Profile: Peter Abisheganaden

Being asked to act as FIP Tournament Director at the Snow Polo World Cup in Tianjin provided some unexpected challenges, as Peter Abisheganaden recalls

ILLUSTRATION PHIL DISLEY

Getting the snow job was a bit of a surprise. When I started receiving emails from New Zealand Polo Association president Gordon Gibson, about an international tournament in February, I thought he must have the wrong person. I didn’t know anything about it until about a week later, when Asad Jumabhoy asked if I was free in February to act as FIP Tournament Director at a World Cup tournament. It was an honour I couldn’t refuse.

Finding out it was a snow polo job was another surprise. In the days when God was still a boy I had played some outdoor polo while at university in Canada. I thought, ‘how hard can this be?’ Conceit is a wonderful virtue.

I met FIP’s Council of Administration in Buenos Aires and was officially appointed by FIP a day before the General Assembly. A week later, I was in Tianjin, very jet-lagged but conducting the tournament draw.

It was fun to work with Derek Reid, Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club’s director of polo operations. I’ve known Derek for a few years, when he has played in Malaysia or I have played in Western Australia. Fortunately Derek is a workaholic, and very good at what he does.

Having run the Zone D play-offs in June 2011, I knew exactly what Derek was going through. It is never easy to run a tournament of this size and stature. There is a lot of stress and you are responsible for the smallest of details.

As FIP Tournament Director I supposed I was ultimately responsible for the tournament, but in fact it can only be the host venue’s tournament director that can truly run the tournament. In my view the FIP Tournament Director post is a misnomer. In the FEI’s equestrian world, the job title is ‘Technical Delegate’. Indeed the set-up and running of the tournament from the point of view of FIP rules and seeing that there is fairness throughout, is what the job is about.

So the congratulations on the horses, logistics and hospitality certainly go to Metropolitan Polo Club, and especially to Harvey Lee, Rowland Wong, Derek Reid and their people.

The snowfield was laid in early January and I was very glad I was there as we got the contractor to change his method in time to ensure we had a solid layer of ice beneath the snow. Without the ice base, the snow would have been too deep, slushy and unsafe.

There were other issues, some that I had never met before in polo. At first the tournament had been scheduled for 4 to 12 February 2012. Just after the draw, FIP was informed that Metropolitan could not start the tournament on the fourth as it was an inauspicious date. Mr Pan Sutong, the owner of Metropolitan, follows feng shui principles. His geomancer had declared the fourth a terrible day to start the tournament. Rather than doom the event, we agreed to their suggestion to bring the start forward to 2 February.

All the countries had to accept this and there was a flurry of emails. It is fortunate that even as an invitational, FIP was able to provide US $100,000 per team to cover expenses and players’ fees where appropriate, with any surpluses being ploughed back into polo in those countries. Bringing it forward, we would have two days of sitting around blowing warm air on our hands. Always a sucker for punishment, I came up with the idea of adding quarter-finals to the programme instead of going from the qualifying stage to semi-finals. Four more countries would then have a second chance in the tournament.

Metropolitan jumped at the idea, and spending two days at the Great Wall of China in sub-zero weather was consigned to the feng shui waste bin.

Twelve teams is a large number to host when you are providing all the horses. Metropolitan had 156 horses available for this tournament. We lost less than five per cent in the preparation, a percentage that would have been lower, had the new Martin Collins footing been laid in time.

FIP Horse Master Benjamin Araya arrived in late January and worked very closely with Metropolitan’s trainers to produce 12 groups of horses as equally as possible. That there were generally few complaints about the horses is testament to Metropolitan staff for getting them ready and Benjamin’s skill in grouping them.

In the qualifying stage of three chukka games, each team had 11 ponies. That meant that the players had a pony each and there were two spares per team. After the qualifiers we were able to replace the injured horses and add another to each team, so that each player had three plus a spare to play the three chukka quarter-finals.

After the quarter-finals we offered teams more horses, taking the best from the four defeated teams. The semi-finalists essentially had the best horses of the tournament for their last two matches, which were played over six chukkas. In all cases draws were done for horses. Not once was a horse arbitrarily allocated to any team. Contrary to some reports, Hong Kong did not keep the best horses for themselves, but drew for horses at every stage.

One of the biggest factors of playing threechukka matches is that the odd number meant that one team got the advantage of the wind, which some days came barrelling between the twin grandstands like a wind tunnel. Because ends were changed only at the end of chukkas, it meant that on some days there was a wind advantage of a full chukka. Instead of stopping mid-way through the second chukka, a rule that was universally disliked, we resolved it with a coin toss before the start of the match that gave the winner the right to choose the initial, and therefore final direction, but eventually gave the loser the right to choose which team started first if the game went to a penalty shoot-out.

USA went out in the qualifying stages. Losing in penalties to Argentina proved to be very costly as they went out on the who-beat-who rule that FIP uses in World Cup orders of merit. Having a former 10-goaler like Memo Gracida upset with me for enforcing this order of merit was a refreshing change from the minus handicappers that I am more used to having harangue me. Zone D champions India never really got to grips with playing on the snow. They joined Brazil, Italy and USA in not making the quarter-final cut, going out after three games.

England was very strong, and one of the best teams in the tournament. That they lost only one match, their semi-final, to the eventual champions is testament of this. Chris Hyde was one of the strongest players on the snow in Tianjin.

Argentina lost Piki Diaz Alberdi to kidney stone pain after just one match. Santiago ‘Flaco’ Gaztambide had to step in for Piki. With Pablo Jauretche at back, and a typical Argentine flyer, Juan Casero playing off 1 goal, Argentina was still a force to be reckoned with.

South Africa played a brand of fast, open, exciting polo that was at odds with the controlled game that the favourites favoured. Perhaps the large size of the field at 150 x 75 yards made this possible. Jean du Plessis was a real livewire but for me it was Tom de Bruin who added the iron to South Africa’s spine when they had to fight.

We worried about the forecast of warm weather for the final weekend. The field definitely played better in sub-zero temperatures than the 6 to 10ºC that was forecast. I took the decision to shift the final to become the first game of the afternoon so that they would enjoy the better field conditions. It was a very tough decision to make as we had live television coverage for all matches, and the time of the final had been promoted as the second game of the afternoon.

Having two Zone D teams in the final was fantastic for the region. Hong Kong had been given permission to play a team to help develop the sport in China and they had a fairy-tale final, winning 7-4. England beat Argentina 8-7 in a fiercely fought match for third place.

Terrera won the MVP title well before the final, lighting up the tournament with his personality and skill. A cancer survivor, he embodied a great attitude of living life to the full and having fun.

Have fun, we all did. The nine gala dinners may have seemed a little intense, but it is hard to complain when you are drinking 1986 Margaux and the like, every night.

The ‘additional sponsorship’ aka prize money made things competitive, yet, in the spirit of polo, most teams were generous in their sportsmanship, once a level playing field had been established.

Congratulations to Federation of International Polo and to Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club for producing a remarkable tournament.