The Game of Queens

With the inaugural Diamond Jubilee Trophy to be played for at this summer’s Audi International Day, Herbert Spencer looks back at the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and her long-standing patronage of polo

In 1951, the Queen first presented the HPA’s 1911 Coronation Cup at Roehampton Polo Club The high point of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee came on the first weekend of June, with two public holidays giving Britons four days to celebrate. A thousand boats joined the Royal Barge in the largest flotilla ever assembled on the River Thames. Countless neighbourhoods in UK cities, towns and villages held street parties, as beacons and bonfires blazed across the nation from Land’s End to John o’Groats.

In the months before and after the big weekend, the Queen and her consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, were travelling the country visiting every corner of her UK realm. One such official visit, in mid-May, was to Richmond, west London, where local groups gathered to greet them in Richmond Park – on a polo ground.

The royal park’s polo ground, used by nearby Ham Polo Club, was the venue because it provided ample open space for Richmond’s displays and exhibits. The choice of the ground for the festivities also echoed the 60 years of the Queen’s patronage of polo.

Nicholas Colquhoun-Denvers, chairman of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) and of Ham, had gathered a group of players from the club with their ponies along the royal couple’s progression in Richmond Park. Prince Philip, patron of the HPA, stopped to talk with them and recalled that he had once played polo on the park’s ground.

Prince Philip’s 20-year career as a polo player was largely responsible for the Queen’s interest in the sport, but the tradition of royal patronage dates back much earlier, to the reign of Queen Victoria in the 19th century (see ‘The Royal Tournament’ in the Hurlingham summer issue, June 2011).

As a child, Princess Elizabeth would have had the opportunity to watch her father playing polo in the Thirties, before he ascended the throne as King George VI following the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936.

In 1947, as the heir to the throne, Elizabeth wed the Greek-born Prince Philip and early in their marriage became a faithful ‘polo wife’. When Philip was serving with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean in the Fifties, he took up polo under the tutelage of his uncle Lord Mountbatten, with whom the couple stayed on Malta. Prince Philip is reported to have said that he chose the sport because Princess Elizabeth seemed to prefer watching Mountbatten playing polo, than watching Philip playing cricket.

Back in England, Princess Elizabeth attended polo matches in which her husband was playing and was often called upon to present prizes. She first presented the HPA’s 1911 Coronation Cup at Roehampton Polo Club in 1951.

Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne in 1952 and one of her first public appearances after her coronation the following year was at Cowdray Park Polo Club where she again presented the Coronation Cup, watched by a crowd of 12,000.

In 1955, the Queen gave permission for Prince Philip and his fellow players to establish a polo club in Windsor Great Park. The Household Brigade Polo Club later became Guards, of which the Queen is patron and the Duke of Edinburgh president. Over the years the Queen has attended hundreds of events at the club, a short drive through the royal park from Windsor Castle.

No one has kept count, but it seems certain that the Queen has attended more polo events than those of any other sport, including horseracing. It has been said that, on occasion, the Queen appears to be more interested in the ponies at polo than in the players, not surprising considering that she owns and breeds Thoroughbreds for racing.

Meanwhile, the Queen saw her son Prince Charles, and later grandsons Princes William and Harry, take up the sport of her father and husband. For a number of years her royal stud bred and trained polo ponies for Philip and Charles.

From 1972 it became traditional for the Queen to preside over the HPA’s International

Left Her Majesty and Prince Philip with Lord and Lady Cowdray in 1951. Below With polo great Lord Mountbatten, Prince Philip’s uncle. Bottom Her Majesty treading in at half-time during a 1970 Royal Ascot Week match at Guards Polo Club, with Prince Philip as umpire

Left Prince Charles and Princes William and Harry frequently played together on Charles’s Highgrove team before his retirement from polo in 2006 Right The Queen presenting during GCC Polo Cup at Guards Polo Club, June 2011

Day at Guards Polo Club, an event that regularly draws up to 20,000 spectators, many of them attending just for a chance to see the sovereign at polo. On the occasions that the Queen has been otherwise occupied, her place has been taken by other members of the royal family, including the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the late Princess Diana and Prince Harry.

In 1977 the HPA marked the Queen’s first 25 years on the throne by inaugurating the Silver Jubilee Cup, a large sterling silver bowl of modern design commissioned by WD & HO Wills, then sponsors of the association’s International Day. For years the trophy was awarded to winners of the second international match at this event.

On the occasion of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, the HPA inaugurated the Golden Jubilee Cup, first presented by her at the association’s 2002 Cartier International Polo Day. In subsequent years the trophy was played for by The Prince of Wales’s Team and the Hurlingham Team.

To celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee this year, the HPA is inaugurating the Diamond Jubilee Trophy, to be presented to the winners of the match between Young England and Young Commonwealth, at the association’s Audi International at Guards Polo Club on 22 July. The new trophy is an impressive bronze created by the noted equine sculptor Emma MacDermott. The sculpture, which is about 20 inches high, is of a leopard perched on a rock. It recognises the fact that Princess Elizabeth was staying at the Treetops hotel in the

Aberdares, Kenya, well known as leopard country, when King George VI died and she became Queen. Miniatures of the bronze trophy have also been created and presented as the winners’ individual prizes whenever the trophy is played for.

The HPA has also commissioned me to produce a display marking the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, with various photographs of the Queen at polo over the years and a review of her patronage of the sport. The display will be shown at several HPA events this summer. It seems most appropriate that the glittering trophies marking milestones of the Queen’s reign are now awarded at the HPA’s most important international test matches, as she is still sovereign and chief-of-state of some 30 countries and territories around the world. The Silver Jubilee Cup is played for at the St Regis International and the Golden Jubilee Cup at the Beaufort test. Now we have the Diamond Jubilee Trophy at the Audi International in July, together with the 1911 Coronation Cup, a reminder of the days when the sun never set on the British Empire or on polo.

‘No one has done more than Her Majesty The Queen, together with the HPA’s patron, the Duke of Edinburgh, to raise the profile of our sport both here and abroad,’ said HPA chairman Colquhoun-Denvers. ‘Their presence at our association’s International Day over the years has helped to make this the world’s biggest one-day polo event, which in turn has enabled us to contribute substantially to our Polo Charity Trust and to develop the training of youth in polo.

‘All of us owe Her Majesty an enormous debt of gratitude for her patronage of polo over the past 60 years. The whole of the polo community joins millions of others around the world in celebrating her Diamond Jubilee.’