September 2021 Polo Players' Edition- Golden Dreams

Golden Dreams

Argentina Hopes Polo Returns to The Olympics

By Lucas Noel

The Argentine squad that won the Olympic gold in 1936: Andres Gazzotti, Jack D. Nelson (captain), Roberto Cavanagh, Luis Duggan, Manuel Andrada, Enrique Alberdi and Diego Cavanagh.

The South American country, which has dominated the sport for many years, aspires to once again have a chance at the world’s most important global event.

A slow motion camera captures a close-up of soccer player Lionel Messi’s look of concentration before a final. Tennis player Juan Martín Del Potro raises the Davis Cup. Facundo Campazzo and Luis Scola come out dressed in light blue and white with the national basketball team to face NBA players. The Pumas hug each other, get excited and their chests swell hearing the verse ‘or let us swear to die with glory’ (from the national anthem) before a rugby test match. All of them are elite athletes who return to the most amateur of feelings when they wear the t-shirt with the colors of their country. All of them are the envy of Argentine polo players.

Of the five times polo was an Olympic sport, Argentina participated in two of those editions and won the gold medal in both of them. Since 1936, this discipline, in which the South American country is the world leader, has not participated in the schedule of the most important sporting event of all. And it is difficult for it to do so again under natural conditions. Its logistics are more complex than other sports due to the enormous number of horses each national team would have to transport. And to this we must add not a minor detail: face to face and without restrictions no nation today accepts the challenge of facing Argentina.

Argentina defeated Mexico, 15-5, in a hard-charging game in the XI Olympic games in Berlin. Argentina took home the gold medal while Mexico settled for bronze.

©1936/Comite International Olympique (CIO)

Argentina now has eight players with 10-goal handicaps and 10 with 9. Maybe a 3 vs. 3 beach polo at the Summer Games or snow polo at the Winter Games could be a way back to the Olympic program. But to summon the participants, perhaps it should be done with a limit in the handicap, as the FIP World Cup is held today, the only event where nations confront each other.

“You don’t really understand why in a World Cup we have to compete at such a low handicap or why we do not compete in the Olympic Games. We would have the gold medal for sure. In many other sports,

Argentina is in inferior conditions and in 100 meters they pass you over. I say that at some point it will come. I have that illusion,” said Gonzalo Pieres Jr. when he last played the Nations Cup with Argentina in 2012. Two years later, Adolfo Cambiaso and Facundo Pieres shared a foursome in the Coronation Cup to beat England at the Guards Polo Club. Otherwise, there are few examples of the best Argentine polo players representing their country.

Action in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. It was the first time Argentina competed in the Olympics and the team took home the gold.

©Smith Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Polo entered the Olympic program in Paris in 1900. In the first three events, competitions were organized with teams made up of players of different nationalities (mostly British and American), with club representatives instead of countries, and the champion was The Foxhunters Hurlingham. Polo was not included in St. Louis in 1904, but it returned in London in 1908. There, three British teams took part. The gold went to Roehampton. After another interruption, it reappeared in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920. The British took the gold again after winning a tournament with the United States, Spain and Belgium.

Argentina shut out Great Britain, 11-0, in the final in Berlin.

©Smith Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Argentina won the first medal of its sports history in Paris in 1924. Polo was the benefactor and that starting team in the French capital was formed by Arturo Kenny (5), Juan Diego Nelson (7), Enrique Padilla (6) and Juan Bautista Miles (7), with a total of 25 goals. Substitutes were Guillermo Brooke Naylor and Alfredo Peña Unzué. Thirty-five Thoroughbred horses were shipped for the event. The format was an all-play-all with Spain, United States, France and Great Britain. Argentina beat everyone with 46 goals for and 14 against. The silver went to the United States and the bronze to Great Britain. There was no final match, but the 6-5 victory over the Americans, the most difficult rival, was taken as the most important one.

It took another 12 years before polo was seen at the Olympics again, this time in Berlin in 1936. The trip to Germany cost $150,000. The Argentine Olympic Committee contributed $100,000, while the Jockey Club, the Argentine Polo Association and the Ministry of Agriculture made up the remaining $50,000. Forty horses, 14 grooms and six players had to be transported. The journey to Europe took approximately one month between ship and train.

Chambermaids press in divots on the field at halftime in Berlin.

The four starters were Luis Duggan (6), Roberto Cavanagh (6), Andres Gazzotti (8, captain) and Manuel Andrada (7), for a total of 27 goals. Enrique Alberdi and Diego Cavanagh were substitutes. The competition had five participants: Great Britain, Mexico, Hungary, Germany and Argentina. The top three teams competed for the gold medal and the loser of that group played for the bronze medal against the winner of Germany vs. Hungary.

Argentina won all its matches clearly. On the day of the final, 30,000 people in Nazi Germany witnessed an 11-0 thrashing of Great Britain. Mexico took the bronze. The awards ceremony the following day was in front of 100,000 people and the winners received their medals from Joseph Goebbels. In addition to the gold, Argentina was honored with a sapling of the Olympic oak tree, which can be seen today between fields 1 and 2 at Palermo. The light blue and white hegemony resulted in the International Olympic Committee deciding to exclude polo from the program.

With the founding of the Federation of International Polo in 1987, the intentions to return polo to the Olympic calendar were reborn. However, the IOC demands the sport has a World Cup free of restrictions and requires it to bring together a considerable number of affiliated countries. Nevertheless, in recent years there have been great advances in this matter. On the one hand, polo was included as an exhibition at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in 2018. It took place at the Argentine polo field and consisted of a showcase in which a total of 28 young people (11 girls and 17 boys) between 14 and 18 years old from Italy, Australia, Colombia, Scotland, England, Switzerland, Pakistan, the United States and, obviously, Argentina participated.

The oak sapling, given to the Argentine team in the 1936 Olympics along with a gold medal, was planted between the back of the main stadium and Field 2 at Palermo in Buenos Aires. It grew into a mighty oak and still stands today.

©Sergio Llamera

The teams were lined up with players of different nationalities mixed together. Each foursome played a reduced five-minute chukker and then alternated until the end of the eight periods, thus managing to organize an exhibition without a final score that ended up being an example of integration.

The plaque placed under the majestic oak reads: Grown to honor the winner of the new competition; Olympic oak; conquered by the Argentine Polo team in the XI Olympiad Berlin 1936; Juan D. Nelson presided over the delegation.

©Sergio Llamera

“In 2024, it’s going to be 100 years since the first medal. We should be there. We could aim for that, to be an Olympic sport again. And after a century, win. It is a goal we have set for ourselves. Ambitious or not, it is the goal,” Eduardo Novillo Astrada said during the Youth Olympic Games.

Time will tell if this wish can come true. For Argentina it would be great news. The flame of illusion is already lit.