High 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.

With 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. e 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 diff erence. ‘In future,’ he said, ‘we will be looking at enforcing more strictly the one-tap rule to encourage a faster and more open game.’ is rule allows a player with possession to tap the ball only

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

And so, to the big one. e traffi c 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. ousands of cars were queuing in the heat to enter the precincts of Cowdray Park Polo Club. e club bills itself as ‘the Home of British Polo’, and for this day at least that billing was no exaggeration. is was the day of the fi nal of the 2005 British Open Championship for the Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup, the fi ftieth occasion on which the Open has been played. Cowdray Park offi cials estimated that 18,000 or more spectators were there – a record crowd – to watch the fi nal between Ali Albwardy’s Dubai team and Urs Schwartzenbach’s Black Bears. e venue and the event were well worth the wait at the gate. e 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 fi lled with grandstands, fi eldside parking, picnickers and hospitality mar-

quees.

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 fi nal 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 Ratcliff e’s Oaklands Park to earn a place in the Gold Cup fi nal. Oaklands Park’s performance was disappointing, considering that they had defeated Azzurra, the 2004 champions, in a quarterfi nal match.

In the other semi-fi nal 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 ame, 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, suff ering from a strained riding muscle, to be substituted by Augustin Nero. e reconstituted Dubai team struggled to come together and just managed to defeat. Emerging to win a place in the fi nal. With only three days to go and without its injured and irreplaceable Cambiaso, what chance would this untried squad have in the fi nal showdown against powerhouse Black Bears? e new Dubai line-up only managed to get in two practices together before the big day, so the money was now on Black Bears.

‘ ey will kill you in the fi rst chukkas, but

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

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 fi rst half of the six-chukka match. e 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 fi fth. en Dubai pulled ahead in the last chukka to lead 11-10 at the fi nal 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 fi eld commander and was most deservedly named Most Valuable Player of the fi nal.

‘In God we trust, but we like to play with Piki,’ said Horswell after the match. ‘It was his experience and leadership that pulled the new team together.’

‘It took us two chukkas to come together as a team,’ said Piki. ‘ en 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 ame 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-off s 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. ■

Above: Triumphant Dubai, l. to r., Augustin Nero, Lucas Monteverde, Piki Alberdi,Tariq Albwardy, Ali Albwardy, Adolfo Cambiaso.

Left: Kiki King.

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