to come off the conveyor belt. Rob’s comes off first and I notice a massive padlock on the zip. ‘I always lock my cases now after they ripped open my bag and stole my iPod and God knows what else a few years ago,’ he says as I try to control a sudden surge of anxiety. My three very large, very unlocked bags are yet to appear and contain, amongst other things, an iPod and a camera. I try to imagine that there simply isn’t enough time for someone to rifle through my belongings between plane and terminal, while glaring accusingly at a man who is innocently singing along to his headphones. Thankfully, all is well. The bags arrive untouched and I head out into the torrential rain, wondering why I had left the beautiful autumnal shades of England behind. I soon understand why. Even in the rain, which is like a monsoon, there is something magical about Argentina. Maybe it’s the huge sky that envelopes you or simply that the place and people are always so welcoming. It’s like coming home. The fire is blazing in the house we rent in Murray, a few kilometres from Pilar, and we sit down to the first of many ‘milanese’ and catch up on polo gossip. Ellerstina have won the Tortugas and Hurlingham Opens and are now on track to win the Triple Crown. Bauti Heguy has opened a new restaurant along the main drag towards Pilar Chico, Adolfo has an injured riding muscle and, unsurprisingly, good horses are in short supply and prices are at an all-time high. Dressed for the Antarctic, we head to the stables. It’s unseasonably cold and I berate myself for leaving the sleeves to my jacket behind. We rally-drive our way through the mud to the stables and grudgingly get onto our horses in the wet and wind. Round and round the outside of the field we go, chatting and listening to the screeching teros.
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1st December: trying to learn the tango
1st December: dinner at La Brigada with Vanessa, Gini, the owner and George
rent from Alfonso Pieres. No time for lunch, so grab pizza and some Freddo ice cream under the stands at Palermo and watch Ellerstina v Santa Maria, which Ellerstina win. Second game is Indios Chapaleufu II v La Aguada. Lucas Criado comes off within the first few minutes and is replaced by Mariano Gonzalez. A noisy game with too many fouls, although the exciting last two chukkas result in Chapa II winning 15-14 in extra time. Poor La Aguada – they had been in the lead the whole time. Head off to one of the parilla restaurants behind Palermo for… a steak. Monday 19th November Enrol in Oriol College, the language school in Pilar. Practice at Don Urbano and manage to pull a riding muscle. Dehydrated, hot and bothered – not a good combination. Watch the final of the Gold Cup at Ellerstina – Las Monjitas v Sao Jose Polo Club. Las Monjitas win with Eduardo Novillo Astrada, Alejandro Diaz Alberdi, Juan Gris Zavaleta and the patron Camilo Bautista. Sao Jose is spearheaded by Brazilian 7-goaler Rodrigo Andrade but can’t quite pull it off. Dinner in the evening with Jose and Elina Donoso at their very cool new house in Centauros.
4th December: the world’s best polo players at Cambiaso’s Ideas del Sur charity event
Tuesday 20th November Play our second game against La Varzea – Portugal on ground no 1 at Ellerstina and win by five goals! Wednesday 21st November Go with Richard Le Poer and James Beim to our first Spanish lesson at Oriol College! Two hours of trying to concentrate is too much for all of us. Dinner at the Caballeria in Pilar Village and then to the cinema to watch El Sospechoso – brilliant. Thursday 22nd November Third game in the Silver Cup against Endeavour, and we beat them by five goals which means we are now in the subsidiary quarter-finals. Sushi Club for dinner. Friday 23rd November Drove to the airport to collect George, Vanessa Taylor and Gini Hoare. Drag them off to a party in the evening given by Jerome Wirth and Malcolm Borwick in Tortugas. Strawberry daiquiris and dancing till dawn. (The weekend seems to have been completely forgotten – perhaps as a result of Malcolm’s daiquiris.)
30th November: with Vanessa and Gini at the wedding
Still freezing but need to ride as our first game is in two days and I haven’t sat on a horse for six weeks
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8th December: Matias MacDonough at the start of the final
30th November: with Teresa Beresford in Plaza Dorrego, San Telmo
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Tuesday 27th November Drive into BA with Gini and Nessie. To Chala for lunch with Ale Sly. She makes the most amazing cowhide bags, belts and llama shawls. Shopping in Recoleta at Arandu, Ralph Lauren, Etiqueta Negra and Rapsodia in the afternoon and then off to the opening of the new La Dolfina shop opposite the Faena. Photographers only interested in Maria Cambiaso. Thursday 29th November To La Dolfina for a Jaeger-LeCoultre press conference. Adolfo and co definitely more comfortable on top of a horse than dealing with questions and answers in the boiling heat. Lovely dinner under the trees with Florencia and Paul Pieres. Friday 30th November/ Saturday 1st December Off to BA for Sole and Quique Avendano’s wedding at Del Pilar church followed by reception at L’Assosiation. Stayed at the Four Seasons and headed off next morning for antique shopping and a look around the markets in Plaza Dorrego in San Telmo. San Telmo is the bohemian quarter of BA, famous not only for its multitude of antique shops and impromptu tango shows but also for street fighting in the early 19th century. Wearily, then, back to Palermo for semi-finals between La Dolfina and Chapa I. La Dolfina have a decisive win. Dinner back in San Telmo at La Brigada, a charming parilla restaurant full of local football memorabilia, followed by some dire efforts at learning tango. Sunday 2nd December Semi-finals between Ellerstina and Chapa II. A nightmare resulting with Matias being injured and out of the game for the last two chukkas. Too many technicals and yellow
It’s my first final and the only thing to dampen my fervour is the seven minutes of rain in the first chukka cards – a messy game but ends in a wellearned win for Ellerstina. Tuesday 4th December Off to the Duhau Palace Park Hyatt in BA for the Jaeger-LeCoultre party, where US $72,250 dollars are raised for the Ideas del Sur Foundation, a Cambiaso-supported charity which provides food, medical supplies and social support to deprived and disabled youth in Argentina and Bolivia. A large proportion came from the watchmakers themselves as they pledged $50 (US) for every handicap goal of everyone in attendance. With the world’s best polo players all in attendance, including Aldolfo Cambiaso, Facundo Pieres, Augustin Merlos, Lolo Castagnola (and myself of course), the total amounted to 494 handicaps, which converted to an impressive $24,700 (US). Thursday 6th December Drive to Canuelas to choose my horse from La Dolfina. (I did some impulse bidding at a charity auction at Ham last May to play six chukkas at La Dolfina and take one pony home with me.) Am marginally disappointed with the first three, promptly hop off the fourth, but just as I am giving up all hope, the fifth comes up trumps – a dark bay 9-yearold mare called Chapita who stops, turns and runs – what more could I ask for? Saturday 8th December Apart from somehow managing to lose two valuable tickets, I arrive at Palermo on time for the eagerly awaited La Dolfina v Ellerstina final. It is my first final and the only thing to dampen my fervour is the seven minutes of rain in the first chukka. What a game. The two
8th December: football legend Diego Maradona was in the Cambiaso camp for the final
teams again, a mirror image of 2005, in a bid to seal the Triple Crown. Although La Dolfina lead marginally throughout, it never feels like they have it in the bag. In the seventh and eighth chukkas when they’re tied, it seems even less certain. The only distraction is the sighting of Diego Maradona in the Cambiaso camp. We are literally on the edges of our seats until Lucas Monteverde’s golden goal in the extra chukka ends Ellerstina’s dream. The loss is perhaps more profound for the MacDonough brothers, this being their last year playing together in the Open, as Matias leaves to make way for Juan Martin Nero. For me, it’s a bittersweet ending. I am happy for my sponsors Jaeger-LeCoultre, I am desperately sad for my Ellerstina friends. Later, back in Centauros, we drown our sorrows at Matias’s house. Tuesday, 11th December After four weeks, it’s time to go home. Christmas beckons. I drag my feet to Ezeiza airport having hung up my polo sticks, kissed my horses and friends goodbye and eaten my final mouthful of steak. The plane is full of familiar faces, and even though we have 7,000 miles to travel, the world suddenly seems very small indeed.
TONI RAMIREZ WWW.IMAGESOFPOLO.COM; ALINE COQUELLE
Monday 26th November Subsidiary quarter-finals of the Silver Cup against Villa Reale which we lose by a goal.
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Sardinia Porto Cervo was once the location for a James Bond movie and is now the perfect setting for polo. Clare Milford Haven is shaken and stirred 12 to 14-goal Audi Summer Gold Cup, held at the Shergan Equestrian Centre in Bucchi Toltu, a few kilometres away from Porto Cervo. The event, like the Cortina Winter Polo on snow, is promoted by Maurizio Zuliani and Claudio Giorgiutti. It involves more than 160 horses and six teams, and includes players from Europe, Argentina, Brazil and the US. Matches were played in the late afternoons for an enthusiastic and glamorous audience that included several famous faces like motorcycling superstar Valentino Rossi. The final more than lived up to the surroundings, with Arfango eventually defeating the highly competitive Cala di Volpe to add the summer trophy to their JaegerLeCoultre Spring Gold Cup. Young captain Alberto Moretti professed himself delighted with the victory, and pointed out that things had begun badly when teammate Nicolas Espain Gastaldi broke a forefinger in the first chukka. He nevertheless managed to play the full match. Moretti paid tribute to Cala di Volpe’s 9-goaler Carlos Gracida, who
‘managed the game with excellent direction’. Gracida returned the compliment: ‘Moretti’s team has a fantastic understanding of the game,’ he said. ‘Many of their plays turned into goals.’ Cala di Volpe, as the ‘host’ team, were well supported, although Thomas Barrack, their usual captain, was unfortunately unable to play because of a hand injury sustained in the St Tropez tournament. But he was upbeat, even in defeat. ‘It has been a wonderful final for us and we have been very happy to play it,’ he declared. Maurizio Zuliani, President of the Organising Committee, announced that two events have already been confirmed for Sardinia in 2008. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Gold Cup is scheduled for 24 April to 3 May and, with Cortina d’Ampezzo on snow and Monte Argentario, forms the Italian Polo Gold Cup Circuit. The summer tournament is scheduled for 6 to 13 July, and is part of the Polo Master Cup international circuit (which includes Jaipur and Dubai).
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WOLFGANG KAUFMANN
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Sardinia is a bit like the Bahamas in the Mediterranean. Its white sandy beaches and clear blue sea have captured the hearts of the rich and famous and helped turn the Porto Cervo area into an elite playground known as Costa Smeralda. Discovered in 1961 by the Aga Khan, the ‘emerald coast’ has had more than its fair share of influential people gracing its beaches and bars: European aristocracy, royalty, heads of state, supermodels and actors, all looking for a refuge in the sun without the unwelcome glare of publicity that one finds in St Tropez . Between March and October, the island is heaving with sailing regattas, golf tournaments, luxury car rallies – and now, polo. Against a backdrop of rugged volcanic mountains, a former equestrian arena has been transformed into a polo field with enough stabling for 144 horses. In the wake of the extraordinary success of the spring tournament, the Gold Cup returned in September in the form of the
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The final more than lived up to the surroundings, with Arfango eventually defeating the highly competitive Cala di Volpe
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1 Shergan Equestrian Centre 2 Carlos Gracida and friend 3 Valentino Rossi and Luca D’Orazio 4 Arfango in action 5 Enjoying the spectacle
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Careyes Polo on Mexico’s magnificent Pacific coast is a uniquely enjoyable experience. As Melanie Vere Nicoll reports, the emphasis here is on fun Throw together the victorious patron of the Pacific Coast Open with the victorious patron of the Bridgehampton Classic. Then add 10 more patrons from seven different countries, all of whom dabble in the high goal with alacrity. Then put them on a fine field with good club ponies and a lot of serious professionals. What do you get? Answer: the aptly-named Copa Tequila Partida and Copa Careyes tournaments. Played over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday, this is 8 to12-goal polo at its best and, one would think, a cocktail for classic aggressive matches. In reality, though, when you mix these teams with Mexico’s magnificent Pacific coast and the magical atmosphere of Careyes, you get polo the way
it used to be played. Fast, fun and friendly – with the emphasis on fun. In Careyes the number one crime you can commit is to no-show a party. Since there is at least one big fiesta every night, with everyone included, this is an easy thing to do. But if you do, you risk being viewed as a lightweight on the fields the next day – and this has little to do with your mallet-swinging skills. There is a festive atmosphere in which the game’s outcome is truly secondary to the enjoyment of the participants and spectators. When my husband was offered a tequila shot at the start of his first match by the father of one of the opposition players, I realised this was to be a different sort of tournament to the ones played back home in England.
That said, as with all sports played by competitive sportsmen, once the tournament started it became. . . well, competitive! There were six teams, with players from all over the globe: Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Portugal, Mexico, Germany, England, America, Russia and Italy. Mexico’s top player Carlos Gracida and 15-year-old Mariano Gracida played in their debut tournament as father and son. The youth and zeal of the Brazilian/Portuguese team captained by 8-goal player Olayo Novaes dominated the field, winning in the finals by three goals. I know many of us greet the news from our polo-playing partners that we are going yet further afield, for yet another tournament, with a mixture of resignation and ennui.
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Images of endless hours languishing by a picturesque field in a foreign land creep into the mind’s eye, with players eagerly checking mallets and boots in preparation for as many practice chukkas as can possibly be squeezed in before the real games begin. I am delighted to report that Careyes breaks all the moulds. There are many unique diversions here beyond polo. If wildlife interests you there is plenty of it. Children are captivated by the daily repatriation of baby turtles into the ocean, and enthralled by the process that ends seven years later with the very same turtles returning to the very same beach to breed. Another unforgettable experience is riding from the stables through the jungle and onto
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the incomparable Teopa Beach at sunset. A photograph doesn’t begin to do justice to the feeling of watching the sun drop below the horizon with a sudden green flash. Not surprisingly, New Year’s Eve is a moveable feast with even the most reluctant partygoers diving headlong into a smorgasbord of gatherings, each in a setting more breathtaking than the last. Monumental beach bonfires and cutting edge DJ’s alternating with 20-piece mariachi bands provided the perfect way to greet 2008. Careyes is located south of Pueto Vallarta on the Mexican Pacific coast and the Careyes Polo Club is open from November to April. www.careyes.com
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In Careyes the number one crime you can commit is to noshow a party, which is an easy thing to do since there’s at least one big fiesta every night 1 Skirmish in front of bougainvillea-topped goal posts 2 Trophy for the Copa Tequila Partida 3 Giorgio Brignone, founder of the Careyes Polo Club 4 The parking lot 5 Newborn turtles soon to be released into the sea
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St Moritz Snow polo differs from field polo, explains Roderick Vere Nicoll, but that doesn’t make the game any less entertaining
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By the time your driver has negotiated the 29th hairpin bend on the three-hour drive from Zurich to St Moritz your only remaining thought is that there had better be something special at the end of this journey. But as you finally descend into a spectacular valley nestled in the Swiss Alps it suddenly becomes well worth the effort. St Moritz is a charming mixture of old and new. Glitzy turreted palaces turned grand hotels are majestically situated by the frozen lake and overlooked by elegant Swiss chalets that seem to have been there for centuries. There is more high-end shopping than on Bond Street and Madison Avenue combined, with what seems like every major luxury brand represented within a two-minute walk. People-watching is the name of the game. When the 24th Cartier Polo World Cup on Snow begins, all eyes are on the frozen lake, where thoroughbreds run on a racetrack and polo is played. The field is somewhere between an outdoor and indoor pitch: 200 yards long by 100 yards wide (about threequarters the length of a normal outdoor field) and surrounded by boards that are three feet high. There are regular outdoor goals, a back line, a 30-yard line and a 60-yard line. Hard-packed snow makes for fewer divots and is excellent footing for the horses. Ponies adapt well to playing at high altitudes although some allowances are made for the thinner air. There are four chukkas in a game and they are shortened to six-and-a-half minutes. If a horse seems tired the clock is stopped to facilitate a change. Other differences in snow polo are the bright orange ball – which is twice the size of an indoor one but plastic and a bit heavier – and the horses’ shoes, which have extra studs and a pad to prevent snow from collecting under the hooves. Also, while some players use normal mallets, others prefer George Wood graphite mallets, which have larger heads. Each of the four teams plays three days on the trot. From a player’s standpoint snow polo is fun but difficult. The flight path of the ball is unpredictable and occasionally the best shot goes askew – or heads off at a right angle or wherever the wind dictates. For spectators, snow polo is fun and interesting. The smaller field – and standing right up next to the boards – creates the feeling that you’re right on top of the action. There is a wonderfully festive atmosphere and Swiss patron Philipp Maeder of the Maybach team entered into the spirit of the tournament this year with a roaring cheer of ‘Maybach! Maybach!’ every time he rode past his supporters in the stands. They would
1 2 answer with a wave that would not have been out of place in Yankee Stadium. Julius Baer brought along 200 guests for a weekend of unrivalled hospitality and to watch Argentine Open winner and 10-goaler Lolo Castagnola make his snow debut alongside Chile’s finest player Jaime Huidobro and English amateurs George and Charlie Hanbury. Over three days of competitive 22-goal polo, Cartier and Brioni emerged the two strongest teams. In the final, Brioni, captained by Guy Schwarzenbach, rode out with 8goaler John Paul Clarkin and veteran English indoor players Nacho Gonzales and Jonny Good. New Zealander Clarkin, also making his snow debut, was nominated Most Valuable Player having scored the finest goal of the tournament from beyond mid-field – an almost impossible feat given the unpredictability of snow polo. The Cartier team was captained by a newlywed Jose Donoso, who was making his seventh appearance on the snow field. Jose was joined by Swiss patron Adriano Agosti and Argentinians Marcos Di Paola and Guillermo Terrera. The game was a crowdpleasing nail-biter with a final score of 8½-6. Brioni won for the second year running, and the stage is set for a thrilling return by these four teams at next year’s 25th Cartier Polo World Cup on Snow. One piece of advice: if at the final a kind friend offers you a flight out of the valley from the small airport just past the lake… take it.
The smaller field, and standing right up next to the boards, creates the feeling that you’re right on top of the action.
1 On-the-ball MVP John Paul Clarkin (in black, far right) followed by Marcos Di Paola of Cartier (centre) 2 The winners modelling the new Brioni polo collection 3 Maybach’s Philipp Maeder controls the ball in front of the stands
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hurlingham [ action ] 1 Sheik Shamin (left) chases down Claudio Manfrin 2 Intermission entertainment 3 CCSI take home the trophy (from left): umpire Graham Bray, USPA’s Ed Armstrong, Billy Sheldon, Shane Rice, Cary Burch, former Pacific Coast Governor Matt Richardson, CPC’s president Rodney Fragodt and umpire Steve Lane.
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The skies above Los Angeles were finally clear of smoke from Southern California’s devastating chaparral fires, and thankfully in time for the US Polo Association’s (USPA) 2007 National Arena Championship, held in early November. The blazes, contained only a week before, had come no closer than 10 miles of the venue, California Polo Club (CPC), just a short drive from Hollywood, but some of the players from the San Diego area to the south had been involved in rescuing horses during massive evacuations. Only four three-a-side teams competed in the national championship, with most of the players coming from Southern California. Nevetheless, the CPC pulled out all the stops to make it a weekend to remember. The two-day event included half-time exhibitions in the arena by Chilean gauchos and Andalusian horse breeders. With TV and film executives, pop stars and fashion designers among the spectators, there were echoes of the pre-war days when Hollywood greats like Darryl F Zanuck, Walt Disney, Spencer Tracy and other stars played the game just down the road. The host club fielded its own team, California Polo Club, and Danny Brown entered a JV Ranch squad, named after his Colorado ranch. Tony Yahyai was nonplaying patron of the Club Polo Los Cabos team, representing his new residential club in the Mexican province of Baja, California. The clear favourites, however, were California Creative Solutions Inc (CCSI), Cary Burch’s team from Poway Valley Riders Association near San Diego. The Poway side, accustomed to playing together, were
rated at 14 goals; the other three teams were rated 12. CCSI won both their matches, 17-10 over JV Ranch and 17-8 over CPC, to win the championship. Shane Rice, who scored 10 goals in the team’s first match and nine in the second, was named Most Valuable Player and his mount Charter won Best Playing Pony. The Poway players got their names on the trophy and also came away with airline tickets to Buenos Aires to watch the Argentine Open – prizes donated by event sponsors LAN Airlines. Club Polo Los Cabos suffered an unusual double blow in their first-day match against CPC. In the last chukka Ardeshir Radpour and his pony came down hard and the player was rushed to hospital with a serious concussion. Ernie Darquea substituted, but within minutes of the match restarting he too suffered a fall and was hospitalised with a concussion and broken ribs. The Los Cabos team finished the last
minutes of the match with only two players in the arena. Fortunately, both injured players are on the mend. The present USPA Arena Championship traces its ancestry back to the 1920s and the championships of the old Indoor Polo Association of America. In those days many of the top grass players also competed in the arena, including high-goalers like Stewart Iglehart, Michael Phipps and Winston Guest. Edward Armstrong, the USPA director of tournaments, who was at CPC to present prizes, admitted that today’s national arena championships suffer from geography: teams are unwilling or unable to travel with their ponies long distances across the USA to play. So only teams from the immediate region of the venue usually compete, as was the case in California this year. The 2008 USPA Arena Championship will be held in September at Great Meadow Polo Club in The Plains, Virginia.
ALISON DYER
Herbert Spencer reports on the USPA Arena Championship
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1 Amber Clutton-Brock (UK) 2 Talking tactics before the final: (from left) Amy Flowers (USA), Mumy Bellande (Argentina), Bryony Barraclough (UK), Brenda Myrjam de Boer (Holland) 3 The author in action
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Women’s polo
ALICE GIPPS; POLOLINE.COM
Alice Gipps enjoyed sun, swimming and great polo at the Don Manuel International Ladies Tournament A refreshing polo holiday in the sun-kissed Argentina pampas was the perfect tonic after a frustratingly long wet English season.The venue was the peaceful oasis of Estancia Don Manuel, a place well known to me and owned by my good friend Emiliano Blanco. A mere 20 minutes from the airport and situated in Cañuelas, hometown of polo legends such as Cambiaso and La Martina, it was an ideal location with wonderful Bermuda grass fields and fantastic facilities. Already a guest estancia with plenty of experience of holding regular 8-10 goal tournaments, Emiliano he couldn’t have been more helpful. The idea of having his idyllic retreat overrun by squawking women for a week didn’t seem to faze him one bit. In fact, he encouraged us to make it a big event! Having started as a small tournament between friends, the Don Manuel Ladies developed into a full-blown international event in the first year. Women’s polo tournaments are becoming ever more popular in Argentina, already running virtually back to back throughout the season, so we were lucky to find a window in the calendar. We had great support from sponsors such as Pololine.com, huge crystal trophies and piles of prizes from Paseo Alcorta, Vique, Country Polo, Don Ramiro, and even a pink suede saddle from Miguel Acuna Saddlery. All we needed now were more ladies. Word spread fast and girls gathered from as far and wide as Holland, Spain, America, England and Argentina, with the latter providing surprisingly good support.
Lower handicapped players were privileged to play with some of the best women players, such as the highest rated lady player in the UK, Nina Clarkin (3 goals), as well as Argentina’s famous Mumy Bellande (now 2 but formerly their highest rated woman at 3). They were joined by several 1-goalers including the UK’s Lucy Taylor, Argentina’s Maru Gimenze, and USA’s Teresa King. These players were distributed evenly throughout
Word spread fast, and girls came from Holland, Spain, America, England and Argentina - the tournament was extremely competitive the teams. Other players were drawn out of a hat with the aim of keeping the teams even and, more importantly, keeping the polo flowing and fast. Above all, it was meant to be fun, and a huge effort was made to make guests feel comfortable. There was plenty of time to choose from a wide selection of ponies in practices, and even a team practice after the teams were drawn. This helped everyone get to know each other. The tournament turned out to be extremely
competitive, with very tight games throughout. Paseo Alcorta met Country in the final, with the former running out unexpected winners 9-4 against the might of Mumy, who, with many years of experience, commented on the good organisation and how much she had enjoyed herself. Although the week was geared towards the tournament, Argentina has so much to offer that it would have been criminal not to give the girls a guided tour. Any spare moment not playing polo or relaxing by the pool was spent routing through local gaucho shops for Argentine leather gems to kit out our unsuspecting ponies at home, eating out at delicious grills in BA, visiting a truly spectacular Tango show and, most amazing of all, watching the 40 goal, whose electric atmosphere possibly inspired a few new moves in the next game! The amount of support and interest in the first year was an inspiration and shows how much women’s polo is growing worldwide. It was very special to be able to organise a tournament that, as well as being thoroughly enjoyable, also turned out to be one of the highest handicapped Ladies Tournaments of the Argentine season. Anyone interested in joining us next November should get in touch with me at alicegipps@hotmail.com and visit www.estanciadonmanuel.com
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polo in the big apple Manhattan is the birthplace of American polo. Herbert Spencer reflects on the sport’s glory days in New York City
Today when New Yorkers want to take in a polo match, they must travel out to clubs on Long Island or in Connecticut. Not so in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the game was played both on grass and in indoor arenas in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx. New York City can proudly lay claim to being the birthplace of American polo. The sport, already being played in other countries from India to Argentina, was unknown in the USA before 1876. In the summer of 1875, the wealthy New York publisher and sportsman James Gordon Bennett watched matches at
London’s Hurlingham Club and fell in love with the game. He brought sticks, balls and Hurlingham’s new Rules of Polo back home with him. In the winter of 1876, not content to wait for the snow to melt to allow playing on grass, he staged America’s first polo match indoors, right in the heart of Manhattan. That exhibition at Dinkel’s Riding Academy at Fifth Avenue and East 39th Street was not only the first polo match in the USA, but also the first played indoors anywhere in the world; a forerunner of the arena version that became popular on both sides of the Atlantic. The country’s first polo match on grass the following summer was at Jerome Race Track in the Bronx. In the late 1870s the Manhattan Polo Association built its City Polo Ground just outside the northeast corner of Central Park between Fifth Avenue and Sixth (now Lenox Avenue), at East 110th Street. By 1880, however, baseball had replaced polo there, although a succession of baseball stadiums continued to be known as the Polo Ground. Thereafter polo on grass was played instead in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Meanwhile the indoor game also flourished in the city, at venues like the
Squadron A Armoury at Madison Avenue and 95th Street and the Squadron C Armoury in Brooklyn. These fortress-like military establishments with their vast indoor ménages for cavalrymen were perfectly suited to arena polo. During the 1920s and 1930s, championships of the Indoor Polo Association of America saw triumphs of city teams like Squadron A, New York Athletic Club and NY Riding Club. There are few physical reminders left of the Big Apple’s glory days of polo. The Polo Ground is gone, and its name lives on more in connection with baseball. Jerome Race Track has long been replaced by a city reservoir. Only the spectacular façade of the Squadron A Armoury remains. Other sports are played in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, but not polo. If you explore the archives of the New York Times, however, you will discover just how seriously New Yorkers took the sport for more than half a century – from the 1870s through the 1930s. During that time polo stories appeared regularly on the sports pages, rather than the social pages as they do now. ‘I Love New York’ could be paraphrased for that bygone era to read: ‘New Yorkers Love Polo’.
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