Like many winters before the orange ball yet again is flying across the European polo courses. Though winter polo is quite a new entertainment (people started paying polo in the snow some 20 years ago), it has already gained some popularity. Polo tournaments on snowed-under courses have firmly occupied the top line on the list of winter attractions at the most prestigious European resorts.
St. Moritz
The Swiss created winter polo, so it’s quite explainable why the most prestigious world winter polo tournament is held in St. Moritz.
This year the tournament gathered an army of spectators – over 20,000 people. And there was definitely something to see. The veterans say that this year’s championship can be called one of the most spectacular in history. The final match between winners 2006 the Cartier team and the Brioni team defending their title was truly the most beautiful event of the polo weekend.
Cartier fans will long remember the exceptionally beautiful pass of New Zealander John Paul Clarkin from Brioni, who sent the ball into the gate in three touches, not letting it touch the ground. Fairly enough, the struggle was uncompromising: the teams alternately outdid one another, which is only confirmed by the final score - 81/2:6 in Brioni’s favour.
The struggle for the 3rd place confronted Maybach and Bank Julius Baer teams. Maybach players were upset after Brioni literally smashed them, but still found strength to gather themselves together and won the consolatory finals.
Megève
Across the Alps, the French town of Megève gathered a no less impressive crowd. 6 teams struggled for the winning place at the championship called Polo Masters de Megève.
In the end the Charriol team that could boast the brilliant Argentinian Guillermo Terrera among its players (handicap 7) beat the JetFly team from Saudi Arabia. Sal Oppenheim and Jaeger Le Coultre drew and shared the 3rd place; in the match for the 4th and 5th place Mont d’Arbois playing on the home ground smashed their competitors from Constance Hotels.
A novelty of this year’s tournament was the match between two female teams contesting for the 1st Ladies Pommery' s Cup. In the end it went to the French girls from Pommery who left behind the English ladies from Pure Altitude.
And of course all the guests of the tournament will long remember the spectacular China Night Party thrown by Baroness Benjamin de Rothschild who managed to turn the Savoy village into an exotic corner of the Celestial Empire.
Moscow
Lately Moscow’s been trying not to trail behing the leading world winter resorts. For the 5th time in a row the city has hosted the winter polo cup, this year called the Mercury Snow Polo Cup 2008.
The sportsmen weren’t troubled by 15 degrees Centigrade below zero; it maybe even gave the participants an extra impulse to move actively around. Anyway, the matches were a heated struggle: after each chucker the difference in score was only 1-3 points.
4 teams competed for the 3 prize places: Chopard, Land Rover, Villagio Estate and Beluga. In the 1st competition between Villagio Estate and Land Rover fortune smiled on the latter (10:11). The stars of the 2nd match were Englishman Jamie Lee Hardy (handicap 5) who played for Chopard and already got the Best Player trophy this year in Kitzbühel, and Argentinian Diego Brown (handicap 5) from the Beluga team. These two got the title of the most efficient players in the tournament, having scored 19 (Jamie Lee Hardy) and 21 (Diego Brown) balls respectively. The final match for the 1st place turned into a duel between these 2 players and ended in Brown’s (and Beluga) victory at a score of 10:13.
Incidentally, the bright orange balls for the tournament were specially brought by the organizers from St.Moritz, headquarters of this winter game. In a way Moscow became the St. Moritz successor.
Ilya Kalinov
Photoreport
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