Riding high

With Sydney Polo Club going from strength to strength, its owner, Peter Higgins, has plenty of reasons to smile, reports Fiona Turney

In December, at a meeting of the Federation of International Polo (FIP) council in Buenos Aires, it was announced that the next FIP World Polo Championships, in October 2017, would be held in Australia, with Sydney Polo Club winning the bid to host the event. It was fantastic news for Sydney Polo Club’s owner, Peter Higgins, who produced the winning pitch, in conjunction with tourist agency Destination NSW.

Higgins is no stranger to polo: since taking up the sport in the early 1990s, he has become one of its leading ambassadors, both at home and abroad. He grew up in Western Australia, where he rode horses on a friend’s farm. But while he might have aspired to play polo as a younger man, the sport was very much the preserve of the super-elite back then, and it wasn’t until he moved to Sydney that he first wielded a polo mallet. It was the founding with his brother Rodney of Mortgage Choice, one of Australia’s leading finance firms, that paved the way for him to take up the sport in earnest. Higgins has played polo all over the globe in the intervening years, and fielded teams as far afield as France, Argentina and the England. His involvement with the Young Presidents’ Organization, the world’s premier peer network of chief executives and business leaders, has allowed him to take part in tournaments in some of the world’s most exotic locations, including India, Thailand and Jordan, where he played on the prince’s horses at the Royal Jordanian Polo Club. In a similarly regal vein, he has also saddled up with the Duke of Cambridge’s team at Ham Polo Club. Today, he has a 1-goal handicap and competes regularly at all levels, being just as likely to field a team with his children, Georgia and Riley, as he is to play with a team of pros.

As Higgins’s passion for the sport intensified, the next obvious step was to purchase the rights to the name ‘Sydney Polo Club’. The original establishment, Australia’s first, was founded in the state capital in 1876, and Banjo Paterson, the poet who famously penned Waltzing Matilda, was a member throughout the 1880s and 90s, but it had long since ceased to exist. In 2000, with the name in situ and a prestigious trophy cabinet in tow, Higgins purchases farmland next to the Windsor Polo Club in historic Richmond, at the foot of the Blue Mountains, further north in New South Wales, and established a private estate on the banks of the Hawkesbury River.

Since then, with his wife, Rebecca, he has worked tirelessly to establish and promote the new-look Sydney Polo Club, and in doing so, has created one of the country’s leading equestrian facilities. Its 222 hectares encompass six fields, as well as indoor arenas and on-site stabling. It plays host to both national showjumping and polo events, and holds numerous tournaments, from entry-level to 18-goal, throughout the year. Spectator figures are impressive and growing year on year – it regularly attracts Australia’s biggest crowds to its key annual polo events.

All these attributes clearly made the club a strong contender to host international events. With the Hawkesbury River region continuing to be one of Australian polo’s most important hubs, and New South Wales a leading target for tourism, a coming-together of Destination NSW and Sydney Polo Club looks set to be the start of an exciting union, promising much of benefit to both parties – and our sport – in the years ahead.

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