Veuve Clicquot Classic - Go Polo!

Forgetting about the World (snore) Cup action in South Africa
Heather Clawson over at Habitually Chic blogged last week about this new book Polo: The Nomadic Tribe
and last weekends Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic starring Prince Harry and polo superstar and face of Ralph Lauren Black, Nacho Figueras.

Harry had a little tumble, ouch

but Nacho was a suave as ever... and Black Watch won the match...of course.
More on polo out in blogland
The Trad has been weighing in on the the lack of spectator chic at Palm Beach Polo compared to how the polo crowd dressed for the games back in the 1980s.
Having seen these photos of the 2009 Westchester Cup  I can report that there are still plenty of well turned out fans at Palm Beach.

But no matter how the fans dress, the game is still the most elegant professional sport out there even if the life is nomadic....and it is. 
And it's not all champagne and caviar because you don't get to be a top American polo player like this talented horseman and to play on the team that won the Triple Crown of Polo without years of hard work and training.  Yes, the Argentine players like Nacho add the sexiness and excitement, but the American players like Julio add the goals.

Palm Beach Polo - A Great Loss

Well the story came out on Yahoo
It not only was a bad batch of drugs
It was a bad batch of drugs that are not legal in the US
I'm not surprised
Whatever the reality there is a huge sense of loss.
Here is the email that I received from a friend in the Palm Beach Polo world.

Our Black Sunday
By Sam Morton
“Nothing really prepares you for what happened Sunday; the horror of overt twenty horses dropping at our biggest polo tournament of the year. Young athletes cut down in their prime.. It is our Black Sunday or 9/11 in polo.
There are lots of rumors running around which doesn’t really change the end result. Lots of horsemen who happened to be there scrambled over to help but there was nothing they could do. One witness told me it looked like there were twenty people around each horse trying to do something,anything.
“People who work behind the scenes in polo learn to work fast. We pride ourselves on it. Horses are tacked up, stripped, and washed in minutes. At the U.S. Open Sunday, and at any Florida function all winter, there are people from all over the world in the polo community. For over an hour,South Africans, Argentines, French, Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Costa Ricans, Cubans, and several other countries, worked shoulder to shoulder with the best horse vets in the world to save lives. They were scrambling as one, at a moment’s notice. I can tell you no one could have worked faster in any sport, equestrian or human, and for that I am extremely proud to be part of it. The polo team, Isla Carol mounted a substitute team in little over an hour. I’m not sure people realize what went into that.
“Grooms, sponsors, vets, players, photographers and spectators are all bonded by a passion for horses. It’s who we are as a community. The last time we were brought together was the herpes virus scare a few years back. I sat in a room and looked at pros, blacksmiths, grooms, vets, owners and fans of polo that pulled together for the love of our horses and I think it was probably the first time I truly thought about being part of a community. I was proud then and I am proud now.
“In Plains Indian society, less than two hundred years ago, it was believed that when a man dies, his horse would accompany him in the next life.That’s how much horses were deeply involved in their life, and in a way they are that much a part of our lives in polo. I can tell you every polo player, groom, owner, trainer and fan of the game fells the pain right now. We are deeply hurt and saddened as a people over the loss of our horses.
To Lechuza we send our condolences.“God bless the souls of our horses that run with the angels now."Gotta go."“My horse fights with me and fasts with me because if he is to carry me into battle, he must know my heart and I must know his or we shall never become brothers. I have been told that the white man who is almost a god, and yet a great fool, does not believe the horse has a soul. This cannot be true. I have many times seen my horse’s soul in his eyes.-Plenty Coups Chief of the Crow”

You may or not be a fan of Polo as a sport but the spirit and the heart displayed by polo horses is beyond description.

Hell in High Goal

From the Palm Beach Post

Cause of 21 polo horses' deaths could take days, weeks to determine

The horses, all from the same team, died one by one, "almost certainly of an intoxication of some sort that they consumed," said Lechuza Caracas team veterinarian James Belden, a local vet who was among those pumping intravenous fluids into the horses, trying to save them. Belden doesn't travel with the team but said he does not believe the horses were given anabolic steroids because the team competes in England, where such drugs are prohibited.

The U.S. Polo Association does not require drug testing of horses. "There is no drug testing required because polo has always been a gentlemen's game. Polo has always been about the glory of the game, and not the money," said Scott Swerdlin, a member of the Palm Beach Equine Clinic.

Uh no...it's actually all about the money but that's another subject for another post.

And I think that this pretty much says it all

At the highly competitive level of the Wellington tournament, distributing "cocktails" to horses prior to matches to enhance their performance is a common practice, said several polo experts. The steroid-like chemicals are given to horses mixed with their water or can be administered by needle, the sources said.

Anyone who has had any experience in the world of sport horses whether racing, polo or show jumping knows that horses are routinely drugged.