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Herbert Spencer pays tribute to sportsman, war hero and polo legend Tommy Hitchcock

Historians may debate whether Adolfo Cambiaso, Juan Carlos Harriett or Tommy Hitchcock should be ranked as the greatest polo player of all time, but none could argue about the latter being by far the most prominent in the public eye, beyond the narrow confines of the sport itself.

During World War II, when LieutenantColonel Thomas ‘Tommy’ Hitchcock Jr was killed testing a fighter plane in England, his death made the front page of The New York Times. Time magazine followed with a long and glowing eulogy titled ‘Centaur’. Tommy was an Olympian, a larger-than-life allAmerican sporting and war hero, whose celebrity rivalled that of baseball’s Babe Ruth and golf’s Bobby Jones. Wealthy and socially prominent but without any pretensions, he epitomised the great amateur sportsmen of his era; so much so, that his friend F Scott Fitzgerald modelled characters in The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night upon him.

Tommy Hitchcock was born in Aiken, South Carolina, on February 11, 1900, the son of Thomas and Louise Hitchcock of New York. The elder Hitchcock was a pioneer of American polo in the 19th century and was one of the country’s first 10-goal players. Tommy’s mother ‘Lulie’ was a formidable horsewoman and one of America’s first female polo players. She taught the game to a succession of future greats in Aiken and on Long Island. Son Tommy was riding at the age of three, learning polo at five and playing in his first tournament at 13. Then at 16 he won the US Polo Association’s Senior and Junior Championships.

Then The Great War intervened. Unable to enlist at home because of his age but still determined, Tommy joined France’s famous Lafayette Escadrille –becoming its youngest ever pilot at 17. He downed two German planes before he was shot down behind enemy lines and captured. His escape involved jumping from a moving POW train and, under cover of darkness, trekking 80 miles through Germany to freedom in neutral Switzerland. His exploits earned him the French Croix de Guerre amongst other decorations.

After the war Tommy went to Harvard and Oxford universities and began his polo career in earnest. By the age of 24 he had reached the sport’s maximum rating of 10 goals. During his polo career he won four Westchester Cup internationals, four US Open Championships, the equivalent Champions Cup in England, and was a silver medallist in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

He become a successful Wall Street financier and retired from competing in polo tournaments in 1939. After America entered World War II, he was back in uniform and in the air. On April 19, 1944, near Salisbury, England, he was testing a new version of the P51 Mustang fighter, favoured escort of Allied bombers over occupied Europe, when his plane failed to pull out of a dive and he was killed.

In 1990, the late Thomas Hitchcock Jr became the first player inducted into America’s then-new Polo Hall of Fame. Reminders of Tommy now grace the mantles of acclaimed players of this era: statuettes of him, known as ‘Tommies’ like Hollywood’s Oscars, are the glittering prizes for America’s annual Polo Excellence awards. A fitting tribute to one of the game’s true greats.