7 minute read
Destination
eastern promise
located in a buoyant north chinese city, the Tianjin Goldin metropolitan Polo club offers its members outstanding facilities in an unrivalled setting, reports herbert spencer
The polo world’s most iconic venue is the Campo Argentino de Polo at Palermo near the centre of Buenos Aires, home to the sport’s highest-rated tournaments. This national polo stadium is an unforgettable city venue with high-rise commercial and residential buildings of the Argentine capital forming a dramatic backdrop to the action.
City polo venues are few and far between, but halfway across the world, a good 12,000 miles from Buenos Aires as the eagle flies, is one with a cityscape even more impressive than that of Palermo: the Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club in China.
Like those at Palermo, the Metropolitan’s polo grounds in Tianjin’s booming Binhai New Area have a backdrop of high-rise buildings completed or under construction. The difference is that, like so many things in China, the buildings are bigger – like the skyscraper Goldin Finance 117 that, when completed in 2015, will soar to just under 2,000 feet. The Goldin Finance 117 tower and the polo club are both part of a mega-development of Goldin Properties of Hong Kong. Goldin’s 2,600-acre site will eventually be a complete city-within-a-city with office blocks, high-end shopping malls, luxury apartment buildings, town houses and villas, and extensive recreational facilities. The polo club was the first part of this massive development to be completed and it is obvious from Goldin’s promotional material that it is meant to be a sporting and lifestyle flagship to help attract the crème de la crème of China’s new business elite and international companies to the Binhai New Area complex.
The city of Tianjin is 70 miles south of Beijing by road, but a 200mph bullet train takes only 30 minutes to and from the capital. In 2010 the GDP of Tianjin’s fast-growing Binhai New Area exceeded that of Shanghai’s landmark Pudong New Area for the first time. Goldin’s polo club is by far China’s wealthiest and most ambitious project in restoring polo to the country in the 21st century. Polo was first played in China in the Han dynasty some 2,000 years ago, the Chinese having learned the game from Persian visitors. It flourished in the Tang dynasty during the seventh to 10th centuries. One can find artefacts from these periods in China and abroad, such as a colourful wall mural in Shaanxi and terracotta tomb figures of polo players.
Westerners played the modern sport in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before the Japanese invasion, World War II and the Mao-led revolution. There was a polo
standard-size polo fields, state-of-the-art stabling for 157 horses, all-weather training facilities, a riding school and a clubhouse like no other in the world.
The clubhouse is part of the 167-room, resort-style Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Hotel, a massive neoclassical building with sculptures of galloping horses and polo players splashing through a fountain in the forecourt. The hotel has more than a dozen restaurants and bars offering a wide variety of cuisines including French, Italian and Japanese as well as Chinese. There is a gym, spa, Roman-style indoor pool and a grand ballroom that can accommodate 1,000 diners. With such luxurious facilities, the Metropolitan appears to be targeting highend individuals in China’s new economy. Joining fees for the club are reported to range from the equivalent of $58,000 for ‘social’ membership to $1.5 million for polo team patrons.
As it planned and constructed the club, Goldin brought in polo experts from abroad. These now include Derek Reid, former captain of Australia’s national polo team, as director of polo operations; from England, John Fisher as director of stable operations, and Isabel Branch, senior equestrian instructor; and instructors Shane Boyd from New Zealand and Edward Judge from Australia.
The Metropolitan has also recruited experienced horsemen from regions of China famed for horsemanship: from Inner Mongolia, Mongolians from Xinjiang province and a Hasake (or Kazakh) from the China/ Russian border region once known for its fearless cavalrymen. These were hired as grooms, but are also being taught polo to form a nucleus of staff players for the club.
The club has imported 132 polo ponies from Australia and New Zealand and 52 from England for use by its members and to mount visiting players from abroad for its international events. Almost 50 aspiring equestrians have been learning to ride and then to play polo in the Metropolitan’s riding school.
Meanwhile, as there are currently no tournament-level players of Chinese nationality at the club, the Metropolitan has been bringing in professional players and teams from abroad for their events. This has given the club an international image beyond the current state of play in China, a country that may have great potential in polo but still has a long way to go.
In February 2011 the Metropolitan staged Asia’s first snow polo tournament, an imaginative venture that cost the club millions. Tianjin doesn’t often get snow, but this did not deter the high-spending owners. Having first protected the turf with extra nutrients and a blanket of sand, the club
brought in two giant machines that for a month worked to lay down an ice base and 25 inches of snow on an arena-sized area of the main polo ground and a surrounding area for spectators and hospitality.
For its landmark International Snow Polo Challenge, Goldin paid the travel expenses and fees of professional players who flew in to form national teams that represented England, France, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. England defeated Argentina in the final to take the trophy. As with other events at the club, the snow polo show combined polo action with spectacular on-ground and après-polo entertainment and hospitality for Chinese and foreign guests.
The Metropolitan has been exceptionally clever in creating international interest in the club. Goldin has flown in and hosted a raft of polo VIPs including representatives of the Federation of International Polo (FIP) and national polo associations as well as polo journalists. Vintage wines from the Metropolitan hotel’s 10,000-bottle cellars have flowed like water and a good time has been had by all.
This international hospitality paid off in a big way last year when FIP, eager to help with polo in China, agreed to stage a new ‘World Cup’ at the Metropolitan: FIP Snow Polo World Cup Invitational. FIP invited 12 three-man national polo teams to compete in the tournament, which took place 4-12 February this year. Eleven of the teams were fielded by their respective national polo associations: England, the USA, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, France, Italy, India, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. The federation waived its nationality rules to enable Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region), part of China since 1997, to field the 12th team, made up of foreign pros.
Malaysia’s Peter Abisheganaden was appointed Tournament Director of the FIP event, with Argentine former 9-goaler Benjamin Araya as Horse Master. As FIP had never before held a three-man, arena event before, the federation drafted new rules and tournament conditions for snow polo based upon arena polo rules of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA).
According to FIP president, Eduardo Huergo, Goldin Metropolitan paid the federation just over US$2.5m ‘for endorsement and development, the costs of running the tournament and sponsorship for the participating countries’.
FIP paid each of the 12 participating associations $100,000 to cover their teams’ expenses and fees to players where appropriate, with any surpluses being ploughed back into polo in those countries. Another six-figure sum was earmarked for individual awards and, unusually, cash prizes for winners. After all expenses, FIP is expected to be left with a significant surplus as net income to apply to other federation activities.
Meanwhile, Goldin Properties, the owners of the Metropolitan Polo Club, are planning a return of the sport to the firm’s headquarters city, Hong Kong. Polo was played there during the 19th and much of the 20th century, but urban development swallowed up the polo ground years ago.
FIP lists Hong Kong as an entity separate from the rest of China and last year granted conditional full membership to a new Hong Kong federation established by Goldin.
The Hong Kong Polo Promotion and Development Federation is headed by Pan Sutong, Goldin’s chairman and CEO, with two other Goldin executives, Harvey Lee and Rowland Wong, as vice-presidents.
Af ter expenses, FIP is expected to be lef t with a significant surplus as a net income to apply to other federation activities
Opposite Brian Hammond, Director of Field and Facilities, checking the snow quality This page, clockwise from top Clubhouse interior; Derek Reid, Director of Polo Operations; Wellington College were invited to play a demo game; a trained groom
