Autumn 2005

Hurlingham

Hurlingham The Hurlingham Polo Association magazine

Autumn 2005 £5.00

AUSSIES RULE! Autumn 2005

EXCLUSIVE: CAMBIASO PICKS THE BEST PONIES WHY WOMEN WANT TO BE ON TOP

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Everyone dreams of being a 10 goaler.

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foreword Polo has continued to expand this summer with more players, clubs and entries in almost all the major tournaments. To be successful, all members of the team have to be competitively handicapped and well mounted and, in the high goal, we may be seeing an increasing number of teams that do not allow their players to play other levels. At all levels, players are asking for better grounds but at the same time wanting to play more polo.

The two are difficult to match but Cowdray Park’s investment in their grounds has undoubtedly paid off. In the high goal, there have been various allegations of ‘match fixing’. This is nothing new but it is an unattractive and unsporting element of the sport, which cannot be excluded as long as a league system is preferred over a knock out.

The season has also seen the England team playing more frequently. This increased exposure, thanks mainly to Audi sponsorship, is a major step forward for English polo but it has of course had its teething problems.

In previous seasons, the England team has really only appeared once and therefore could only lose once. This season the opportunity to lose has been increased considerably. Nevertheless, although Australia managed to revenge their Rugby World Cup defeat on Cartier International Day when Ruki Bailieu became the Jonny Wilkinson of the Australian Team, England was able to leave the field with their heads held high. It was a great match played by two evenly matched teams, both desperate to win.

Polo has become a truly global sport in the last few years and there are now several international circuits which players can follow. There is therefore an increasing demand that we make a greater effort to have one set of rules.

Umpiring at all levels continues to be subject to criticism especially by the side that has lost. Except for the high goal, the umpiring is done by the players themselves and therefore the solution is very much in the hands of the players and the clubs. Much of the polo that is played continues to involve too much tapping which is not only unattractive to watch but is also more likely to cause accidents as the game begins to resemble rush hour on the Cromwell Road, with everybody zigzagging in an effort to get through the traffic – or get a foul.

Looking forward to the winter, Bryan Morrison may have achieved his longterm aim of having an Arena International at Olympia when England plays the USA on Tuesday 20th December in the second of two matches.

With seating of 7,000 for each match, this should introduce a huge number of new people to polo. It’s another great step forward for our sport.

David Woodd Chief Executive Hurlingham Polo Association

Editor Mark Palmer Associate Editor Herbert Spencer Art Director William Harvey Picture Editor Alex Rickard Publisher Roderick Vere Nicoll Front cover: Australia’s Ruki Baillieu, left, fends off England’s Mark Tomlinson as Aussies capture the Coronation Cup. Photograph from Hurlingham Polo Association/Horse & Hound

©2005 Hurlingham Media. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication, the publisher accepts no responsibility for errors or omissions.

Hurlingham is published on behalf of the Hurlingham Polo Association by Hurlingham Media. The products and services advertised are not necessarily endorsed by or connected with the publisher or the Hurlingham Polo Association. The editorial opinions expressed in this publication are those of individual authors and not necessarily those of the publisher or the Hurlingham Polo Association.

Hurlingham magazine welcomes feedback from readers. To ensure that you continue to receive a copy of Hurlingham, go to our website and fill in the address form.

Hurlingham Media County Hall Riverside Building London SE1 7PB Tel: (44) 20 7152 4040 Fax: (44) 20 7152 4001 email: hurlingham@hpa-polo.co.uk www.hurlinghammedia.com HURLINGHAM, (ISSN TBC), is published four times a year by Hurlingham Media, County Hall, Riverside Building, London SE1 7PB and is distributed in the USA by SPP, 75 Aberdeen Road, Emigsville, PA. 17318-0437.

Periodicals postage paid @ Emigsville, PA. POSTMASTER: send address changes to HURLINGHAM, c/o PO Box 437, Emigsville, PA 17318-0437.

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4 Ponylines A round-up of the latest news, views and gossip from around the international polo circuit

11 Amateur of the Season Adrian Kirby, patron of Atlantic, showed his goal-scoring prowess against mighty Dubai and aims for gold next year

FEATURES

12 Nerves of Steel Judith Keeling looks at recent medical and scientific advances in helping those with spinal cord injuries

16 Pony Power It’s the horses that make the difference in polo. Adolfo Cambiaso selects the best mounts from the 2005 British season

20 Country House Polo There’s a growing movement within the world of polo. Supporters believe it’s something to treasure. By Yolanda Carslaw

24 Polo Olé!

Sotogrande is an expensive Spanish resort increasingly playing host to exceptional polo, reports Herbert Spencer

28 Growing Pains What does it take for a young girl to become a powerful polo player? A great deal, says Clare Milford Haven

Nicolas Antinori, left, and Piki Díaz Alberdi in action at the 2005 Gold Cup final

40 Testing Time

55 British Polo Championships

England’s national team failed to live up to expectations in its all-pro, high-goal appearances at home internationals

Sky television are not the only ones to be impressed by the second BPC tournament

42 High Drama

Polo in Austria is a throw-back to a different era. The nightlife isn’t bad either

The Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup was hot, tense and fearless. For the Dubai team, it was also a triumph

56 Viennese Whirl 58 The French Connection

46 Queen’s Cup

Hats off to the 111th Paris Open, one of Europe’s most decorative tournaments

That small bowl presented by the Queen is every amateur patron’s dream in Windsor Great Park

60 Coast to Coast

48 Prince Of Wales Trophy

The focus of the high-goal season in North America swung from East to West

Aspiring teams use the kickoff high goal tournament of the season to test their players and ponies.

62 All Change

50 Warwickshire Cup

63 Tsar Quality

THE ACTION

This season’s longest-serving patron wins high goal’s oldest cup at the country’s oldest club

The third Moscow Polo Cup shows that the sport in Russia is in good spirits

36 Sudden Death Thriller

52 A Season to Savour

64 Letters to the Editor

The 8 to 18-goal tournaments live up to all expections in the summer of 2005

Readers’ views and news

Yolanda Carslaw first watched polo from her pram while her father played low and mediumgoal at Cowdray Park in the 1970s. This proved useful when she joined Horse & Hound, first as polo editor and then news editor. Recently, she left to go freelance. Her first sporting passion is skiing (she has raced and taught) but she plays polo and hunts with the Surrey Union foxhounds.

In 1992, 17-year-old Argentine Adolfo Cambiaso became the youngest player ever to reach polo’s maximum handicap of 10 goals. Still at 10, aged 30, and considered the world’s best player, he admits that his success is due ’70 percent’ to the ponies he rides – about which he writes in this issue of Hurlingham. Adolfo is married to Maria and they have a daughter, Mia.

32 Close Encounters Safari on horseback is one of life’s great adventures – but this one is not for beginners.

By Midge Todhunter

England and Australia go head to head at this year’s star-studded Cartier International at Smith’s Lawn

Midge Todhunter has won flat races, hurdles, team chases, and crosscountry. He was also a professional huntsman with the Cumberland Farmers foxhounds. Now a journalist and photographer, he has contributed to publications worldwide. He says encounters with a raging bull rhino, snarling grizzly bears, and screaming wild boars, hold no comparison to the fearsome hostilities evident on the polo field.

For the first time in more than 100 years, polo returns to Chester Racecourse

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news… views… gossip…

James Blunt performs.

Right: Sienna Miller. Below: Bianca Jagger

ALAN DAVIDSON

Show time!

It was a great day – and a fine night. Never mind the hard-fought action on the field between England and Australia, battle continued afterwards at the Cartier International as Chinawhite and the Official Players Marquee Party (OPMP) went head-to-head in their respective tents.

Chinawhite got off to a solid start but it was the OPMP which possibly just sneaked it – thanks largely to chart-topping James Blunt, who was persuaded to do a star turn by his old Harrow school chum Jack Kidd.

This year, Kidd teamed up with party organisers Smyle and together they had promised the mother of all parties. No one was disappointed – not least when Blunt (who earlier had been presented to the Queen in the Royal Box, along with Cate Blanchett and Bianca Jagger – who must, temporarily have abandoned her anti-establishment principles) took to the stage shortly after 9pm.

‘James agreed to do a 45-minute set because we were at school together,’ said Kidd. ‘It was a hell of a coup.’ Blunt, 28, served in Kosovo as a captain in the Life Guards. He also stood sentry over the Queen Mother’s coffin and rode as Sovereign’s Escort at Trooping the Colour. Whether or not he will ever be tempted to get back on a polo pony is unclear – but it wouldn’t do the sport’s image any harm if he did.

Meanwhile, Sienna Miller used the Cartier International as a means of telling anyone who was interested that the hiatus with her fiancé Jude Law was not the end of the world. Far from it. She was pictured kissing her ex-boyfriend Orlando Bloom and was then seen entwined with the brooding Lord of the Rings star in the Chinawhite tent.

That was a bit of a coup as well. So, honours even for the two party hosts – and roll on next year.

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…from the ponylines

The Hurlingham Polo Association and its member clubs, players and supporters have been raising money to help make up a £450,000 deficit in the £1.5 million Animals in War Memorial project. The monument, dedicated to all animals killed in war and civil strife, was unveiled by the Princess Royal in London’s Park Lane last year. It was originally conceived by author Jilly Cooper and former polo player Andrew Parker-Bowles, with Princess Anne as the memorial’s patron. In the Great War alone, many hundreds of conscripted polo ponies died in battle or from starvation or disease. The HPA’s fund-raising goal is £10,000 and, when it is reached, the association’s name will be carved onto the monument. A donation form for members can be downloaded from www.hpa-polo. co.uk. Other donations can be sent to Animals in War Memorial Fund, 71 Wilton Road, London SW1V 1DE.

Anyone for golf?

A group headed by Isla Carroll patron John Goodman, owner of International Polo Club Palm Beach, has bought the nearby 36-hole Wellington Golf & Country Club, known for its beautiful lakes and canals links. ‘We’re thinking about adding golf to the attractions for our members at the polo club, Goodman said on a recent visit to London.

Out to grass Wicklow Polo Club’s three-man arena events are well known throughout Europe and on both sides of the Atlantic, with regular participation from clubs including Newport, Rhode Island. Now owner Mickey Herbst has installed a new regulation grass ground at his club on Ireland’s east coast south of Dublin.

Polo rocks Music and polo impresario Bryan Morrison is pulling out all the stops to make his December arena polo at Olympia the sport’s biggest-ever central London bash.

‘Our Cartier London International will feature an England v USA match at the highest level of the three-man game, equivalent to 28 goals in polo on grass,’ says Morrison. ‘There will also be a celebrity exhibition game with the likes of musicians Mike Rutherford and Kenney Jones, and Kenney’s group, The Jones Gang, will be playing. We are planning pantomime-type entertainment for the children and, for the grown-ups, a party

by Chinawhite.’ Morrison hopes to fill the 7,000-seater main arena and attract 4,000 to the après-polo festivities.

Tickets can be bought from www.polo-rocks.com.

CENTAUR

REX FEATURES

War horses

Philip unveiled The Duke of Edinburgh showed obvious delight when the Queen unveiled a halflife-sized bronze statue of him making a nearside backhand from his once favourite pony, Portano, before 1,200 guests at a cocktail party celebrating the Golden Jubilee of Guards Polo Club. The statue, standing 10-feet tall on its plinth, is a replica of a small bronze the Queen gave him on their 25th wedding anniversary, the year after he retired from the sport.

The club commissioned the statue in appreciation of the prince’s 50 years as its president.

The

Love of My Life…

Mark Tomlinson, 6-goal handicap, member of England team and played for Oaklands Park, which reached this year’s Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup Semi Final Pony’s name: Veintecinco Age: 14 Sex: Mare Breed: Homebred Colour: Chestnut Height: 15HH Origin: England We bred Veintecinco on our farm near Beaufort Polo Club in Gloucestershire. My mother [Claire Tomlinson] breeds most of our polo ponies. Veintecinco was given to me when she was 5 years old. I brought her on and played her. In fact she played her very first competitive chukka with me in the final of the Royal Windsor Cup held at Guards Polo Club. That was roughly eight years ago. It is still my most memorable moment with her. Whenever I play her she

gives her all to the game. She has such a light mouth and responds instantly. She is fantastic to stop and turns on a sixpence.

The only down side is that she could do with another gear. Her acceleration is great but she is lacking in top speed. She wins plays because of her agility. I knew she was good the first time I played her; she took to it like a duck to water, such a natural talent. I usually keep Veintecinco on the sidelines during a match and get on her towards the end of a chukka and play her for the remaining couple of minutes. I may do that 3 or 4 times during a match. She has a brilliant temperament, very mellow.

Nothing phases her. I would trust her with a patron or a nervous rider because she is so good natured. She is very cuddly. I can’t walk past her stable without opening the door and going in and giving her a cuddle.

I have successfully bred 4 or 5 foals from her, so hopefully she and I can continue our partnership for another couple of years and when I retire her one of her offspring will be ready to take over.

Antje Derks

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TROPHY AND MEDAL COURTESY THE HURLINGHAM CLUB

Polo trophy and medal presented at the 1908 London Olympics, and a poster from the 1936 Berlin Olympiad when the sport was last included in the games.

The Olympic challenge Standing proudly in a glass case in the Polo Bar of the Hurlingham Club in Fulham is an impressive silver trophy that was presented to the English Roehampton team that won the event in the 1908 London Olympics. What are the chances of that trophy, or a new one, being played for when the Olympics return to the capital in 2012?

Polo, part of the Olympics from 1900 to 1936, is currently on the International Olympic Committee’s list of officially recognised sports, but has yet to be reinstated in the games themselves, including the 2012 Olympiad. But polo’s governing bodies are hopeful that the IOC and the London organising committee might accept it as an historical and quintessentially English game that could be played on the periphery of the 28 featured sports.

Ambassador Glen Holden, president of the Federation of International Polo (FIP) – which is recognised by the IOC as representing the sport worldwide – is enthusiastic.

‘As soon as I heard the news that London had won the bid to hold the 2012 Olympics,’ says Holden, ‘I e-mailed Christopher Hanbury [chairman of the Hurlingham Polo Association] urging him to serve as point man in possible discussions with the London organisers. There could be no better place to associate our sport with the games in one way or another. England

is the font of modern polo from where it spread around the world and England remains one of the three greatest poloplaying countries.”

Hanbury immediately appointed HPA Steward Nicholas Colquhoun-Denvers to explore the best way to make approaches to the London Organising Committee.

‘It’s never too early to start,’ says Colquhoun-Denvers, ‘but we must come up with some concepts that might appeal to Lord Coe and his team and to the IOC.’ The IOC has discontinued its policy of allowing ‘exhibition games’ as an official part of the Olympiad, so another formula would need to be found to showcase polo in 2012.

Polo has history on its side. It was being played here 25 years before the modern Olympics came into being; it was part of the Olympics before most of the other horse sports and it is one of the fastest growing sports in the country today. The game was first played in the Olympics in Paris, in 1900, then London in 1908; Ostend, Belgium, 1920; Paris, 1924; and Berlin, 1936. Recovery for the sport was slow after World War II and there were no real efforts to return it to the games until a few years ago when FIP lobbied successfully to gain recognition by the IOC. ‘We can take heart that, whilst the IOC has dropped some other sports from its “recognised” list, polo remains very much in place,’ says FIP president Holden.

Herbert Spencer

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Culture vultures VIPs of the Federation of International Polo (FIP) are boarding a luxury coach in September for a sightseeing tour on their way to the federation’s 53rd Ambassadors Cup tournament at Heiligendamm on the North coast of Germany. Hans von Maltzahn, president of the German Polo Association, organised the tour to take in Berlin and Dresden where the FIP officials and their wives will attend the opera, and Mecklenburg, the seat of aristocrat von Maltzahn.

Saddle up with... Glen Gilmore

What would you have done if you hadn’t become a polo player?

I’d have probably been a farmer, but in my dreams I would have been a professional golfer.

Best attribute on the field?

My communication as a captain and the way I distribute the ball.

Down on the ranch

Good causes Royal equestrian Zara Phillips joined her uncle, the Prince of Wales, and cousins, William and Harry, in playing chukkas for charity this summer.

Having followed in the footsteps of her mother, the Princess Royal, as a threeday event competitor, Zara was on a team of well-known eventers fighting a squad of national hunt jockeys that included Zara’s former live-in boyfriend, Richard Johnson. The chukkas, before 5,000 spectators at Tidworth Polo Club, were played on both ponies and mountain bikes, in aid of the spinal injuries charity Inspire [see page 12]. At the same Hampshire event, the day of the annual ArmyNavy game, Prince Charles and Prince Harry played against an American team that included Florida club owner John Goodman and Tim Gannon, both of whom had been US Open Championship winners. During the summer, the Prince of Wales and his sons played a

Off the field?

I hope I am a good father, husband and friend.

How do you relax?

Golf and playing with my children.

Most admired polo player?

It has to be Memo Gracida because of all the tutoring he gave me, his professionalism and the fact that he retained his 10-goal handicap for so many years.

CAREN WATCHUS

One of the USA’s most prominent polo families has been playing the American equivalent of England’s Country House Polo on their Wyoming ranches this summer. Occupying adjoining spreads are S.K. ‘Skey’ Johnston Jr., a past chairman of the US Polo Association; daughter Gillian, (who became the first woman patron to win the US Open with her Coca Cola team in 2002) and son Skeeter, whose Skeeterville team made it to the Open finals this year. The family invites friends to fly in for the weekend for matches on their polo grounds with professionals like Owen Rinehart, Miguel Novilla Astrada and Julio Arellano.

Age: 34 Nationality: Australian Polo Handicap: 7

Desert Island film, band and book?

Dumb and Dumber, AC/DC and a Playboy magazine!

Why polo?

I think polo chose me. We always had horses at home. My grandfather and father were involved with polo and so were six of my dad’s nine siblings. I started playing from a young age having learnt to ride well. Eventually I became a groom and progressed to being a professional player at 21. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Where is your favourite polo ground and why?

Ellerston Home Field in Australia. It is the best surface I have ever played on and has an amphitheatre atmosphere.

It is only used for semi’s and finals so you know you’ve made it when you canter out there.

How difficult was England to play against this summer?

England are always tough because they are a talented bunch of guys but I think we kept it together better as a team and managed to convert our opportunities.

Best polo moment this year?

There were two: winning the Royal Windsor was amazing and being handed the Coronation Cup by the Queen was unbelievable.

And the worst?

When Isobel Hayden, my patron, was injured having fractured some ribs and couldn’t play.

Any unfulfilled ambitions?

To play off scratch at golf. I would also like to improve opportunities for young Australian polo players.

How can polo’s profile be raised?

People think that polo is too expensive because wealthy individuals play the sport. I think we need to make people aware that you don’t have to be wealthy to play polo up to a certain level. Spectators often complain that the match “took place on the opposite side of the field”. Maybe playing on a smaller field would give it a more compact feel and make the sport easier to watch.

Glen Gilmore was talking to Antje Derks

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Allegra’s grand designs

The morning of this year’s Cartier International must have been a depressing sight for the organisers and sponsors.

With a torrential downpour and consequent quagmire, arriving at the Cartier tent could have been like turning up at Glastonbury. But, somehow, it was like finding an oasis (below). Inside, as 650 guests happily quaffed champagne and tucked into a three-course lunch, there was a surprising air of calm.

This tranquil atmosphere was the creation of designer Allegra Hicks (above). The talent of this 42 year old Italian mother of two caught the discerning eye of Cartier, although she says modestly: ‘Perhaps they just chose me because somebody else was unable to do it’.

By pure coincidence, the choice of Allegra Hicks at such a huge polo event could not have been more appropriate. Not only does she gain inspiration for her own designs from two countries, Argentina and India, whose histories are steeped in polo, but she is also married to fellow designer Ashley, son of the innovative interior and garden designer David Hicks and grandson of the late Lord

Mountbatten, one of the most avid and influential polo players of our time.

The 12 enormous transparent silk hangings suspended from the tent ceiling were illustrated with photographic images and diagrams from An Introduction to Polo by ‘Marco’, the humorous pseudonym under which Lord Mountbatten wrote polo’s all-time best-selling book.

The book, which was originally published in 1931, provided the first comprehensive introduction to the game and although the rules may have changed slightly, the principles still remain.

Many of Lord Mountbatten’s well known royal relations have taken up the sport due to his motivation, but his grandchildren have not been bitten by the bug, although Allegra’s daughter, Angelica, has the opportunity to play at boarding school. Allegra prefers to watch from the side-lines.

When not travelling to source new products, Allegra can be found at her shop in Pont Street where she sells everything from coffee cups to kaftans. Her customers include Brook Shields, Gwyneth Paltrow, Natasha McElhone, and Emilia Fox. With plans to open a store in New York or Los Angeles in the near future, the Hicks legacy is destined to remain an international phenomenon.

total of 17 charity exhibition matches that raised more than £900,000 for a variety of good causes.

Election fever Top officials of polo’s governing bodies tend to be elected after a consensus has been reached in committee – but former 10-goal player Frankie Dorignac faced a three-way contest when he was chosen as president of the Argentine Polo Association. Dorignac proved to be the most experienced candidate, having served in the top post once before. Following factional disputes under the presidency of the late Gonzalo Tanoira, it appears that the new president will have less of a say in the appointment of other key association officials and committees in the world’s leading polo nation.

Home from home The Hurlingham Polo Association’s headquarters is out on an Oxfordshire farm, but with so many of its volunteer officials busy in their London offices, the association has a home away from home just off Hyde Park Corner. The historic Cavalry and Guards Club at 127 Picadilly is the venue for many of the HPA’s meetings and the occasional social function.

The old Cavalry Club had occupied the mansion since 1890 and when the Guards Club lost its premises in Mayfair in 1976, the two merged to form the present club, drawing its membership from serving and retired members of the armed forces and their families. The ornate club is filled with military paintings and silver and bronze statuettes and trophies, some evoking polo’s long connections with the Army. Paintings of officers’ polo ponies at the turn of the century adorn the Members Bar and the large, silver Indian Inter-Regimental Polo Cup occupies a place of honour on the first floor landing. The start-of-season HPA Council meeting this year was held in the Balaclava Room with its big painting of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, and a champagne reception for council members and their wives was held in the Waterloo Room with its portrait of the Duke of Wellington. A dinner then followed, which, it is hoped, will become a new pre-season tradition.

Defying gravity What was 1-goal player Ed Hutley doing in full polo kit on a strange looking, fourwheeled contraption coasting down the drive at Cowdray House? He was one of 27 competitors in the fund-raising Gravity Challenge staged by Lord Cowdray, President of Cowdray Park Polo Club.

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Hurl_Ad_09 1

15/8/05 10:12:44 am

30 years of scholarships WHEN RAYMOND VERE NICOLL tragically was killed in a road accident in 1975 at the age of 16, his family and friends set up a fund to help others enjoy the game of polo while studying at the University of Virginia. This fund initially provided admissions assistance to one student per year, who was academically qualified, demonstrated an ability and interest in polo, and whose character and industry was particularly outstanding. As the Vere Nicoll Fund grew, the Virginia Polo Board was able to provide financial assistance on a case-by-case basis to Vere Nicoll Scholars.

This work continues, providing an opportunity for young people of all walks of life to experience the “Game of Kings.” For further information, please contact Virginia Polo at polo@virginia.edu or +1-434-979-0293.

‘Ed was one of several polo players amongst us,’ said Lord Cowdray. ‘He had one of the weirdest machines as well as the most distinctive racing costume.’ The event, like the Soap Box Derby in America, was for hand-built vehicles powered by gravity alone, with the winner determined by which coasted the greatest distance down a slope. ‘We allowed each com-

HOOKED on

petitor a maximum of £250 to build his or her machine,’ said Lord Cowdray. ‘The winner was Ralph Hubbard who is a veteran of another gravity event, the Cresta Run at St Moritz.’ Among those attending the charity event were the Earl and Countess of March, over from Goodwood; jazz pianist and TV host Jools Holland, and PR guru Lord Bell.

‘It was a fun event,’ said Lord

polo

TOM AIKENS, Michelin-star chef, runs his own restaurant in Chelsea.

‘I really get a great kick out of playing polo. It takes me away from my normal duties behind the kitchen stove.

It’s not just a mental game but I have to use a great deal of physical energy as well – it’s one of the reasons I go to the gym three or four times a week. I’m becoming quite obsessive about the sport. I am a bit of a speed freak and the adrenalin really kicks in as soon I get on the polo field. I would love to own my own pony. Thanks to the encouragement I have had from Peter Grace at Ascot Park Club, who taught me, I am now trying to put together a side, but sadly none of those I have approached to sponsor me has been interested. Perhaps that’s something for the future.’

Cowdray. “And it raised money for the White Lotus School in Ladhak in Northwest India.

Tibetan Buddhists are taught their own language and culture at the school, in an area where Indian state schools have a Hindu curriculum.’

Place your bets Punters at Beaufort Polo Club during its Country Fair were able to bet on the outcome of the all-pro Argentine Club Cup match between England and an Australian team. The bookmakers Cantor Spreadfair, one of the event’s sponsors, offered fixed odds on England, 5-6, and Australia, even, and spread betting on goals scored. More than 100 wagers were placed, at a maximum of £30, at the Cantor booth. ‘We took a few more bets on England than Australia (the winners) and we broke even on the day,’ said Chris Shillington of Cantor, an organisation more accustomed to taking bigger money in football, racing, rugby and cricket.

Ten-goal legends Memo Gracida and Gonzalo Pieres, former 10 goalers, have teamed up to run the Herradura Classic at the latter’s Ellerstina polo centre outside Buenos Aires from October 10-30. This will be the 15th polo training and coaching event run

by Mexican-American Gracida and previously held in Florida, France and Mexico. ‘This is the first time the Herradura Classic has gone to Argentina,’ said Memo.

‘We take players of any ability, train them and put them into practise games, from 16 to 30-goal level.’ Pieres has also asked Gracida to serve as coach for the Ellerstina team playing in Argentina’s high-goal season, including the Argentine Open. The 35-goal squad will include Pieres’ brothers Gonzolito and Fecundo and Pablo and Matias MacDonough.

Carolina dreamin’ Russ McCall, owner of New Bridge Polo Club in Aiken, South Carolina, is happy. Not only has he secured the 2005 USPA Gold Cup for his club, but he’s also signed up the world’s best player for his own New Bridge team for the 26-goal tournament in September/October. Things looked grim in July when Argentine 10-goaler Adolfo Cambiaso broke his wrist during the British Open. ‘But Adolfo says he will be back in condition by the time our tournament starts,’ said a delighted McCall. He has also signed Cambiaso for the big winter season in Florida next year.

Co-host for the USPA Gold Cup is Aiken’s Langdon Road Polo Club, run by 10-goaler Adam Snow and former 10-goaler Owen Rinehart.

Tournament director is Jimmy Newman, polo manager at International Polo Club Palm Beach and Santa Barbara, who has run some 15 US Opens.

We are expecting six and maybe eight teams for the first Gold Cup at Aiken,’ says McCall. ‘We’re leaving entries open as long as possible to give everyone a chance.’

Teams include his own; Fred Mannix’s Millarville from Canada; Skeeter Johnston’s Skeeterville, finalists in the 2005 Open; Gillian Johnston’s Bendabout; and, it is hoped, Peter Brant’s White Birch, current Open champions.

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Amateur of the season Name: Adrian Kirby Age: 47 Nationality: British

‘It was a hugely successful and enjoyable season but there is still room for the team to improve.

Next year, I’ve got aspirations for winning the Gold Cup’.

Adrian Kirby scoring one of four goals in the semi-finals of the Queens Cup against Dubai. This one from 80 yards.

ALICE GIPPS

ATLANTIC Adrian Kirby 1, Pablo MacDonough 8, Matias MacDonough 8, Tom Morley 5.

In 2005, Atlantic lost in the semi-finals of the Queens Cup and won the Jack Gannon, a subsidiary of the Gold Cup.

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special report

Nerves of steel A back-breaking fall is a polo player’s worst nightmare and until now there has been scant hope of recovery. But, as Judith Keeling reports, new research into spinal cord injuries is giving doctors and patients cause for optimism hen Mark Vestey was left paralysed by a riding accident 21 years ago there was no hope of a cure for him or for any of the millions of other people worldwide suffering from spinal injuries.

Doctors and scientists were all agreed that paralysis was incurable because the spinal cord and the cells inside it were incapable of regeneration. This left patients learning to live with terrible disabilities as best they could.

For those who were completely paralysed, like Vestey, it meant life in a wheelchair, their bodies lifeless from the point of the injury downwards. Extreme cases, like the actor Christopher Reeve, a quadriplegic following a horse riding accident in 1995, were unable even to breathe without a ventilator. Twenty years ago, very few scientists did research on

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spinal injuries – simply because it seemed pointless.

Now, however, scores of research centres all over the world are conducting experiments and making discoveries which offer hope to those who have suffered a wide range of disabilities in sports like polo, hunting and rugby.

‘A lot of progress has been made in recent years and scientists are now seeing that it is an exciting and worthwhile area to devote their careers to. There is an enormous amount of interesting work going on,’ says John Cavanagh, head of research for Spinal Research, the only UK charity funding research into spinal injuries.

Dangerous sports – of which polo is high on the list – carry obvious risks of injuries, including spinal breaks and fractures, brain damage and loss of limbs. Dr Robert Walton, father of star American polo player Rob Wal-

ton, who was completely paralysed after a fall playing polo, believes that although few polo players suffer serious spinal injuries, the risks are nonetheless part of the innate appeal of the sport.

‘A game like polo is attractive to certain men and women because it involves risk. If you take the risk away you wouldn’t get these men and women playing the game,’ says Dr Walton, himself a former President of the United States Polo Association.

Unsurprisingly, the Walton family has been following closely the developments in treating spinal injuries. Scientific research has focused on several key issues about why the cells in the spinal cord are unable to repair themselves.

One recent discovery is that the scar tissue formed around the site of an injury creates a physical barrier to reconnecting any nerve impulses.

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MICHAEL CHEVIS

‘I held on as long as I could, then at the last moment I decided to roll off’ ROB WALTON WAS ONE of America’s greatest polo stars when he suffered a near-fatal fall at the age of 40 while playing on the Sultan of Brunei’s fields in Malaysia in 1995. Rated 9 in Britain and 9 in the arena in the States, (8 outdoors), by a strange quirk of fate, his fall came only two weeks before Christopher Reeve’s.

He has since displayed much of the determination he once showed on the field of polo, and although in a wheelchair with some movement in his arms, is active enough to trade horses and coach polo.

‘I was taking a near-side shot,’ he says, ‘and the horse started bucking. I held on and held on as long as I could, then at the last minute I decided to roll off. At first I didn’t feel anything, then all of a sudden I couldn’t move. At first I thought it was temporary – I didn’t realise I had injured my spinal cord. It was only after I had had tests in hospital that they told me and I had to come to terms with being in a wheelchair.’

Walton was taken first to hospital in Malaysia, then at the insistence of his South African polo playing friend Joe Henderson, on to better equipped hospitals in Singapore.

He was diagnosed as having a C4 fracture – on the fourth column of his spinal cord, and is paralysed for life.

‘I was more fortunate than most people in that I came to terms with my disability really quickly,’ he says.

Researchers have also discovered it may contain certain substances which block re-growth in damaged nerve fibres. A number of scientists are examining different aspects of this problem, including a team from Kings College, London, headed by Professor Stephen McMahon, which has discovered that an enzyme called chondroitanase (cor), is very effective at digesting scar tissue material.

In trials involving rats, they found that those injected with chondroitanase recovered an encouraging degree of mobility.

Most spinal injuries do not sever the whole spinal cord. In many cases, some of the nerves in the surrounding area remain intact, as least for a while.

However, when neurons in the spinal cord do die, it sets off a series of events that cause the damaged area to enlarge. Some scientists are now studying ways to limit the spread of this secondary damage – like BioAxone, a Canadian company which is conducting clinical trials on a compound it hopes will reduce the neuron death that occurs following a spinal injury.

At the University of Virginia, scientists have discovered that injections of a compound called Adenosine have helped semi-paralysed rats to recover mobility. Their experiments have shown that Adenosine blocks the inflammation and damage which the body’s own immune system creates following a spinal cord injury. Researchers saw

MIKE ROBERTS

The tumble was during a Gold Cup match in a previous year. The player involved was Gillian Johnston patron of Coca Cola. Neither she nor the horses were hurt. It was in the last chukka. She remounted and scored the winning goal.

The Queen presents Walton with a medal at Smith’s Lawn

Rob Walton with his son

But he was shocked to find how the costs of his treatment escalated. The sheer expense of his medical bills meant he ran through his private health insurance policy very quickly indeed. And then there were the costs of rehabilitation, physiotherapy and he needs to employ someone 24 hours a day to help him perform the mundanities of life.

‘The single most difficult thing has been finding someone responsible and good, who I can live close to and who is affordable,’ he says.

But Walton also experienced the generosity of the polo-playing community in helping him meet his bills.

‘If it wasn’t for them, I would be pretty much in trouble,’ he says.

Donations from fundraising polo matches and private individuals financed his treatment at the Petrowsky Centre in Orange County, California, where functional stimulation treatment (involving using electrodes to move and strengthen muscles) helped him regain use of his right arm which means he can use a wheelchair and feed himself.

Prince Jefri of Brunei also made generous donations towards his treatment and he benefits from a regular fundraising event at Palm Beach in Florida for injured players.

‘People have been very generous to me and I’m hugely grateful for it,’ he says.

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THE MOMENT MARK VESTEY hit the ground after being thrown from his horse while hunting with the Heythrop Hunt in Gloucestershire, he knew he had irrevocably damaged his spine.

He also knew that his best option was to make sure he was treated in a specialist spinal injury clinic – and asked to be taken straight to Stoke Mandeville Hospital, because of its leading reputation in treating spinal injuries.

‘One of our farm managers in Brazil had broken his neck diving into a swimming pool and we had brought him to the UK for treatment. I’d done a lot of research on the matter and knew that Stoke Mandeville was the top place. After I fell off jumping a hedge I was conscious all the time. I knew exactly what I had done as soon as it happened,’ he says.

‘I knew it was important to go to Stoke Mandeville rather than get taken to Cheltenham Hospital which was actually the closest.’

Vestey’s injuries were so severe that he is now paralysed from the chest down. However spinal experts say that he did exactly the right thing to prevent worse complications setting in.

MICHAEL CHEVIS

For information on the UK’s 11 specialist spinal injury centres, contact the Spinal Injuries Association. See Fact Box.

Mark Vestey with wife Rosie and their daughter Nina

NIGEL PEARCE

‘I knew exactly what I had done as soon as it happened…’

dramatic results in laboratory tests on rats, which had damaged, but not completely severed, spinal cords. Many animals almost completely recovered use of their hind legs.

Other scientists are focusing on trying to understand exactly why nerve fibres cannot re-grow once damaged in the spinal cord.

Dr Stephen Strittmatter and a team at Yale University have been studying why a compound called Nogo apparently inhibits regrowth in damaged spinal tissues.

Scientists are looking to find a way to stimulate cells to re-grow in the spinal cord.

A key discovery, developed over the last 10 years by Professor Geoff Raisman, from the Institute of Neurology in London, is that cells found in the nasal cavaties which conduct our sense of smell to our brains have the power to constantly regenerate themselves naturally. When transplanted into the spinal cord of rats, these cells – called olfactory ensheathing glia – have been found to stimulate spinal nerve fibres to regrow.

As a result, the paralysed animals recovered movement in their limbs and paws.

However, clinical trials are still thought to be at least five years away.

Similar studies are also being carried out by Professor Mary Bunge and a team at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, the

world’s largest comprehensive spinal injuries research centre.

The area which has attracted the most media attention, largely thanks to the tireless lobbying of Christopher Reeve – who died last year – has been developments into embryonic stem cells, dubbed the body’s “self-repair kit.”

Stem cells are the body’s “master cells” – blank, uncommitted cells, which given the right stimulus, have the potential to become any type of tissue in the body – perhaps the very nerve cells that could mend a spinal cord.

We all start life as a tiny cluster of these all-purpose cells, which is why scientists think that stem cells collected from human embryos just a few days old could hold the key to the miracle that Christopher Reeve campaigned for. Britain is spearheading such work worldwide, but in many countries it has been bitterly opposed by religious and pro-life groups.

In the United States, President George Bush has banned use of federal money for embryonic stem cell research, although in some centres, like Stanford, privately funded research is continuing.

And despite the overall optimism about the last decade of medical advances, all researchers are keen not to raise unrealistically high hopes for a cure.

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Adolfo Cambiaso goes down in the 2005 British Open. This time it was only a broken wrist.

As a spokeswoman for the Christopher Reeve Foundation says,: ‘It’s important to note that if by ‘cure’ you mean full return to the way a person was before injury or disease, that may be asking more than the research can deliver – for now. In the short term it’s more likely to mean better bowel and bladder and perhaps sexual function for people with paralysis, reduced pain, improved breathing and hand function for quadriplegics. Some people may gain functional walking; some might even be able to toss out their wheelchairs.’

Of more immediate help, especially to the partially paralysed, have been developments in physiotherapy like weight assisted treadmill training. This involves the patient being suspended in a harness above a treadmill while a physiotherapist moves his limbs in order to help the body to relearn to walk. The theory is that walking requires very little effort from the brain and that as the spinal cord has a memory, repeated use of certain muscles can cause the body to relearn how to move. The treatment, pioneered by Professor Reggie Edgerton at the University of California, is particularly effective in helping those who are partially

paralysed to move better. But it is also useful for quadriplegics because it helps to stop their muscles wasting away.

Another area of medical advance has been the use of electrical impulses to stimulate muscle movement. Researchers at the Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville Hospital have had successful results in helping those with partial paralysis to regain some use of their limbs. A magnetic coil of wire, resembling a doughnut on a stick, is held above the patient’s head, creating a magnetic field. By emitting magnetic pulses, it can send signals down the spinal cord using nerve pathways that are partially intact, stimulating the muscles to move. Because the magnetic pulses are stronger than signals the brain would send, the muscles move more strongly than if you were trying to move them voluntarily. Repeated therapy strengthens the nerve pathways, making it easier for patients to move their muscles voluntarily.

All this costs money. Government funds are used to finance research in the field, but often for general projects and not specifically for cures into spinal paralysis. ‘One of the problems with spinal cord injury is that the big drug companies have no incentive to develop a cure. There are too few incidences for it to be worthwhile and lucrative for them. So foundations like the Christopher Reeve Foundation and Spinal Research are very, very important – they get work done that otherwise wouldn’t be done,’ says Joel Linden, a researcher into spinal cord injury at the University of Virginia.

Fortunately, over the past decade spinal research has attracted some high-profile, wealthy and hardworking campaigners. In April, actor Tommy Lee Jones and the US TV star John Walsh competed in a two-chukka polo match at Palm Beach to raise funds for the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis, the fundraising arm of the Miami Project. This summer several British polo clubs, like the Kirtlington, held events with profits going to spinal research. Zara Phillips has been hugely supportive, raising money in Australia and in

Britain to help the cause.

Waghi El-Masry, director of the Midland Centre for Spinal Injuries, at Oswestry, says; ‘With a spinal injury, it is not only the spinal cord which can be damaged. All the body’s internal systems: cardiovascular, digestive, urinary, blood and fertility can be affected.

‘A paralysed person also does not react to treatment in the same way as a non-paralysed person, partly because they have lost sensation. It can be easy for someone who is not a spinal specialist to miss associated injuries in the days following an accident, because most doctors rely on what the patient complains of to help them diagnose.’

A district hospital, for instance, serving half a million patients, may only see between five and eight patients with back problems a year, ranging from relatively minor ones to complete paralysis.

Mr El-Masry, who is chairman of the British Association of Spinal Cord Injury Specialists, stresses that many patients who are referred to a specialist unit within two days of their injury, can recover a lot of movement and even learn to walk again, depending on the severity of their injury.

‘All totally paralysed patients remain paralysed for life but if someone comes to me within 48 hours of injury with paralysis from the neck down but with some flicker of movement in one or two toes, the chances of them walking again are 80 per cent.

‘If someone comes to me within 48 hours with no movement from the neck down, but feeling pinprick sensations, the chances of them walking are 70 per cent.’

W. Dalton Dietrich, scientific director of the Miami Project said recently: ‘It is more and more clear to me that one simple discovery is not going to directly lead to a cure for paralysis. The concept that one study will uncover the “silver bullet” that will lead to successful regeneration and a cure for paralysis is not likely to materialize. On the contrary, a number of small steps, each bringing us closer to a cure, are most likely the means by which our goals will be met.’ ■

FACT BOX ■ International Campaign for Cures of Spinal Cord Injury Paralysis (ICCP) is the umbrella body of 9 worldwide charities in Britain, Australia, France and Japan funding research into paralysis. Contact www.campaignforcure.org ■ Spinal Research +44 1483 989786, www.spinal-research.org is a UK charity funding research into spinal injuries ■ Christopher Reeve Foundation +1 973 379 2690, www.christopherreeve.org ■ Spinal Injuries Association +44 845 678663, www.spinal.co.uk a UK organization providing information and support to anyone with a spinal injury ■ Association for Spinal Injury Research (ASPIRE), +44 208 954 5759, www.aspire.org.uk is a registered charity working to help people with spinal injuries to regain as much independence as possible

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high-goal season However talented their riders, it’s the horses that make the difference in polo.

Argentine 10-goaler Adolfo Cambiaso, widely considered the world’s best player, identifies the ponies bringing victory to high-goal teams in England this season

pony power

n Formula One racing, the teams with the right tyres on their cars are the ones that win the race. In polo, the teams that have the right ponies under their players are those that mount the winners’ podium. It’s a sport in which 70 per cent or more of winning or losing is down to how well a player is mounted. You need the right ponies not just for the star players, but for every member on the team, and enough mounts to last through two and sometimes three high-goal tournaments in just a couple of months or so. That is a lot of high-pressure polo for the horses.

The two top pony strings in England this season were probably equal to those being played in the big tournaments in Argentina, including the Argentine Open, or in the US Open in Florida. One was that of my team, Dubai, patroned by Al Albwardy.

We entered three high-goal tournaments and won the two most important: the Queens Cup at Guards and the British Open for the Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup at Cowdray Park.

The author at Dubai team’s Berkshire stables with champion Small Person, about to load the pony up for a well-deserved rest in pastures after victory in two major tournaments.

HERBERT SPENCER

I

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The other outstanding string was that of Urs Schwarzenbach’s Black Bears, who were finalists in those two contests and winners of the Warwickshire Cup at Cirencester Park.

For both Dubai and Black Bears, it was the right ponies – and enough of them – that got both through the league matches and into the finals.

Stefano Marsaglia’s Azzurra team, who beat us in the Gold Cup last year, also had a strong string this year that enabled them to win the Prince of Wales Trophy at the Royal County of Berkshire, first high-goal tournament of the season. Azzurra had the third best string in England this season.

There were some really outstanding ponies.

It is difficult to single out one as the best of the season, but I would perhaps choose Presumida from the Black Bears string, played by Javier Novilla Astrada in the fifth chukka of the Gold Cup final.

This 16-year-old grey mare, an American Thoroughbred, originally came from 10-goaler Carlos Gracida and was one of 18 ponies that the Black Bears patron bought from Hubert Perrodo, whose team won the Queens Cup last year.

The Black Bears string was greatly strengthened by this purchase, and the team played five or six of their new mounts in all their important matches. As second best I would choose Small Person, a Thoroughbred New Zealand mare, 10-year-old dark bay about 15 hands, that I have played for the past two seasons in England. She has everything. She quite deservedly won Best Playing Pony in the Queens Cup this year, a true champion.

She has everything.

After I was brought down by a foul and broke my wrist in the fourth chukka of the Gold Cup semi-final, Small Person went on to do well in the final, ridden by my substitute, Lucas Monteverde. Although one might think that ponies should be matched to individual players, or to the positions they play, this really isn’t true. A good horse is a good horse, a champion is a champion, and can be ridden by any good player to great effect.

Either of the Novilla Astrada brothers could ride Small Person and score goals.

Third on my list would be Mujeramante, also from our Dubai string and ridden by me. She is another American Thoroughbred, a dark bay mare about 15 hands high, and is one of my favourite mounts. Black Bear’s Thoroughbred grey mare Shimmer, ridden by Javier Novilla Astrada, is another outstanding pony. Owned by Urs, Shimmer had 14 starts in races in New Zealand and was a six-furlong winner before being trained as a polo pony

by Tony Devcich, one of the leading players there. There are of course many other excellent

mounts I could mention, like my teammate Piki Diaz Alberdi’s Indiana that won Best Playing Pony in the Gold Cup. The overall quality of high-goal ponies in England this season was higher than I can ever remember.

Javier has suggested that ponies have to be more well-rounded in English high goal than in, say, the big Florida tournaments. There is more contact, more close-in action in England than in America, where Bermuda grass

grounds in consistently good weather produce a more open and racing game. Its an interesting question: are different types of ponies required in different countries?

Well, I would be delighted if I could play my English string in every big high-goal tournament, including the Argentine and US Opens. For now, however, Small Person, Mujeramante and the others are having a welldeserved rest in English pastures. ■

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ANDREW SEAVILL

Thoroughbreds wanted English polo player and trainer Andrew Seavill agrees with Adolfo Cambiaso’s choice of the season’s best ponies. He found 2005 champions Small Person and Indiana through the unusual expedient of placing an advertisement in a daily newspaper.

‘I placed wanted ads in the racing section of the New Zealand Herald, asking for unbroken two-year-old Thoroughbreds,’ Seavill said, ‘and then travelled all over the North Island looking at the horses. Small Person and Indiana were in the first bunch I bought.’ He brought the horses back to England and made them into polo ponies.

‘Even after they’ve been taught the game, you can’t put young horses into high-goal polo straightaway,’ Seavill says. ‘It takes patience, however great a pony you think you’ve got.’ He believes the average high-goal pony only reaches its prime at age 10 and the great ones are usually between 10 and 16 years.

‘A really famous, stand-out pony, like Chesney in the Nineties, only comes along every generation or so,’ Seavill said. ‘Small Person is still developing and could be in that class one day.’

It was Seavill who also brought Reeba to England. He originally purchased this Thoroughbred in New Zealand for a client here. Reeba, played by 10-goaler Bautista Heguy of Azzurra, was named Best Playing Pony in the Prince of Wales Trophy tournament final this season.

New Zealand Thoroughbreds also won best pony in the Warwickshire Cup and Coronation Cup – a clean sweep for Kiwi mounts.

POLOLINES/HERBERT SPENCER

Above: Black Bears’ Javier Novilla Astrada aboard Presumida, chosen by author as best from the English season.

Right: Shimmer, from the same team’s string.

Top right: Andrew Seavill with Small Person as a two-year-old before polo training.

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home affairs Anyone fed up with the win-at-all-costs attitude should seek out an invitation to Country House Polo. It’s a growing movement and a reminder of gentler times. Yolanda Carslaw is charmed wo sets of players line up in the middle of a Gloucestershire polo ground and an umpire throws in the ball. There follows a few misjudged swipes, hooked sticks and clumsy jostling for position before someone finally gets hold of a decent pass.

The commentator is getting excited, while 50-odd spectators keep one eye on the action, another on drinks, children, fellow bystanders.

It’s a pretty English picture – a low-goal tournament at the height of summer, perhaps.

But wait a minute. Aren’t they all behaving rather politely? Where is the raised arm? The raised voice? And why is just one player per team a nimble, skilful expert?

Why do I keep seeing them selflessly passing the ball up to their less proficient team-mates?

And, hang on, don’t most of the chaps on the field usually run their own teams, with three pros each? In that case, what are they doing here, playing their socks off, virtually all by themselves?

The answer is that this match, at Colin Dhillon’s Trewsbury Farm, near the source of the River Thames outside Cirencester, is by no means regular low-goal: it’s Country House Polo, an “alternative” to club polo.

Three amateurs and one three or four-goal professional make up each team, and everyone is invited to a sociable tea or lunch afterwards.

T

But most importantly, Country House Polo is played without pressure or tension.

The movement’s founder, Nigel a’Brassard, an investment banker and 0-goal player, originally put his idea to a group of private ground-owners three years ago.

‘Country House Polo was started to recreate what I think polo used to be like,’ he says. ‘When I first took up the sport in the early 1980s, it was competitive, but it was done in a gentlemanly spirit.

Above: Colin and Jacqueline Dhillon hosts of the Trewsbury Farm (pictured right) Country House Polo day.

ALL PICTURES JASON BUCKNER

Left: Alex Olmos and Nigel a’ Brassard battle for possession of the ball.

Back ‘Now, most patrons – of all nationalities and ages, across all levels – are only interested in winning. And they want to win at almost any cost, and that takes a lot of the enjoyment out of it. Meanwhile the pros have another match, so they jump in the car and drive off.

Before, we’d all go to the bar and talk about the game. The whole thing has become much less gentlemanly.’

Colin Dhillon’s home is one of Country House Polo’s dozen or so venues across the south of England. Others include Black Bears patron Urs Schwarzenbach’s grounds near Henley, which hosted the first Country House Polo fixture two years ago; the Lloyd Webbers’ Watership Down estate, HPA chairman Christopher Hanbury’s Longdole and the Vesteys’ Foxcote, both in Gloucestershire.

The day I visit, the Dhillons’ two immaculate fields are hosting not only six chukkas of polo, but a village fête – which means there is more of an audience than usual. The polo runs

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to the future alongside pony rides, football training with former England captain Tony Adams, who lives nearby, tours of a fire engine and polo’s compulsory partner: a lamb asado crackling away under the supervision of half a dozen South Americans.

The setting is idyllic: alongside the ground is a leafy avenue; on the other side, thick hedges; at the end, a pretty copse around which ponies are exercising on a sandy canter track. Cottonwool clouds race overhead.

The three teams’ nine amateurs include a former fighter pilot, a Cresta Run recordholder, a clutch of low- and medium-goal patrons, Country House Polo secretary Lavinia Black and Nigel a’Brassard. They have forked out about one-third of what they would pay for a low-goal club match. This week, the current and former high-goal regulars – Urs Schwarzenbach, David Jamison, Alex Ebeid (patron of the Falcons more than 20 years ago) – happen to be absent.

‘A lot of amateurs who play Country House Polo have won the Gold Cup. In fact, at one game, I was the only one who hadn’t,’ says a’Brassard, who keeps a beautifully handwritten record of every game in a

Aren’t they all behaving rather politely? Where is the raised arm?

The raised voice?

And why is just one player per team a nimble, skilful expert?

hardback book.

The pros at Trewsbury are Englishman Julian Appleby, Argentine veteran Alex Olmos and young Indian hotshot, Raghav Raj Singh. They are under instructions to pass the ball rather than dribble it; to play back shots rather than turning the ball; to keep the game moving and open it up.

They do, and as a result, they make the amateurs shine.

‘I have seen people who have been playing for years play their best games ever at these matches,’ says a’Brassard. Raghav Raj Singh adds: ‘You make the others play as much as you can.’

Other regular pros include Gus Prentice, Rob Cudmore and Tim Keyte. Prentice says: ‘You go hard and fast but don’t dominate the game. It’s classical English style. And you never query an umpire’s decision.’

At Trewsbury, the match itself is low-key.

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Simon England taking the ball upfield with Jan Stanek in attendance

gets plenty of cracks at the ball. About half the crowd at the fete watches inquisitively at the sidelines, obediently treading in at half-time.

What is remarkable, though, is that nobody – even the players – is quite sure which of the three teams has won, despite a large, obvious scoreboard. And when we gather round for the prize-giving, the winning side is uncertain who its captain is.

A’Brassard has an antique, intricately decorated cup to hand over – he collects polo memorabilia – but more entertaining are the special awards. This week, film DVDs go to the best defender (In the Line of Fire), the highest scorer (A Fistful of Dollars), and best

riding skills (Blazing Saddles). Lavinia Black, as the only female on the field, is named best woman player and Australian Ian Archibald, mid-way through a European tour, best (and only) visitor.

In the Dhillons’ handsome farmhouse afterwards, players descend on a dining table laden with egg and cress sandwiches, scones, cake and flapjacks.

Discussing the game, the amateurs agree that the most important thing they get from Country House Polo is no-pressure practice.

Cosmetic surgeon Jan Stanek, who plays up to 12-goal himself and backed an all-pro team of young Britons in this year’s Cowdray Park Gold Cup, says: ‘Playing for real, you’re affected by the psychology of competition. Things can get nasty, with swearing and so on. That never happens here.

Also, the pitches are pristine, which is not always the case with club polo, so we stand a far better chance of hitting the ball.’

David Wildridge, a former fighter pilot who shadowed Russian bombers during the Cold War, says: ‘Here, you are not trying to prove anything. There’s a place for all types of Above right: The captain of the winning team Eddie Miller with the 1905 Madras Polo Club Trophy Above left: The Little Gladiators with their giant ear buds Left: A Lancia that brings back fond memories

polo, but at my stage of life, this is where you have the most fun. And there’s always a fifth chukka – meaning the social event afterwards.

That’s when any competitiveness begins.’

Not surprisingly, Country House Polo is gaining a loyal following, with 61 players last season – compared to 20-odd the first year – and a waiting list most weekends.

Organisers say it is running at full capacity, although I gather those who could offer their own private ground might still wangle an invitation. However, participants do see potential for duplicate activity in other parts of the country – wherever there is a cluster of private fields.

‘Other people ought to do it in other areas,’ says Colin Dhillon. ‘What Nigel a’Brassard has done is exceptional; now it could be spread around.’ Inglesham is already catching on that there’s a market for an alternative to regular club polo, and has launched “pro-am”, a series with two pros and two amateurs per team; meanwhile Beaufort stages County Polo, aimed at novice players with limited funds or horsepower. Perhaps these ventures herald the wider resurrection of an informal, low-pressure style of polo. ■

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overseas

Polo olè!

Sotogrande on Spain’s Costa del Sol has long been continental Europe’s favourite polo destination. Now the Santa Maria club is bidding to stage international events and its status is rising, says Herbert Spencer

t must be the world’s strangest traffic intersection. Heading from Gibraltar towards Spain, your car is stopped at a red light when suddenly a huge passenger jet roars across your path. Then the traffic light turns green and you drive off, believe it or not, on a road that bisects the airport runway where the jet touched down a minute or so earlier.

There can be few more dramatic arrival points anywhere than Gibraltar International Airport. From the air, you see the coast of Morocco eight miles across the straits that divide Europe from Africa and the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean. To the north, there are the coasts and mountains of Spain’s Andalusia. As you land, the sheer face of the massive, 1,400-foot-high Rock of Gibraltar towers above you.

The airport runway in the shadow of the Rock was once the site of the now-extinct Gibraltar Polo Club. Britain’s future King George V played polo at Gibraltar in the 1880s while serving as a young Royal Navy officer with the Mediterranean Fleet, and the club was popular with Englishmen between the wars.

Sotogrande is only 15 minutes away, a

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HERBERT SPENCER

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Grooms and ponies at Santa Maria Polo Club

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COURTESY SANTA MARIA POLO CLUB

Below: Santa Maria’s main grounds straddle the Rio Guardiaro at Sotogrande

Left: Alvarito Domecq of bullfighting and ‘dancing horses’ fame with admirers at a FIP party; the late Enrique Zobel (right), Godfather of Sotogrande polo.

sprawling, 5,000-acre seaside resort that boasts multi-million pound villas, a marina crammed with luxury yachts, four golf courses – and Santa Maria Polo Club with its 11 grounds and year-round tournaments.

I visited Andalusia this spring to attend a meeting of the Federation of International Polo (FIP), watch the federation’s 52nd Ambassadors Cup tournament, and hear about Santa Maria’s ambitious, £114.7 million expansion plans on which the club is basing its bid to host FIP championships in the future. The club and the Royal Spanish Polo Federation were our hosts and their hospitality was typically Spanish, with every minute of every day filled with polo, parties and sightseeing.

On my first evening, before the polo began, I dined with FIP’s president, Californian

Glen Holden, his wife Gloria, and a party of friends that included Spain’s ambassador to France, José Maria Ullrich y Rojas. José Maria and his French-born wife live in Sotogrande when not in Paris and it was he who encouraged FIP to come to Andalusia.

‘Sotogrande itself is a real paradise,’ the ambassador said, ‘and there is so much to see and do in this region of Spain: Jerez, Ronda, the ferias, flamenco, horses, fighting bulls – and, of course, our polo.’

Some 40 years ago, only cork oak forests and small farms occupied the land at the mouth of the Rio Guadiaro on the Costa del Sol. In 1962, the giant Ayala Corporation in the Philippines began buying up the farms, one of which was named Sotogrande, and nearby land in the foothills of the Sierra Almenara.

Its goal was to create, from scratch, an upscale residential resort, quieter and more exclusive than some of its Costa neighbours. Ayala’s grand plan, in staged development, was for wide, tree-lined streets with large plots for luxury villas and a range of leisure facilities for their occupants, all within a gated and guarded community.

Robert Tyre Jones was brought in to design the first golf course near the sea and the Royal Sotogrande Golf Club opened in 1964. Soon big villas began springing up in this area of the Hurlingham 25

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resort known as Sotogrande Costa. Over the years, the resort spread into the hills with the building of new golf clubs in the Sotogrande Alto area: Valderrama (Spain’s No.1 course and home of the Ryder Cup), Almenara and, just recently, La Reserva.

Down on the coast, the developers built Puerto Santa Maria with its quayside bars, restaurants and condominiums and a marina with some 800 berths for millionaires’ big motor yachts and sailing craft. Sotogrande is now a major venue for south of Spain regattas.

Billionaire Filipino player Enrique Zobel, CEO of Ayala, was the driving force behind the development of polo at the resort. ‘It’s thanks to Enrique’s vision,’ said Nicholàs Alvarez, president of the Spanish polo federation, ‘that Spain now has one of the world’s most famous polo venues here at Sotogrande.’

The resort’s first polo ground in 1965, right on the shores of the Mediterranean, had a dramatic backdrop of the Rock of Gibraltar and the coast of North Africa in the distance.

Wealthy patrons from Europe and America and top international professionals came to play up to 28-goal polo. Well-known Englishmen were involved in running the game here in those early days: Claude Pert, long-serving polo manager of Guards Polo Club, and Jack Williams, who also served at Cirencester Park and the Brunei and Santa Barbara, California, clubs.

After a violent storm swept the beach ground away, polo moved inland, first to Paniaqua and then to the banks of the Rio Guadiaro. Today Santa Maria Polo Club has two grounds at Rio, four brand new ones at Los Piños just across the river, and five up in the foothills. The FIP Ambassadors Cup matches were played at the Rio grounds.

There is polo year-round at Santa Maria, at all levels of the game. This year the 12 teams signed up for the 20-goal Gold Cup in late summer included those of high goal patrons who competed in the British Open or US Open this year. Amongst them were England’s Roger Carlsson, Venezuela’s Victor Vargas, and Italy’s Alfio Marchini.

Santa Maria’s multi-million pound expansion plan, a long-term project, involves building two new clubhouses, residences, hotel, and commercial centre at its Los Piños grounds, which will become the club’s main facility. ‘We expect all the final planning permissions and funding to be in place by the end of this summer,’ said Luis Estrada, the club’s chief operating officer.

Sadly, the ‘Godfather’ of Sotogrande polo won’t be around to see the massive new development. Enrique Zobel was still playing here, aged 64, when in 1991 a polo accident left him a quadriplegic. He continued to

Action in FIP’s 52nd Ambassadors Cup tournament at Sotogrande. Below right: FIP group treated to a show of horses and bulls at Alvarito Domecq’s finca near Jerez de la Frontera

support the sport from his wheelchair, until he died last May, aged 77. In the Philippines, tributes to this tycoon philanthropist and maverick of his country’s business and political affairs poured in from all quarters, including President Gloria MacapagalArroyo. And at Sotogrande last August, Santa Maria honoured Enrique by inaugurating the Founder Enrique Zobel Memorial Cup, with his granddaughter, Paula, presenting the prizes.

Before leaving Sotogrande, I dropped in for a farewell drink with James Gaggero, chairman of GB Airways. James, who is a polo player and lent ponies for the FIP tournament at Santa Maria, was the first to build in the quiet and exclusive enclave of Sotogrande Alto, in 1985, and he is a passionate advocate of tourism in Andalusia. He summed up what Sotogrande is all about.

‘The men from Ayala who first conceived Sotogrande 40 years ago were consummate visionaries,’ he said. ‘It was their pioneering spirit, meticulous planning and early work that enabled a very underdeveloped part of Andalusia to become, over the years, one of the

world’s greatest resorts. The place is booming and there is still room for much growth, but the nice thing is that the older residents are still a very close-knit community.

‘As for the polo here,’ said James, ‘Santa Maria’s expansion plans are indeed impressive, and the club deserves to be awarded a major international federation event in the future.

And it’s very gratifying to see so many young members of our families, as young as eight or nine, taking up the sport. These youngsters – perhaps there is even a budding 10-goal player amongst them – are the new generation that will ensure a great future for polo at Sotogrande.’ ■ GB Airways operates 11 flights a day from London and Manchester to Gibraltar and Malaga. (0870 850 9850 www.gbairways.com).

Avis Gibraltar can be reached on 0870 6060100 www.avisworld.com.

Rooms at the San Roque Club start from 145 Euros (00 34 956 613030 www.sanroqueclub. com). For information about polo at Sotogrande, Santa Maria Polo Club call 00 34 956 610012 or visit www.santamariapoloclub.com

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FIP on the Costa The four-star San Roque Club is where the FIP officials and ambassadors were lodging.

The club property was once a holiday home of the Domecqs, the FIP President Glen sherry and polo Holden, right, and dynasty, and Patrick Seve Ballestero Guerrand-Hermès has a golf school there, run by his brother Vincente.

But there was little time for the golfers amongst FIP visitors to enjoy San Roque’s championship 18-hole course. When they were not out at polo, the federation’s key officials were closeted in meetings, working on a major rewrite of federation’s bylaws and preparing for its Council of Administration meeting at the end of their stay in Andalusia.

At the Council meeting itself, Mexico made a successful bid to hold the VIIIth FIP World Championship there in 2007 (in June the country was confirmed as the World Cup venue). FIP founder Marcus Uranga announced plans for the federation’s first high-goal tournament next year in Buenos Aires, with England, USA, Brazil, Argentina and perhaps other countries competing at up to 30-goal level. Chinese-born Californian Wesley Ru reported on meetings he had in China on developing the sport for that country’s growing and affluent business elite and Australia’s Peter Prendiville told of potential new FIP ties with polo in the United Arab Emirates.

The most surprising moment for observers at the meeting came when FIP President Glen Holden announced that he would be stepping down this year. As the summer progressed, the only candidate for the top job was Patrick GuerrandHermès, the Frenchman who organised FIP’s highly successful World Cup at Chantilly last year.

If Guerrand-Hermès is elected president at the General Assembly meeting in Buenos Aires in November, the federation’s headquarters will move from California to France, appropriate in that Europe has more polo-playing countries, clubs and players than any other continent within the FIP family.

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MICHAEL CHEVIS

talking point

Pony Club Polo player Tabitha Taylor, aged eight, on Danny

Growing pains here is a theory that polo originated as a sport played by women in Persia in the 6th century B.C. Early Mughal paintings in India also depict scantily clad courtesans playing alongside men on wonderful, ornately tacked-up ponies.

Today, in the macho world of Argentina, polo’s spiritual home, female players are regarded as mildly eccentric. Over here they are observed with a mixture of bemusement and admiration. Nina Vestey, England’s highest handicapped woman at 3 goals and last year’s winner of the HPA’s Best Young Player believes that any prejudice rapidly diminishes once the game is in play. ‘I think if real prowess is shown on the field, then dues are given, but women must play even better than their male counterparts to gain respect,’ she says.

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This year, out of the 2,348 HPA registered polo players in this country, 652 are women, representing a 28 per cent slice of the polo playing cake – a figure that has remained pretty consistent over the past five years or so.

In the last year, over 46 per cent of newcomers to the sport were female. Added to this, the number of women’s tournaments has grown.

There is also an established circuit worldwide of invitational women’s tournaments with one being held practically every month.

In June, the Beaufort Polo Club held a women’s international game which, at 10goal level, was the highest rated female game ever played. Competing against the home team of Nina and Tamara Vestey, and Claire and Emma Tomlinson were Sunny Hale (4, The four Graces: a ready-made team

MIKE ROBERTS

Pony Club Polo is full of girls swinging mallets, but few go on to play at a high level. Should more be done to help women in polo? Asks Clare Milford Haven

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Play to Win.

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the highest rated female in the world and the first woman to win the US Open), Lesley Ann Masterton Fong (2), Marianella Castagnola (2) and Kirsty Walters (2). England won by 61⁄2 -1. ‘The standard of play was fantastic – fast moving and surprisingly good to watch!’ says Nina Vestey.

So, with all this apparent increase in the unbridled enthusiasm of women leaping merrily into the saddle, why is it that after pony club level, where there’s a huge interest from girls, the male/female ratio differs so widely?

Some sceptics might say that it is because women discover boys at that age and their beloved ponies are forced to take a back seat.

Or is it because there is little enthusiasm shown from the governing body of polo?

Charles Fraser, HPA Steward and Chairman of the Development Committee disputes this: ‘Interestingly, more girls than boys apply successfully for overseas bursaries that take

promising youngsters abroad, to Argentina in particular, to develop their polo skills. These fast track scholars are chosen from a long list submitted after the Pony Club championships at Cowdray in August. The selection is limited to 6 to 8 players, and the criteria is that the candidates should have the potential to get to 5 goals by the time they are 23. Although there is no sex discrimination in the choosing, it is rare for girls to achieve a handicap above 1-2 goals.’

The fact remains that, physically, women are challenged in a sport that is extremely demanding, dangerous and rough. What they lack in strength, they have to compensate for in riding skills, mental dexterity and courage.

As polo-playing actress Stephanie Powers points out: ‘Although the average height and weight of male polo players is pretty similar to a woman, we may not have the strength and agility. But we have the coordination and

many women ride far better than men’.

But it is not only the physical aspect of the sport that confronts the fairer sex. It is also the financial situation. If women are unlikely to get above 1-2 goals, then the chances of them becoming paid professionals are very slim. Once past the pony club stage of owning one pony and having a long-suffering parent to drive/groom/pay/pick up the pieces, how on earth is a keen young female polo player meant to keep going unless she has unlimited financial resources?

The assumption is that patrons who are female must have an over-generous ‘sugar daddy’ in the background supporting their passion.

But, more often than not, it is the women who manage to get sponsorship and an increasing number are taking the sport up as their salaries match those of their male counterparts. It is rare, but not unusual, to find a female patron, in her mid 30s, discussing hedge funds or asset

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REX FEATURES DAVID LOMINSKA

VANESSA TAYLOR

L to r: Gillian Johnston, first woman patron to win the US Open, Clare Milford Haven and Nina Vestey

management on her mobile five minutes before a game. The shift in attitude towards the working woman, added to the fact that many remain single for longer, means they have more disposable income – and polo is a great release from a high-flying job.

Rachel Bartels, a partner in the consulting firm Accenture, won the 15 goal Harrison Cup this summer. She remains optimistic for the future of women in polo: ‘I don’t think there are any limitations that a woman cannot overcome. I used to be of the school of thought that no woman could ever be a 10 goaler but I now believe that the sky’s the limit’.

In golf, the lady’s tee is roughly 10 per cent shorter than the men’s and up until last year, the handicapping system in golf gave women an advantage. In polo there is no such thing as women taking a 60 yard penalty from the 40 yard line, and they are handicapped on a

par with men. Is there a school of thought that women should have some advantages to make it easier to compete with and against men?

‘I think women would feel insulted’, says Charles Fraser. ‘They play the game because they love it and accept the rules and structure as it is. I don’t think they would want any advantages’.

One woman who didn’t need any extra help was Claire Tomlinson, undoubtedly the most famous woman in polo and once the highestrated female player in the world at 5 goals. She started playing in Oxford in the late 60s, and was instrumental in changing the game for women ten years later in the late 70s. ‘They wouldn’t let me compete in the High Goal’ she says. ‘John Cowdray had a rule that he didn’t want women to play because he thought it was embarrassing for foreign players and that it was dangerous.’

Claire, who was 3 goals at the time, called his bluff with the threat: ‘Either put me down to 0 or let me play.’ Eventually, she rounded up enough

support with a petition, including signatures from Hector Barrantes and Eduardo Moore, proving that the foreign players didn’t mind after all.

Daphne Lakin, the late Lord Cowdray’s sister who is now in her late 80s agrees that her brother was very anti women playing polo before the war, but became more accepting afterwards. ‘All polo stopped during the war and John was so keen to get polo going again that women were welcomed with open arms – but only in the low goal,’ says Daphne Lakin. ‘I was terribly lucky, had fabulous ponies provided by my brother and played for Cowdray off 1 goal. There was a nasty moment when there was talk of my going up to 2 but fortunately I didn’t or no one would have ever asked me to play again!’

For me, polo is a way of life. I have no problem playing what is perceived to be a man’s sport and I see no reason why a woman should not play as well as a man off the same handicap. Even the world’s highest handicapped player, Adolfo Cambiaso, concedes that maybe women players aren’t so bad after all. ‘I can think of other things that women do better,’ he says, ‘but then I did win the US Open with one so…’ ■ Hurlingham 31

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adventure

Close encounters Nothing compares with riding out at dawn in pursuit of elephants, leopards and lions – and confronting an angry male rhino is part of the thrill. But it’s not something for the amateur. Only expert riders should apply, warns Midge Todhunter

here he stood. Two massive tonnes of white bull rhino straddled across the track in front of us. King of all he surveyed. The bull flashed his steely glare across our group then with shuffling body language began demanding to know why we seven horse riders were wandering about on his patch?

‘Whatever you do – don’t turn and run,’ said Philip, our mounted field guide. ‘You’ll not get further than 20 yards before he has you crushed to the ground. We gotta do some negotiating here.’

Two years earlier, I’d had a close encounter with a bull rhino on the African bushveldt. That beast had come charging at me through some side bushes – circa 40kph. My horse’s natural flight instinct saved me on the day, but could I be as lucky again? I don’t play polo, but you will certainly need to be a confident rider to survive these potential

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MISSY BAILLIEU

Main picture: Ant Baber leads English players into the Limpopo bush as they track big game, left to right, Emma Tomlinson, Nina Vestey, Sophie West.

Above: Emma Tomlinson, Sophie West and Caroline Tully close in on a white rhino mum and her calf.

encounters. This is no place for beginners, and you must be capable of galloping away from dangerous situations. If not, the company won’t take you.

Bull rhinos spend most of their days away from the herd, marking their territories with great sprays of urine, and scrubbing their bottoms aggressively on tree trunks. But this was a cool, balmy evening, and our bull rhino did at least look semi at ease with the world. He had clearly just bathed (albeit in sticky mud) and he’d been grazing the central strip of grass on the track when we came meandering around the corner.

All of us knew Philip had packed a .458 Winchester magnum rifle on his saddle which would have the final say if things cut up rough.

But first we would prefer some arbitration.

And with that, Philip nominated me to join

him in approaching the big bull with a view to asking if he’d please shift his butt.

The tension grew palpable as Philip and I urged our horses ever closer until we were but a few inches from the bull rhino’s massive head. So close, I could feel the bull’s hot breath on my boot as he instinctively sought out our identity. I could see the thinking in his eyes: were we passive, or a challenge to his territory?

The next two minutes seemed the longest 120 seconds of my life. The rhino sniffed at us, looked us up and down, and then sniffed some more. We didn’t move a muscle. The bull finally concluded we were no threat – we didn’t smell, or act like a challenge to his domain.

With that, he gave a grunt, turned and slowly ambled off into the bush. Breaking wind loudly as he went.

Gerti and Philip Kusseler own and operate Wait A Little game reserve close to the Kruger Park, in South Africa. They’re a delightful and well organised couple who manage to strike a balance between not taking foolish risks, yet making each ride searching and adventurous.

My invitation to join them for the inaugural running of their new Makalali Ride promised five-star luxury in South Africa’s finest game lodges with par excellence Pan-African cuisine. And the twice-daily experience of riding top quality horses to seek out the native big game herds in the 22,000-hectare Makalali Big Game Reserve The rewards of riding this land are rapid access to the more secret places which few motorised safari clients will ever encounter.

Horseback is certainly the best way to approach the game. In a jeep safari you will do little more than peer from a distance with binoculars. But mounted on a horse with a trustworthy guide at your side, you can steadily edge closer. Some animals will have none of this. But the majority will give you the benefit of a small doubt and allow you to approach, albeit on their terms, their very private life among the herd.

Philip is the qualified guide of the mounted team. ‘Approaching animals in the wild is all about body language and understanding their comfort zones,’ he says. ‘The distance at which the animal has begun to issue clear signals tells you where you have violated his personal space.’

There’s something wildly intoxicating about riding the open savannahs of South Africa. A gallop at dawn with the Zebra herds; see a startled family of warthogs burst into action and scurry off in all directions; exploring dried-up river beds in late afternoon for Hurlingham 33

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IMAGES OF AFRICA/ALAMY

Luxury lodge at Wait A Little

deep static pools where snorting hippos bob inquisitively to the surface. And on every ride, the possibility of a thrilling encounter with one or more of the Big Five.

As an admirer of Ernest Hemmingway, I like to believe it was potential confrontations with the Big Five – elephant, (black) rhino, (Cape) buffalo, lion and leopard – which drew the great novelist and big game hunter to Africa. I envy those tales of his bohemian lifestyle which seem to relate so well in this part of Africa. A constant seeker of the ultimate in adrenalin rush (he should have played polo!), Hemingway would surely have heard how these fearsome creatures had earned their title: not for their physical size – but for the size of the fight within them.

For should the hunter wound an animal, chances are that beast will turn and run. But not the Big Five. Wound one of these fiends and they will keep on coming – head down, and in full charge mode. The hunter has but one chance of a shot to the brain to bring down one of the Big Five. Fire a wounding shot, and the enraged adversary will continue with its charge. And end the conflict… in its favour.

In Hemingway’s day, big game hunters were pioneers who cleared this mineral rich land of such dangerous animals, allowing ship loads of settlers landing at Cape Town to press ever further north. Ironically, in these modern times of adventure seeking travellers, it is the big animals which are the star attractions of Africa’s game reserves.

The rewards of riding this land are rapid access to the more secret places which few motorised safari clients will ever encounter. Horseback is certainly the best way to approach the game.

Night accommodation on Makalali is at three of the finest game lodges anywhere in Africa. And for me, the star of these is Garonga. Garonga is pure style. It’s glam without the glitz and attracts clients from all over the globe to be soothed, massaged, and gently rocked back to a state of calm. It was created in 1997 by ex-army officer Bernie Smith. A genial chap, Bernie is a proud hands-on manager of what he calls “my quiet oasis”. The ambience of the place glides along at a gentle pace, with striking attention to detail.

Bernie was there to greet us on arrival with warm face towels, and chilled home-made lemonade. And just to remind us he’s an Englishman abroad, a tray of the most delicious bacon butties arrived at our table five minutes later.

An English couple arrived during our stay to be married next day on a high platform above a nearby watering hole. Another couple from America had two nights at Garonga on their silver wedding celebrations agenda. It’s simply perfect for that special two-day occasion. My idea of bliss is a long,

lazy afternoon, a hammock in a shady spot, a gentle breeze and a bottle of the finest chilled white Burgundy that I can afford at the time. I spent my afternoons doing just that.

The new Makalali Ride is limited to small groups of six. Riding begins at 7am and stops around 11am when the midday heat is getting fierce. Afternoon tea at 3.30pm and the evening ride begins around 4pm when the grooms will have your horse tacked up and ready to mount.

Each evening ride cleverly winds up at a predestined place where a Land Rover will be waiting in the glorious red sunset.

English polo players were guests at another private reserve, Ant’s Nest and Ant’s Hill in the Limpopo Province. The group, including Emma Tomlinson, Nina Vestey, Lucy Taylor and Sophie West, had just played in a tournament at the Inanda Polo Club in the Transvaal and were much in need of a bit of R&R and pampering after some tough polo action.

They got this and more at the luxury lodges run by Ant and Tessa Baber. Ant has lived in Waterberg all his life and is a passionate conservationist. The players watched as Ant and his helpers released new animals into the reserve. They rode out with him for some really close encounters with big game in their natural habitat. There were canters across the open plain and hacks into the mountains that provided spectacular views.

The Englishwomen returned in the evenings for stress-busting laying on of hands on the massage table and chilled out with sundowners on the terrace. Like mine, theirs was an experience of a lifetime.

This is tough riding, and you’re expected to handle it. But this shouldn’t be a problem for a polo player. ■ Makalali Ride 11 days/10 nights, staying in four different camps. Maximum group six, very experienced riders only; costs £300 per night, plus flights to Johannesburg and transfers. Visit www.waitalittle.co.za or tel: (+) 27 (0)83 273 9788. For Garonga, visit www.garonga.com or (+) 27 82 440 3522 For information on Ant’s Nest and Ant’s Hill, visit www.waterberg.net.

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Australia came, saw and conquered – but it was no pushover. The Cartier International went into extra time and was a magnificent spectacle – both on and off the field. By Antje Derks

Sudden death thriller he rain kept on coming – but so did the crowds. And, then, just as the Hurlingham Polo Association’s Cartier International was about to start, the sun decided it was too good a day to miss.

Good choice. It was one of the most thrilling internationals of recent years. Australia, making its debut at Smith’s Lawn, was under Glen Gilmore’s captaincy and was joined by Jack ‘Ruki’ Baillieu, who plays off an eight goal handicap. Damien Johnston played at number 1 and Mike Todd looked after the backdoor.

For England, Henry Brett retained the captaincy and the rest of the team comprised Luke and Mark Tomlinson and Malcolm Borwick, who was making his international debut.

Then, there was the socialising. Prince Harry, who played for The Prince of Wales’s Team in its victory against Hurlingham, dropped in on Chinawhite’s party marquee.

Sienna Miller played a cameo role following her break-up with Jude Law and all manner

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Australia’s Ruki Baillieu was powerful in the Coronation Cup match. Above left: Drum horse and trumpeters led the opening parade

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ALICE GIPPS

THE ACTION Hurlingham 37

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Above: Cate Blanchett with Arnaud Bamberger, MD of Cartier, the event’s title sponsor.

Left: Darius Danesh and friend Below: Hundreds wined and dined in the luncheon and paty marquees.

of celebrities squeezed into the Cartier tent for a sumptuous lunch.

The Cartier International is becoming a bigger and bigger occasion. This year, a record crowd of 25,000 turned up on Smith’s Lawn and was rewarded with an outstanding game of polo, despite the difficult conditions. After so much rain, the ground was cutting up like tissue paper. For the ponies, it was a gruelling day’s work.

Australia used a total of 40 ponies, England required the services of 30.

England, sponsored by Audi, Cadenza and Crew Clothing, started with a one goal handicap advantage over Australia, whose sponsors were Barter Card and Gibson Guitar. Brett soon added to England’s lead after being set up by Luke Tomlinson, playing one of his best ever matches for his country. The Australians had no reply and at the end of the first chukka England were 2-0 up. In the second chukka, Luke

Tomlinson took full advantage of a collision between teammates Johnston and Baillieu, by breaking away from the pack and scoring.

Gilmore, whose penalty taking abilities were awesome, managed to claw two goals back from two undefended penalties. England’s lead was narrowed to 3-2.

Because of the earlier adverse weather conditions, the crowds were asked to tread in after the second and fourth chukkas.

The third chukka saw another fine penalty

hit by Gilmore bringing Australia level with England, but Luke Tomlinson replied with an equally accurate penalty taken from the 40 yard line. At half-time, England were winning 4-3.

England scored again in the fourth. The crowd began to sense that the underdogs were about to pull off a shock result. Brett, playing at number one this season rather than at number three, covered every blade of grass and the new England formation appeared to

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COURTESY ROLLS-ROYCE MOTORS

Left: Young players from Schools and Universities Polo Association parade before Royal Box

Below: Australia’s Glen Gilmore cuts through the England defence.

ALICE GIPPS, COURTESY OF CARTIER

Above: Prince Harry played on The Prince of Wales’ team that won the Golden Jubilee Trophy.

Below left: Damien Lewis and Helen McRory.

be working well.

Then Gilmore scored two goals in quick succession in the fifth chukka and it was allsquare. But not for long, as Brett broke away and passed the ball to Luke Tomlinson, who put England back in front 6-5. Just as chukka was called, Glen Gilmore again equalized for Australia.

The sixth chukka saw Australia take the lead for the first time with two and a half minutes to go. England were awarded a

penalty, which Borwick took – and missed.

It looked to be all over, but with seconds remaining Engand won another penalty. There was a collective intake of breath from the crowd as Luke Tomlinson stepped up to the plate – and levelled. The teams played 30 seconds of extra time but with no goals forthcoming the match was pushed into a nail-biting seventh chukka, where the “Golden Goal” rule was applied. It came in the sixth minute of the seventh chukka in the

form of a stunning goal by Baillieu.

It can be a cruel game. Neither team deserved to lose – but that was little consolation for England as the Queen handed the Coronation Cup to Gilmore.

‘We played well together and I was really pleased with our performance,’ said Brett.

‘It didn’t quite go our way but we showed that we are a strong unit. There was a great atmosphere and the whole day was an important one for polo in this country.’ ■ Hurlingham 39

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England fail the tests With sponsorship and a new structure in place, expectation was riding high – but the national team struggled to find its form early in the 2005 season

Above left: Argentine Ambassador Federico Mirré presents Argentine Club Cup to Australia’s Glen Gilmore after his team beat England.

ome wasn’t built in a day and, likewise, construction of a winning England team apparently takes time. Despite welcome new corporate funding from Audi for coaching and training, England’s performances in all-pro, high-goal appearances at home this season were less than the fans had hoped for.

Expectations were high back in April, when the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) announced new test matches for 2005 and a three-year contract for Audi sponsorship of the team. But glory eluded the England side.

In their first international encounters, they lost to Argentina and twice to Australia. At press time only the September test against South Africa at Cowdray Park remained as a chance for England to show their worth.

Nonetheless, more appearances, win or lose, meant that the team and all its players were enjoying a higher profile than ever before. They were seen in action against Australia at the HPA’s flagship Cartier International at Guards Polo Club; against Australia (playing as Elysian) at Beaufort; the Evolution test against Argentina (playing as Buenos Aires) at Beaufort; and in the British Polo Championships at Coworth Park, when not one but two England teams took the field.

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Argentina showed why they are regarded as the strongest polo nation in the world at Beaufort Polo Club when Buenos Aires defeated England 9 goals to 7½ in the Evolution test match. The mighty Tommy Garcia del Rio didn’t put a foot wrong, converting every penalty opportunity afforded by the English. However, England worked well as a team and are clearly benefiting from playing together more regularly. The game was closely fought with the lead changing several times. In front of a crowd of some 3,000 spectators – who braved cold and damp conditions – England entered the last of five chukkas just half a goal down but despite breath-taking runs by Malcolm Borwick and the captain, Henry Brett, they failed to grasp victory. Buenos Aires showed greater resolve and experience to pull ahead and ultimately win the match. The Evolution test match moves to Cirencester Park next year.

The solid performance by the English team followed a less assured display the previous weekend in the final of the Argentine Club Cup, also held at Beaufort.

The final of the 7th All England Club Championships for the Argentine Club Cup was the centre piece of the Calcot Manor Hotel Country Fair, held over two days in

Buenos Aires’s Pepe Araya outpaces England’s Henry Brett in home team’s test match defeat.

June. The fair, a major family event, was in aid of the Countryside Foundation for Education.

Visitors were treated to some beautiful weather as well as some high-class polo.

The England squad started off well, only trailing Elysian by a goal at the end of the first chukka. During the second chukka things started to go wrong and with Gilmore on fire they were 11-3 behind at half-time.

England came back fighting with two

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spectacular goals by Mark Tomlinson in the opening minutes of the fourth chukka.

Going into the fifth and final chukka, England had it all to do with the score standing at 11-6 in favour of Elysian.

Despite England scoring another two goals, Elysian’s lead was just too great, especially after Rob Archibald scored their 12th goal, ensuring a comfortable 12-8 victory by full-time. AD ■ Hurlingham 41

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High goal drama From Berkshire to West Sussex, the 2005 high goal season was the biggest in many a year, culminating in a memorable British Open Championship. Herbert Spencer reports on the traditional ‘big four’ tournaments

Black Bears’ Eduardo Noville Astrada outpaces Dubai’s Augustin Nero before record crowd of 18,000.

Below: Sidelined Adolfo Cambiaso discusses tactics with Dubai team owner Ali Albwardy, right.

ith more than a dozen patrons from six continents putting together 24 pro-am teams to enter one or more of the major tournaments in just two months, 2005 was one of the busiest and most cosmopolitan of high-goal seasons anywhere in the world.

The 22-goal cap on pro-am team handicaps clearly belied the toughness of the competitions. ‘England’s 22-goal is like 24 or even 26-goal polo in the States,’ said Javier Novilla Estrada, of Black Bears, winners in high goal this season. One of his opponents, 10-goaler Adolfo Cambiaso, concurred.

Not everyone, however, was happy with the high-goal action this season, compared with that of some past years. David Woodd, chief executive of the Hurlingham Polo Association, recognised the difference. ‘In future,’ he said, ‘we will be looking at enforcing more strictly the one-tap rule to encourage a faster and more open game.’ This rule allows a player with possession to tap the ball only

MELITO CEREZO/ALICE GIPPS/POLOLINE

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once before hitting it out of a scrum or passing it to a teammate.

And so, to the big one. The traffic jams on roads around the normally quiet town of Midhurst in West Sussex began building up well before noon on a hot and sunny Sunday in July. Thousands of cars were queuing in the heat to enter the precincts of Cowdray Park Polo Club. The club bills itself as ‘the Home of British Polo’, and for this day at least that billing was no exaggeration.

This was the day of the final of the 2005 British Open Championship for the Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup, the fiftieth occasion on which the Open has been played. Cowdray Park officials estimated that 18,000 or more spectators were there – a record crowd – to watch the final between Ali Albwardy’s Dubai team and Urs Schwartzenbach’s Black Bears.

The venue and the event were well worth the wait at the gate. The scoreboard end of the club’s famous Lawns Two ground was reserved for the competing teams and their

ponies, but every yard of the other three sides was filled with grandstands, fieldside parking, picnickers and hospitality marquees.

Most of the crowd had arrived by late morning. Event sponsor Veuve Clicquot had invited 380 VIP guests, including the Duchess of York, to a champagne reception and luncheon in its elegant marquee beside the main grandstand. Others lunched in smaller marquees or opened their picnic hampers on the grassy banks overlooking Lawns.

Interest in the final was already intense, with Dubai having beaten Black Bears in the Queens Cup. One semi was played without incident, with Black Bears, fresh from their victory in the Warwickshire Cup, defeating Martyn Ratcliffe’s Oaklands Park to earn a place in the Gold Cup final.

Oaklands Park’s performance was disappointing, considering that they had defeated Azzurra, the 2004 champions, in a quarterfinal match.

In the other semi-final between Dubai and Fabian Pictet’s Emerging, disaster struck.

Dubai’s 10-goal superstar Adolfo Cambiaso was fouled and fell awkwardly, breaking his right wrist. Play was suspended while Dubai’s team manager, Robert Thame, and coach, John Horswell, reconstructed the team.

Eight-goaler Lucas Monteverde was substituted for the injured Cambiaso, but this left the team short on handicap. Ryan Pemble retired, suffering from a strained riding muscle, to be substituted by Augustin Nero.

The reconstituted Dubai team struggled to come together and just managed to defeat.

Emerging to win a place in the final. With only three days to go and without its injured and irreplaceable Cambiaso, what chance would this untried squad have in the final showdown against powerhouse Black Bears?

The new Dubai line-up only managed to get in two practices together before the big day, so the money was now on Black Bears.

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Eduardo Novilla Astrada passes Piki Alberdi, the Lawns Two fun fair in the background.

his experience and leadership that pulled the new team together.’

‘It took us two chukkas to come together as a team,’ said Piki. ‘Then it was a matter of controlling the game, keeping it close and tight to prevent the Novilla Astradas from breaking out, because when they do get away, they score.’

Robert Thame also paid tribute to 17-yearold Tariq Albwardy, who had replaced his father, Ali, in Dubai’s line-up for the British Open. ‘Tariq really got stuck in, with some good ride-offs and hooking of the more experienced Black Bears players. He’s still in school and so hasn’t had the opportunity to play that much, but he’s developing well.’

It was Tariq, the youngest patron ever to win the tournament, who proudly received the Gold Cup from the Duchess of York in this Arab-patroned conquest of one of the polo world’s three great open championships. ■

you’ll get it together and kill them to win,’ coach Horswell told his boys on the day.

And so it proved.

Black Bears dominated for most of the first half of the six-chukka match. The Novilla Astrada brothers performed brilliantly and the team was 4-0 up at the end of the second chukka. It was well into the third period before the new Dubai team got its act together in a surge that left the game tied 5-5 at halftime. It was even pegging for most of the rest of the match, with the teams tied 7-7 in the fourth chukka and 9-9 in the fifth. Then Dubai pulled ahead in the last chukka to lead 11-10 at the final bell, and to win the 2005 British Open.

As the clear underdogs, how did the new, untried Dubai team do it? Key to their victory was the 42-year-old veteran, Piki Diaz Alberdi, who had taken over from Cambiaso as field commander and was most deservedly named Most Valuable Player of the final.

‘In God we trust, but we like to play with Piki,’ said Horswell after the match. ‘It was Above: Triumphant Dubai, l. to r., Augustin Nero, Lucas Monteverde, Piki Alberdi,Tariq Albwardy, Ali Albwardy, Adolfo Cambiaso.

Middle: Duchess of York, with sponsor’s David Meyers, presents Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup to Dubai’s Tariq Albwardy.

Right: Myleene Klass

STEPHEN MORRIS

Left: Kiki King.

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The Queens Cup Cambiaso triumphs as Dubai grabs its first high-goal trophy of the season at Guards Polo Club ith its grounds an easy hack from Windsor Castle and with the Duke of Edinburgh as its president and Queen Elizabeth II presiding at its major events, Guards enjoys one of the highest profiles of any club in the world.

Guards’ Queens Cup, first played in 1960, has always been considered the second most important trophy to win after the British Open’s Gold Cup. To receive the small silver bowl from Her

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Majesty is the dream of every amateur playing-patron, so the tournament always has a good turnout of top teams.

This season was no exception. With Guards marking its 50th anniversary, a record 16 teams threw their hats into the ring, and competition was fierce throughout the tournament, sponsored this year by Cartier.

There was a sell-out crowd of 12,000 for the final on the Queens Ground at Smith’s Lawn in Windsor Great Park, but some of the most nail-biting action had already taken

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ALL PICS: MIKE ROBERTS

Nicolas Antinori and Piki Alberdi cross sticks in Dubai v Blackbears final.

Adolfo Cambiaso, stick raised to strike, gets past Eduardo Novilla Astrada in red helmet.

place in the semi-finals the previous week, when two English-patroned teams came surprisingly close to pulling off upsets against the favourites.

Maidford was the only team in the Queens Cup to be comprised of all English pros: 6-goalers Malcolm Borwick and Roddy Williams and 5-goalers Johnny Good and Oliver Hipwood. In one of the semi-finals, this well-balanced, home-grown squad faced Urs Schwartzenbach’s Black Bears, with their dynamic duo of 9-goalers Javier and Eduardo Novilla Astrada and one of the strongest pony strings of the season. Maidford did England proud and lost the match only 9 goals to 7.

An even closer semi was between Ali Albwardy’s Dubai, with 10-goaler Adolfo Cambiaso, and Adrian Kirby’s Atlantic.

Cambiaso was clearly off form on the day as Atlantic came close to staging a major upset, in the end losing by only one goal, 12-11.

Kirby proved his worth by scoring four of Atlantic’s goals, the best performance of any

amateur playing-patron in the tournament.

When Dubai met Black Bears in the final, on a wet ground under intermittent showers, it looked at first as if the latter would prevail. The first half was dominated by Black Bears, with the Novilla Astradas keeping Cambiaso largely bottled up, allowing him only one goal. The half ended with Black Bears leading 6-5.

Then, in the fourth chukka, Cambiaso – riding Small Person for the full seven minutes – caught fire, scoring four goals in quick succession to give Dubai a lead they never relinquished. The Argentine went on to thrill the crowd with all the brilliance that has earned him the accolade ‘world’s best player’. At the final bell, Dubai came out the winners by a decisive 12 goals to 7.

‘This was one of Adolfo’s best days,’ said Dubai’s No.3, Piki Diaz Alberdi, who had provided excellent support to Cambiaso.

‘When you give him the space, he gets away.’ Black Bear’s Eduardo Novilla Astrada agreed. ‘We managed to control Adolfo in the first half,’ he said, ‘but when he found his form in the fourth chukka, there was little we could do to stop him.’

The Queen first presented the Queens Cup to Dubai patron Ali Albwardy. Then, to resounding applause from the crowd Cambiaso had so captivated with his skills, she awarded him the prize as Most Valuable Player – and the Best Playing Pony prize to Small Person, which he rode.

A headline in the equestrian magazine Horse & Hound said it all: ‘Cambiaso’s on top of the world’. ■

The Queen presents Dubai stalwart Piki Alberdi with his prize.

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The Prince of Wales England’s first high-goal tournament of the season was a testing time for both players and ponies

hen the Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club (RCBPC), newest of England’s ‘big four’ clubs, was founded 20 years ago, the only slot available in the high-goal calendar was May. So the club’s Prince of Wales Trophy tournament became the first 22-goal competition on the fixtures list each year.

With the Queens Cup, Warwickshire Cup and British Open scheduled in June and July, some teams prefer to skip the RCBPC tournament and stay fresh for the coming battles. Others see the Prince of Wales as a chance to test their mettle before going on to the later high-goal contests.

The healthy turnout of eight teams this year included three squads that pundits had predicted would do well throughout the season. Italian Stefano Marsaglia’s Azzurra

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Opposite: VIP guests gather at RCBPC’s royal box to watch tournament final.

Right: Club owner Bryan Morrison presents the trophy to Azzurra patron Stefano Marsaglia, also last year’s winner.

ALICE GIPPS

Main pic: Azzurra’s 10-goal star Bautista Heguy on the ball.

TREVOR MEEKS/HORSE/IPC+SYNDICATION

won the Prince of Wales last year and went on to win the 2004 British Open. Ali Albwardy’s Dubai, with 10-goaler Adolfo Cambiaso, was a past winner of the Open and a finalist last year. Italian Alfio Marchini’s Loro Piana was considered one of the strongest teams in the series of 26-goal tournaments, including the US Open, during the 2005 Florida season.

Azzurra, with one of the strongest pony strings in England, had to change its line-up before the tournament. Their star player, 10-goaler Marcos Heguy, was still in rehab after suffering from a pinched nerve in his neck during the Argentine season. His place was taken by brother Bautista, also 10 goals.

The team won each of their three preliminaries by only one goal. Loro Piana fell to Azzurra in the quarterfinals and Azzurra knocked out Dubai in the semis to gain a place in the finals.

Frenchman Fabian Pictet’s Emerging also went through to the finals, played on a soggy ground in gusty wind in the middle of the old racetrack – the venue was a racing training stud before becoming a polo club.

‘We got more rain this morning than we got all winter,’ said club chairman Bryan Morrison. The conditions slowed the game.

It was the skills of Bautista Heguy, superior teamwork and greater pony power that brought Azzurra its convincing 9-4 win over Emerging – and its only major cup of the season.

That first of the high-goal tournaments also gave a foretaste of how tough the HPA’s professional umpires would be throughout the coming months in enforcing the rules of the game. Even with the final already decided, emerging patron Pictet was sent off 20 seconds before the match ended on a technical foul: arguing with the umpires. ■

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The Warwickshire England’s oldest high-goal trophy at its most venerable club is won by the longest-serving of the season’s high goal patrons

irencester Park is the oldest of England’s exiting clubs, founded in 1894 on the vast Gloucestershire estate of the Earl Bathurst.

Up north that same year, the townsfolk of Lemington presented the Warwickshire Polo Club with a massive silver cup that is today the oldest of all the country’s high-goal trophies – and its most travelled.

The club at Leamington ceased to exist at the beginning of the Great War, leaving the Warwickshire Cup in the hands of the captain of the last team to win it in 1913. Then, in 1932, he presented it to Roehampton where it was played for between that London club, Hurlingham and various international high-goal teams. After Roehampton gave up polo in 1955, it passed the trophy on to Cirencester Park where it remains today as the prize in the club’s premier tournament.

The Warwickshire Cup tournament has been an important fixture on the English high-goal calendar since 1959, but with varying fortunes. In recent years, because of an increasingly crowded season, it has drawn fewer entries. This season, however, it started moving back up to strength with 10 competing teams.

‘That is more entries than the Warwick-

AL PICS THIS PAGE: HERBERT SPENCER

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Cirencester Park’s president the Earl Bathurst, left, with Countess Bathurst and Christopher Hanbury, chairman of the HPA.

ment losing by only one goal, 10-9, in its semi-final against Spencer McCarthy’s Emlor.

In the other semi, Urs Schwartzenbach’s Black Bears comfortably defeated Foxcote/Wildmoor 9-5 to earn a place in the finals.

A crowd of several thousand lined both sides of Cirencester Park’s historic Ivy Lodge Ground to watch the teams’ star players – Argentina’s Novilla Astrada brothers for Black Bears and Chile’s Donoso siblings for Emlor.

Emlor opened the scoring, but Black Bears were ahead 2-1 at the end of the first, taking a lead that increased period by period. It was clear from the start that Black Bear’s massive pony power, demonstrated earlier in the Queens Cup, had Emlor out-horsed. The Gloucestershire team was leading 7-2 in the Black Bears patron Urs Schwartzenbach grasps Warwickshire Cup for the sixth time. fourth when Emlor staged a comeback that reduced their deficit to only one goal in the shire has had in 15 years or so,’ said former fifth and final period, but at the final bell it Cirencester Park chairman Mark Vestey. was Black Bear 8, Emlor 6.

Support from Gloucester-based teams So the Warwickshire Cup again went to helped make the difference, with Black Bears Black Bears patron Schwarzenbach, as it had and Foxcote/Wildmoor from Cirencester last year. The team has now won the trophy a Park, Evolution/Laird from Beaufort and record six times.

Lovelocks from Longdole joining the fray.

It was a reminder that the Swiss patron has Lovelocks, with young Charlie Hanbury, been fielding high-goal teams far longer than did particularly well in the 22-goal tournaanyone else playing in England today. ■

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CHRISTOPHER FEAR

e Cup

This page: Emlor’s Nacho Gonzalez hooks Black Bears’ Javier Novilla Astrada.

Above left: Battling brothers still friends, l. to r., Javier Novilla Astrada, Jose Donoso, Eduardo Novilla Astrada, Gabriel Donoso.

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A season to savour Consistently high entries, fierce competition, enthusiastic crowds and plenty of British players – the 8 to18-goal tournaments provided a summer treat, reports Yolanda Carslaw

Jonny Good of Dubai/Desert Palm in the 8-goal Archie David final

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CENTAUR PHOTOGRAPHIC

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olo aficionados can watch, admire and read about the stars at the top of the game: the highlypaid, seasonal visitors from South America; the talented England squad; the latest young hotshots that aspire to be the 10 goalers of the future.

But the true core of polo in the UK and Ireland is the thousands of players – plus the massive industry that has grown up around them – who concentrate on low and medium goal and a bit of 18 goal. Of the 2,427 HPAregistered players, 1,755 are handicapped at 0 goals or under. Meanwhile, all but six of the 59 clubs only stage tournaments at 12-goal level or lower, the vast majority of which are at four-goal level or below.

The long-established medium- and lowgoal levels of 15 goal, 12 goal and eight goal have enjoyed consistently high entries this year. They also feature considerably more British players than at the higher levels.

‘These levels are the bread and butter of British professionals’ earnings,’ said Jason Dixon, chairman of the British Association of Professional Polo Players. ‘Eight and 12 goal is a good enough standard for young British players to get an education and improve up to two or three goals. Then they need to be playing 15 goal and above.’

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ber of teams. In the 2005 rulebook, the HPA upped the number of overseas sponsored players permitted on each team from one to two, giving patrons more choice of professionals, and has reduced the number of tournaments.

Below: Caballus Eighteen goal at Guards in June, RCBPC in capture 18-goal Indian Empire July and Inglesham in August were dropped Shield, l. to r., Rob from the calendar, leaving six scheduled tourArchibald, Andrew naments instead of nine.

Hine, patron The HPA has also spread the number of VicBruce Merivaletor Ludorum tournaments more evenly through Austin, Silvestre Garros. the season. Victor Ludorum rewards success in a series of nominated tournaments at 8, 12, 15 In May’s eight-goal Gerald Balding at and 18-goal levels, producing a champion at Cirencester, which had 14 entries, Clifton each level at the end of the season.

Wrottesley’s Wild Boars team beat Charles This year, eight teams entered the Indian Hanbury’s Longdole side 8 – 4. The Archie Empire Shield at Coworth in early May. The David Cup, at Guards in June, attracted more best supported 18-goal tournaments tend than 30 teams, an impressive turnout; although to be the Indian Empire Shield, the Cowyears ago, when few other tournaments at this dray Park Challenge and the Duke of Wellevel existed, more than 50 teams used to pitch lington, at Guards, at the end of August. up. Dubai/Desert Palm came out on top in a Some teams use the Indian Empire Shield, a close final against Montroc. The winners went former high-goal trophy from pre-war days, into the fourth and final chukka half a goal as a warm-up for 22 goal. In this year’s final, ahead, then Peter Webb scored a brilliant field Bruce Merivale-Austin’s Caballus. a regular goal for Montroc. But Johnny Good struck a 18-goal side, beat Martyn Ratcliffe’s Oakpenalty shot through the posts in the final lands Park, a high-goal squad with one player minute to win by half a goal. swapped out, by half a goal in the final minTwelve goal has drawn good entries: Ciutes. Caballus has spent several years playing rencester’s Queen Mother Trophy in July, for medium goal and, rather than make the jump example, attracting 15 teams. The Dollar Cup, straight to 22 goal, is taking advantage of the played at Cowdray in May, drew 18 entries. In opportunities offered by 18 goal. a close final, the local Broncos beat GloucesSouth African-backed Bateleur, another tershire Raiders Al Burak by a goal. medium-goal side, came back from four goals A number of sides, such as Altu, Corramore tina for the first time in a decade, was watch- down to win Cowdray’s Duke of Sutherland and Groeninghe, compete regularly across ing. Gaston’s four-goal younger brother, Max, Cup at the end of May, beating Governors 7 – several levels, appearing in 12 as well as 15 has also been playing out of Alan Kent’s Sus- 6 1/2 in the final seconds of an exciting match goal, and sometimes 18 goal. sex yard this season, in low and medium goal. on Lawns One. In the Duke of Beaufort’s This season’s Royal Windsor Cup, 15-goal’s In 18-goal polo this year, the HPA has in- Cup in mid-July, Charles Hanbury’s Loveflagship tournament, attracted 23 teams, tervened to try to increase participation. The locks came out the best of the four entries, which played qualifiers at Beaufort, Coworth level was introduced a few years ago to give beating Richard Britten-Long’s Laird 13 – 12 and Cowdray as well as Guards. This is an- teams who could not quite put a 22-goal side in the final. other fixture that, though well supported now, together a chance to play at a higher level than As Hurlingham went to press, Goodwood historically had even higher entries – more traditional 15 goal. But it has struggled to find week at Cowdray Park drew to a close, having than 30 – when there was less choice of tour- its feet, despite enthusiasm from a small num- had a healthy six entries for the Challenge Cup naments.

(18 goal), 17 for the Harrison Cup (15 goal), Belgian patron Isabelle Hayen, who is based and 37 for the Holden White Challenge Cup at Coworth, won the prestigious title with her (eight goal). As well as rain – welcomed by established side, Groeninghe. They beat Darthe groundsmen if not by the crowds – most ren Mercer’s formidable and well-mounted of the country’s professionals descended on Altu side 7 – 5.

Cowdray Park for the week, for all three levThe final of the Eduardo Moore Tournaels. Lambourne, with Katie Seabrook, Pancho ment, played at Royal County of Berkshire Moreno, Tommy Wilson and Robert Thame, Polo Club and entered by seven teams, probeat Il Macereto (Riccardo Pavoncelli, Gasvided perhaps the most appropriate victory of ton Moore, Justo Savedra and Alan Kent) the 15-goal season. Six-goaler Gaston Moore, 10-7 to lift the Challenge Cup. Another lady nephew of the late 10-goaler Eduardo Moore, patron, Rachael Bartels, took the Harrison played his first full season in England and Cup with Roderick Vere Nicoll, Roddy Wilwon the trophy with Mark Hulbert’s Wolves. liams and Silvestre Garros, defeating Clarita Wolves had lost an earlier league match to 7 – 6. Martin Ephson’s Farrow & Ball team, their opponents, Ocho Rios, but, after a shaky with Adrian Wade and young South Afristart in the final, they played a brilliant team cans Leroux Hendrix and Ignatius de Plessis, game to pull ahead. lifted the Holden White after scraping past Jubilant Isabelle Hayen, Belgian patron of Gaston’s father, Sonny, visiting from Argen- Groeninghe, with 15-goal Royal Windsor Cup. Oberhaus, 6 – 51/2. ■ POLOLINE

ALICE GIPPS

POLOLINE

Left: Rachael Bartels, winner of 15-goal Harrison Cup.

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A professional job Audi England move into top gear to run away with victory at the NetJets British Polo Championships at Coworth Park, reports Antje Derks udi England outclassed the Williamson Tea British Lions in comprehensive fashion beating them 8-5 at the second annual NetJets British Polo Championships staged by British Polo Enterprises (BPE). The tournament was held at Coworth Park Polo Club, near Ascot, in almost perfect conditions. The event helped raised money for the Evelina Children’s Hospital appeal.

Building on its successful launch last year, when it got what is believed to be the largest ever television audience for polo, the BPE championship is an all-professional event. It moves away from patron-led high goal polo, allowing the professionals to play against each other at a high level. All the teams were sponsored.

The first chukka of the final saw Williamson Tea British Lions and Audi England level with a goal apiece. Audi England’s lineup did not include Henry Brett nor Luke and Mark Tomlinson, all of whom had playing commitments abroad. But it was still a strong line-up.

Things certainly changed in the second chukka as James Beim, England reserve at this year’s Cartier International, set the pace

alight, scoring three goals in succession. Audi Captain Roddy Williams further increased his team’s lead by breaking away from the chasing pack to score a goal that can only be described as perfection. By half time Audi England were comfortably 5-1 in front. The British Lions had it all to do if the match was not to be a complete whitewash. Audi England scored a further two goals, extending their lead to 7-1 before the team finally pulled their socks up. The Tariq Dag Khan of NetJets, centre, presents trophy to winners Audi, l. to r., Roddy Williams, James Beim, Nacho Gonzalez, James Harper final chukka

James Beim gets his shoulder into Rob Archibald

PAUL HULBERT

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saw them score four goals, including a superb one by their captain, Jamie Le Hardy.

Victory, however, was not to be theirs after Audi England scored again making it 8-5.

Both Audi England and Williamson Tea British Lions won their places in the final after hard-fought semi finals played on the Friday evening. All matches were ‘played open’ with no adjustments for handicap differentials, with a maximum team handicap of 24 goals. Audi England faced Australasia, sponsored by Destination Marketing in their semi-final. The match was a carbon copy of the previous week’s Cartier International, with the match going into a fifth chukka where the golden goal rule applied. This time it was England who came out victorious after a stunning goal by Nacho Gonzalez.

It was an important day for polo, with a crowd of some 2,000 and Sky Sports filming the game for screening a couple of days later. ■ Hurlingham 55

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he first glance of Schloss Ebreichsdorf, towering above the small town of the same name, reminds you of a palace in a fairy tale.

In this far eastern area of Austria it is possible to drive across miles of flat plains and open skies without seeing anything more than an occasional farm building – and so the sight of such an important and ancient building is a surprise. For anyone who yearns for the traditional hospitality of polo together with the charm of an 800-year-old castle and beautiful landscape, plus sophisticated après polo entertainment, Ebreichsdorf is the answer.

Baron Richard Drasche has run the polo club from his ancestral family home for 15 years, and it is very much an enterprise in which he takes huge pride. He is also an active participant, playing in many of the tournaments, alongside his two daughters, Nadine and Valerie. The club, on the outskirts of Vienna, was founded in 1991 when the park was remodelled, with ponds and trees making way for polo fields.

Today, it is one of the most beautiful clubs in Europe.

Richard had invited me to come and play. Not only that, but he asked me to share a team in the 12-goal tournament.

Santiago Gaztambide, who plays with me in the 12-goal, was sceptical because neither he nor I had heard of Ebreichsdorf.

We both sent five horses along with two grooms for a two-day journey by truck with Martin Richmond. It was decided that

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Austria’s Ebreichsdorf club is a reminder of polo from a different era.

You can dance until dawn and then enjoy exciting action in stunning surroundings. Emma Treichl packs her dancing shoes

Viennese whirl

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Main picture: Baron Richard Drasche dances with Emma Treichl.

Above: Sal. Oppenheim team in action against Cartier.

Below left: Victorious Knize team, l. to r., Martin Orozco, Horacio Llorente, Sponsor Rudolf Niedersüß of tailors Knize, Gerhard Hermann; Tilman Kraus, and their children.

an absolutely unique experience,’ said Dr Bernhard Ramsauer, chief executive officer of Sal. Oppenheim Austria. ‘It has become a highlight of the summer season.’

At the final, about 1,000 people showed up for lunch in the marquee. I was sandwiched between the Argentine and American ambassadors and everyone was dressed in all their finery. There the journey would be uninterrupt- defined but it includes organising be worn. Santiago rushed off to was much eating, drinking and ed, except for feeding and water- mass for all the Argentines every Midhurst to rent a dinner jacket general socialising as the polo ing. The horses were in excellent week in Spanish at the castle and I dragged a groaning suitcase ensued. Sadly, we were not in shape when we arrived five days chapel. full of everything from ‘smart either final, but I had the pleasure later, ready for our first match.

During the day, we were either casual’ to’ elegant’, ‘black tie’ and of parading around the grounds The 12-goal tournament playing polo, stick and balling, for the final what can only be de- with the other seven teams. takes place over two consecutive or watching matches. Delicious scribed as ‘Ascot’ minus the tails Ebreichsdorf is a unique weekends and is played on the food and ice cold beers are served and top hats. treasure from the past, almost an Friday, Saturday and Sunday. This from a marquee next to the two We were wined and dined in endangered species of polo. And enabled us to return to England grounds. Estebans’s son gave a sumptuous surroundings; we were long may it continue. ■ during the intervening week. The running commentary in heavily entertained by jazz singers at an club very generously offered us accented English during play, asado, an entire band the size of free stabling and accommodation while salsa music played between Glen Miller’s played swing, and for the grooms, all of which was chukkas. The whole event had a we were treated to the sight of a stone’s throw from the castle festive atmosphere. couples performing rock ’n’ roll. and grounds. As with almost any From my bedroom window Finally at 2.30am, we crawled polo club around the world, there I could see the polo grounds into bed and played at 10 am is a strong Argentine presence, below, just beyond the moat, the the next day, the ultimate test of at least two pros and eight or landscaped park and polo fields, anyone’s polo skills. nine Argentine grooms. Esteban framed by a fan of tall trees. We ‘The Sal. Oppenheim Cup may Panelo (4 goals), his four children had been forewarned by the club not match the high technical and dynamic wife Toria, were very that there would be a number level of some of the international much in evidence. Esteban is polo of functions to attend and that high-goal games but the magnifimanager. Toria’s role is less wellsuitable attire must at all costs cent setting of the castle creates Hurlingham 57

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Elégance Française The cream of Parisian society turned out for the 111th Paris Open, one of Europe’s oldest tournaments.

Competition was fierce – and the hats were awesome

Madame Jean-Luc Chartier, Sophie de Charbonnière and Laurence de la Beraudière – and their hats. Below: Princess Nesrine Toussoun. Opposite: Prince Charles Emmanuel Bourbon Parme and his three daughters

or most months of the year, the well-manicured turf in front of the elegant clubhouse at Polo de Paris is used for practice in that other, younger stick and ball game, golf.

In June and July, however, the club’s historic ground echoes to the thunder of hooves, the crack of stick on polo ball, and cries of ‘leave it’, ‘take your man’ and other, less printable phrases in a variety of languages.

At tables under large white umbrellas on the clubhouse terraces, tout Paris – the crème

F

de la crème of Parisian society – gather to sip champagne, engage in tittle-tattle and admire one another’s finery. A hard core of aficionados amongst the members and guests take time out to concentrate on the polo action out on the ground.

Thus it has been since 1892 when the Viscount de la Rochefoucauld and the Duke de Doudeville first established a polo ground in a meadow known as Bagatelle in the Bois de Bologne. In the days of the belle époque, spectators arrived in fashionable carriages to watch

polo. Today, Polo de Paris is less than a 15 minute drive from the Champs Elyséé and minutes from the Longchamp racecourse between the park and the River Seine.

This summer saw the club hold its 111th Paris Open, Europe’s third oldest tournament after England’s Inter-Regimental and County Cup. Indeed, the dozen teams entered in the 12-14 goal Open competed on the same ground where France played Argentina in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Most had just come down

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from France’s ‘Capital of the Horse’. Just north of the city where they competed in the French Open Championship at Patrick Guerrand-Hermès’ Polo Club du Domaine de Chantilly.

Italian Simone Chiarella’s Black Polo Team, defeated in the final of the French Open, almost suffered the same fate in the final at Polo de Paris.

Frenchman Philippe Fatien’s Castel squad dominated for most of the match, until the last chukka when Black staged a comeback, scoring 2 goals to even the account. Then, in the

very last second of the match, Black’s Pablo Jauretche found the goal posts to give his team its 9-8 victory.

The spectators at Polo de Paris also competed on the day.

The champagne house Ruinart, sponsor of the Paris Open, had invited a plethora of princes and princesses, counts and countesses, foreign ambassadors. To entertain them between the polo, luncheon in the marquee and tea on the clubhouse terrace, the club staged a classic cars competition and a contest for the most impressive ladies’ hats. ■ Hurlingham 59

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Coast to coast

Players and grooms exercise ponies in the Pacific surf near Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club

With the summer season in full swing across North America, the focus of the high-goal game moved from East to West

the 20-goal Robert Skene Trophy tournament. Geoff Palmer’s Antelope defeated Michael Hakan’s Duende 14-11 in the final. The tournament is named after the late, Australian-born American t was by coincidence that two edly forced postponement of partly the same as it had been in 10-goaler Bob Skene and his of the most important high- matches between the five teams Florida, with 10-goaler Mariano widow, Elizabeth, was on hand to goal tournaments in entered in the East Coast Open Aguerre and young Julio Gracida, present the prizes. the USA were scheduled and there were few people there 3, as key players. Brant played off Antelope’s 10-goal star, Adam for the same week, thousands of to watch Brant’s own White 4 and Miguelito Torres, 2, was Snow, was the high scorer in the miles apart on the Atlantic and Birch team prevail over Larry added to make up the 20-goal final with 6 goals, closely folPacific coasts.

Austin’s Endeavor Capitol 15-9. squad. lowed by teammate Joseph Stuart The 20-goal East Coast Open Brant was on a high after Aguerre and Gracida shared with 5. Stuart was named Most was played at Greenwich Polo winning the 26-goal US Open the scoring honours with seven Valuable Player and Snow’s black Club in Connecticut. Greenwich Championship in Florida in goals each, and Julio was named mare Hale Bopp won Best Playwas founded in 1984 by highApril. Having won every other Most Valuable Player of the final. ing Pony. Santa Barbara, founded goal patron Peter M. Brant on major high-goal tournament dur- Aguerre’s mare Criollita won the in 1911, is one of the oldest clubs his vast Conyers Farm residential ing his long career, it was his first Best Playing Pony prize. in the USA and one of the most estate and plays a split season, US Open victory, although he Across the continent in Calibeautiful, with tree-covered hills early and late summer. himself did not play in the final. fornia, at Santa Barbara Polo & on one side and the Pacific Ocean This year heavy rains repeatWhite Birch’s line-up was Racquet Club, six teams entered on the other. ■

I

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Left: The winners of the East Coast Open, (l to r) Peter Brant, Martin Aguerre, Miguelito Torres and Julio Gracida

DAVID LOMINSKA

Joseph Stuart, Most Valuable Player in Robert Skene tournament, with his mother, left, and Skene’s widow Elizabeth.

Below: 10-goaler Adam Snow over the boards in Santa Barbara tournament.

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Left: Front Anthony Fanshawe playing as Bentley/Elegant Resorts; Front (navy shirt) Richard Thomas playing as David McLean; Back (navy shirt) Malcolm Borwick; Back (white shirt) Oliver Taylor

Chester Racecourse was transformed for the inaugural Flame Estates International 12-goal polo tournament, heralding the return of polo for the first time in more than 100 years.

All change at Chester Left to right: Richard Thomas, Mario Gomez, Jamie Le Hardy, Oliver Taylor

he two-day polo tournament on June 3-4, comprising of four invited teams playing for £10,000 of prize money, began with typical aplomb as players dropped in by helicopter and numerous Bentleys rolled onto the hallowed turf.

The opening match saw spectators enthralled by Breitling’s Kelvin Johnson’s domination of play, ably supported by teamate James Harper, resulting in the trouncing of the Bentley/Elegant Resorts team. The next match resulted in heavy defeat for the David McLean team (Richard Thomas, Hamilton Ashworth, Malcolm Borwick, Jamie Le Hardy) by the Heathcotes (Mark Hulbert, Guillermo Cuitino, Tarquin Southwell, Daniel Otamendi).

T

The evening polo black-tie ball was a spectacular affair: beautiful women, bronzed polo players, flowing champagne.

A kilted Borwick proved to be a big female crowd puller, Le Hardy was at his down-toearth and charming best, Oliver Taylor looked tanned and sultry, and Anthony Fanshawe dark and brooding.

The first game on the second day saw David Mclean undergo a second beating, this time by the Bentley/Elegant Resorts team. In turn, Breitling couldn’t match the Heathcotes team’s ability. The delighted Mark Hulbert and his merry men were awarded £7,500 of the prize money and Nigel Warr, patron of the Breitling team, pocketed the runners-up prize of £2,500. ■

Above: Mario Gomez and Richard Thomas

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Tsar quality articipants from all three teams came together on June 25 – 26. The two-day tournament began with a welcome dinner on Friday night and it was noted that some players had come a long way to be there. The Araya brothers – Benjamín and Santiago – were the ones who came the farthest, flying in from Coronel Suárez, Argentina. After dinner, there was a men-only cocktail party to discuss the rules of the tournament – a particular tradition of the club.

Saturday night saw a black-tie Gala Dinner held at the exclusive Moscow City Golf Club in the centre of Moscow. This was followed by a visit to First, one of the

P

The third Moscow Polo Cup was played this year during a glorious summer weekend in Gorki, one hour away from the Russian capital.

city’s most stylish nightclubs.

A triangular competition was organised, featuring the three entered teams. On the Sunday, the English Land Rover team played Imperia in the final. The third side, Deutsche Bank, had been beaten by both finalists. Victory went to Land Rover by 7 – 5 in what turned out to be an exciting and fiercely contested match.

What was especially heartening was the enthusiasm of the crowd and of the sponsors, particularly Tim Gannon from the United States, Davide Alemanni from Italy and Andrew Foreman from England. There was also plenty of vodka and caviar to keep everyone happy. Polo in Russia is in the best of spirits. ■

POLOLINE

Above: Imperia team takes possession against Deutsche Bank. Left: New Russia fashion at a Gorki luncheon. Right: Moscow club logo adorned saddlecloths

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Letters to the editor GINGER BAKER’S article about his long association with polo (Hurlingham spring 2005) was greeted enthusiastically, not least by the Daily Telegraph, which reprinted an abridged version in its Weekend section prior to Cream’s reunion concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

But it also triggered a reaction from Bryan Morrison, chairman of the Royal County of Berkshire, who disputed some of Mr Baker’s facts. This, in turn, led to a further response from the legendary drummer. These letters are reprinted with permission from both Mr Morrison and Mr Baker.

Big mistake Firstly, congratulations on getting the first issue out. Ginger Baker has obviously forgotten that I introduced him to polo and indeed gave him his first lesson along with Kenny Jones; it’s documented by an article in the Evening Standard at the time. It was, however, a good article and more of this kind of stuff is needed.

The only down point is you need a new cartographer, also someone who knows the alphabet. G comes after F, making Guards polo about number 14 [in the published list of HPA clubs]. It doesn’t bother me in the least but there are a lot of people who will think your magazine has G leanings. If of course the article was meant to represent then it was accurate except of course the other 34 were wrong. Lastly, on your map you have the Berkshire club somewhere up near Rugby – that does piss me off.

Regards, Bryan Morrison

High praise The masthead suggests the new magazine welcomes feedback. And in between what is turning out to be a cracking season here in Beaufort land I was just wanting to say how very impressive it [Hurlingham] is, especially the use of first-rater writers such as Rory Knight Bruce and Roger Scruton (“Screwtop” has also been been published, courtesy of the Financial Times, in the Beaufort Polo Club programme several times). I am particularly cheered by the upbeat layout and design, and enticing photographs in a market generally dominated by somnambulist publishing at best.

With best wishes, Angel Bacon

Wrong man Bryan Morrison has obviously had far too many polo accidents and his poor brain has become somewhat addled. The story, as printed in your excellent magazine, of how I got into polo is absolutely true. I joined Ham Polo Club in 1975 where I met Bryan. As I recall we were both playing off a 0 handicap. At no time did Bryan introduce me to polo or ever give me a lesson. He did introduce Kenny Jones – not Ginger Baker. This reminds me of when Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, where I had to sit through a speech made

by Ahmed Ertegun where he told the audience the story of how he discovered Eric Clapton and formed Cream. We were sitting at the same table, would you believe! Do make sure that Bryan receives a copy of this – tell him not to swallow his cigar… my car bears a sign, “truth hurts.”

After years of claiming that he introduced me to polo and, what is even more ludicrous, “gave me my first polo lesson” the time has come for him to own up to the truth. He did neither.

Best regards, Ginger Baker

Short and sweet What a surprise. Your new magazine arrived today – just out of the oven. It was so beautifully designed and such fun. Bravo bravissimo!

Lusita Miguens Tanoira

Fresh approach I’m sure Hurlingham’s savvy approach will find a warm reception among a sophisticated polo readership that has, until now, been spoon-fed society and fashion splashes or fact-starved polo dispatches. Congratulations and best wishes for success.

Diane Hensley, California

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Back to basics I have a mixed impression. I found the cover story and the insight into the changes in the management of the England team very interesting but I haven’t spotted much coverage which reflects the level of polo at which I am starting to play. Likewise, although I was pleased to see an article on polo in South Africa [pictured left] it omitted mention of grassroots polo there, including efforts to bring through black youngsters as players as well as grooms.

Yours sincerely Rosemary Hoskins

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64 Hurlingham

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