Volume 17 Issue 4 May 2011
ÂŁ5.50
www.polotimes.co.uk
Caribbean convergence British pros the big winners in Barbados and Jamaica Plus: the US Open, new rules and UK high-goal preview PT p1 cover.indd 1
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the
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Flying without wings This shot captures both the tranquility of Kingston Polo Club’s beautiful setting and a sense of the speed of the polo that is played there. It shows Team Pegasus (in blue) against Bin 26 in the semi-final of the Jamaica Open last month. Bin 26, featuring England’s Jamie Le Hardy, went on to win this and the subsequent final, while Pegasus triumphed in the subsidiary final. The birds in the foreground found themselves constantly moved from one part of the ground to the other by the fast, end-to-end nature of the games, as the teams in the tournament all looked to play open, passing polo. It provided fantastic entertainment and encouraged the larger-than-ever crowd of spectators to stay on and celebrate long into the night at the after-party on finals’ day in Kingston’s clubhouse on the sidelines. ◗ See more photographs from the Jamaica Open on pages 48 and 86
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Feature
Interview – Charlie Gordon-Watson
Not just another big-time
Charlie
Catherine Austen meets famed bloodstock agent and Cirencester zero-goal patron Charlie Gordon-Watson, and finds him to be passionate about re-training ex-racehorses and promoting young polo talent as he gears up for his one-off high-goal experience
When and why did you start playing polo? When I was 18 I spent a few months in Argentina with Hector Barrantes, working as a groom. Then, 22 years later, Madeleine Lloyd-Webber, who’s an old friend, phoned and asked me: “If I started a club, would you play?” I said yes. I was hunting all winter and I missed riding in the summer but I’m not someone who can just go for a ride and I wasn’t going to take up eventing. I like team games, ball games and physical things – polo has all that. I’ve been playing for 10 years now. What is your involvement? I have a team called Felix. Last year we played 42 games at Cirencester, more than any other team. I keep seven ponies at Sydmonton [Charlie lives in a house on the Lloyd-Webbers’ estate in Hampshire]. And how did you become involved in racing and become a bloodstock agent? I wanted to be a trainer and worked for Captain Ryan Price and Fulke Johnson Houghton before I decided training was too risky. I then got a job at Robert Sangster’s stud on the Isle of Man, but I instantly clashed with the chap in charge. After a year I went to see Robert and said: “Either he goes or I do.” I was on the next boat home, 26
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but it taught me everything – a real fast track experience. So, I set up on my own as a bloodstock agent when I was 25, which was very young, but you probably need to be that age to have the balls and the energy to do it. What have been your career highlights? In racing, buying nine Classic winners, including Derby winner Kris Kin, 30
is a chance that one of the mares could produce this year’s Derby winner; the foal that the mare was carrying at the time is currently third-favourite for the race. Baker [who was found guilty of fraud] was incredibly clever; he managed to dupe around £60 million out of his victims so I was only a bit part player with around £3 million of it – I hasten to add that it did not cost me that.
“I’d love to have an official involvement in the Retraining of Racehorses organisation as it’s something I really believe in” individual Group One winners and 20 Royal Ascot winners. In polo, winning any HPA tournament at our level is a great thrill and we have been lucky enough to win the six-goal Kingscote Cup at Cirencester in 2008 and 2009. And your lows? Undoubtedly the Michael Baker fiasco [where Charlie bought millions of pounds worth of bloodstock for a man who had no intention of paying for them]. Now, nearly four years later, it is still not unravelled but we are getting there and some good has come out of it – the horses bought have turned out to be good investments. There
Fortunately it did not stop me from doing anything I wanted to do, but it was very much a lesson learned. Are there any similarities or crossovers between racing and polo? The main similarity is that they both cost a lot! The crossover mostly occurs at the highest level, such as patrons who also own racehorses. Sumaya’s Ahmad Aboughazale, for example, has horses in training in America and Chile. Polo has opened up a few things for me. If a client from the polo world wanted to buy racehorses, he might go for me rather than another agent because we share a www.polotimes.co.uk
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Charlie Gordon-Watson (second from left) and his Felix team celebrate their 2008 Kingscote Cup success at Cirencester. They went on to retain the crown in 2009
What do you think racing could learn from polo? The amazing thing about polo is there really is no financial reward. In racing, you can buy an expensive yearling and, if it’s good, you can get some money back. If racing owners www.polotimes.co.uk
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had a high-goal polo team it would cost them as much, if not more, and you wouldn’t get any money back. Polo’s a one-way ticket. After polo, racing’s cheap! Believe me, I’ve had quite a few clients in racing who have been involved in high-goal polo, and they certainly take the attitude than polo is a hobby rather than a business investment. However, the best racehorse owners are those who have been in polo.They have a genuine interest in horses, because they ride, and they understand the whole thing better. And I would have thought for the patron who gets too old to play, the next thing is to own racehorses. Not that I’ve managed to move anyone across yet. Polo has a lot more glamour and racing
would love the sponsors polo has. It’s also very well run. The HPA is very efficient and there are no warring factions or divided interests, making it streets ahead of racing. Polo is run by people who understand the sport and are passionate about it. Racing could learn a lot from that.
Photograph by Christopher Fear
common interest. And here’s a funny story – about three years ago I recognised a grey thoroughbred gelding David Ashby was riding called Rimrock. It was a yearling I had bought for 120,000gns by Royal Applause, which had been sold out of racing for 800gns. He was a half-brother to [dual Group One-winning mare] Simply Perfect and there he was playing against me!
Emma Tomlinson’s Polo Studbook is being launched this year. Do you think this will significantly help the polo breeding industry? Yes. I’d like to know a lot more about the breeding of the ponies I buy. I asked someone recently which the best racehorse stallions for polo were, and no one seems to know – or if they do they won’t tell you. I’m a huge fan of ex-racehorses going into u Polo Times, May 2011
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Reports
US Open, International Polo Club Palm Beach, Florida
Cracking Caracas remind
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US Open, International Polo Club Palm Beach, Florida
Reports
England what they’ll miss Victor Vargas’s Lechuza Caracas completed a memorable and highly emotional victory at International Polo Club Palm Beach last month, though their rivals Audi proved to be disappointing competition in the final
Alex Webbe in IPCPB, USA
Lechuza Caracas Audi
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t was just two years ago that the Lechuza polo team was devastated by the loss of 21 of their top ponies as they were preparing to compete in the semi-finals of 2009’s US Open. On Sunday 17 April, the team finally laid the ghosts of those horses to rest as they returned to the same field to capture North America’s most coveted trophy in a one-sided 8-6 win over a powerful Audi foursome. However, their victory came just Most valuable player
Juan Martin Nero days after Vargas was forced to announce that urgent work commitments with his banking businesses in Venezuela meant the side would u Lechuza Caracas and their buoyant entourage celebrate a particularly emotional victory in the US Open final on the podium at International Polo Club
Polo Times, May 2011
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Reports
Barbados Open 2011
Home from home for Brits in Barbados Seven teams took part in the ninth Damiani-sponsored Barbados Open this March and April, as the improvements in the island’s horses, competitiveness and tournament infrastructure have made it almost as popular a fixture for Britons as the Cowdray Park Gold Cup
James Mullan in Barbados
Digicel First Caribbean
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the subsidiary final to give Sir Charles a one-two-three clean sweep at the top of the tournament’s leaderboard. To do so marked a fantastic achievement for the passionate Bajan, requiring the use of Most valuable player
Tom Morley more than 75 horses. However, its magnitude was cast into some doubt by cries of foul
Photographs by James Mullan
superb all-round performance from hard-working Englishman Tom Morley was the highlight of an Anglo-Saxon invasion at Clifton Polo Club last month, when he guided Digicel to victory in the Barbados Open final.
Digicel also featured Scottish ex-patriot Jamie Dickson, England’s George Gemmell and Sir Charles Williams’s easy-going 27-year-old grandson, Oliver. They beat First Caribbean, a side led by Oliver Williams’s uncle Teddy and bighitting Brit Jack Kidd. Sir Charles Williams mounted both sides, as well as a third side, Bajan Services – comprising Henry Brett, Teddy Williams’ brother Stephen, promising prospect Adam Deane and the island’s most improved player, Wayne Archer – who won
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Barbados Open 2011 play from the tournament’s three most successful patrons in recent years – Philip Tempro, Stewart Gill and Bruce Bailey. Their complaints came long before the final, when the semi-final line-ups were decided on the last day of the group-stage contests by several very convenient looking drawn matches for all Sir Charles’s unbeaten teams. The tied scores exposed a glaring failure in the design of the Open, which didn’t
However, while the debate is likely to rage on, what it gave us was four semi-final teams, featuring a largely unfamiliar set of patrons at this, the business end of the tournament, with each also employing at least one British pro. Thus, I watched with great interest as Tom Morley got one over the ambitious and industrious Bobby Dundas and then Jack Kidd won a personal friends-become-foes
Tom Morley got one over Bobby Dundas and then Jack Kidd won a personal friends-become-foes battle with Henry Brett require games to play for a result. Polo is unlike most other sports, in that it isn’t too much of a rarity for more than one side in any given tournament to be drawn from the infrastructure of the same umbrella organisation (in this case Apes Hill). And so – whether deliberate or not – the constant movement of players and horses between teams on a tournament by tournament basis means the most knowledgeable pros can broadly orchestrate their desired result. They know how each opposing pony or a certain player (often a good friend) is likely to play, and can make provisions for this. Since there was nothing in the rules to prevent their convenient stalemates, it should come as no great surprise that somehow those games, consciously or not, resulted in all three Apes Hill teams progressing to the semi-finals.
battle over Henry Brett in the two semi-finals on the fast and firm Lion Castle ground. It set up an all-Sir-Charles-Williamsmounted final at Clifton on the Sunday that promised more compelling sub-plots, as Oliver Williams faced up against his uncle Teddy, George Gemmell took on another wiry number one in the shape of born-andbred Bajan Marc Atwell, and Tom Morley and Jack Kidd vied for the bragging rights as the best penalty specialist. In the end, it was the horsepower of Morley’s Digicel side that edged out their opponents, helped by a strong first chukka. Just as they had ultimately proved too good for Jeff Evelyn’s Rugby Stables team in the semis, Jamie Dickson and George Gemmell’s superior knowledge of their string allowed them to see more of the ball than Kidd’s u Action in the semi-finals at Lion Castle, where all four teams included British pros
Reports
How did they perform? We mark the finalists out of 10, based on their effectiveness in terms of handicap
Digicel George Gemmell (1) Declared by his step-father Sir Charles Williams as “the best mounted player on the ground”, Gemmell should have probably seen more of the ball. However, after a good semi-final, he was hindered from showing his best by the stop-start nature of the final.
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Jamie Dickson (3) Another obviously well-mounted player, as you would expect from the man in charge of the Apes Hill stables, Dickson did the lion’s share of attack for the side, drawing a lot of the penalties that Morley went on to score
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Tom Morley (6) The game’s top scorer, finding the posts for five of Digicel’s six goals. He lead by example throughout, giving encouragement and advice to his teammates, whilst also producing a superb individual performance himself.
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Oliver Williams (0) Took a bit of a battering from commentator Jonathan Simpson in the first couple of chukkas, when he barely had a touch, but marked up well at back and forced the opposition to shoot from range.
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First Caribbean Marc Atwell (1) Plenty of industry from the promising youngster, committing himself to his polo full-time for his first season since leaving university. His horses looked good and he did a fine job blocking and running to create space behind. Richard Gooding (2) Gooding failed to exploit the space in front of goal created by the clever runs of Atwell, though he did come up against Digicel’s Tom Morley in some of his best-ever form. He was largely crowded out and couldn’t get the ball.
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Teddy Williams (3) Having played well in the semi-final against his brother Stephen, Teddy also put up a good show against nephew Ollie, but he also had to contend with the excellent Morley and took a nasty horseshoe to the eye for his trouble in a freak accident in the last chukka.
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Jack Kidd (4) Kidd is always good value to watch as far as the spectators are concerned. He moved from a scrappy and frustrated first half to an electric final two chukkas, scoring all four goals. However, his passion also got the better of him, and his team polo suffered as a result.
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Polo Times, May 2011
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EFGInt - polo - eng – 230 x 300 mm +3 mm bleed - quadri - publication :Polo Times, June 2011 issue (20.04.2011)
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