Country Article / Postcards

Campeonato Argentino

Date: 12/18/2003

Right in front of me, a red-team player literally threw himself into the side of a black-team player. It was one of the most aggressive moves I've seen in sports. But this wasn't rugby, NFL Sunday, Australian football, or Shaquille O'Neal. And the players weren't men, but horses. This was aggressive, Argentine polo, where you play the man, not the ball.

Argentina produces arguably the best tango singers and dancers in the world…perhaps the best soccer players…and some of the best tennis players, jazz musicians, and scientists. Argentine farmers excel in the quality of their meat, chicken, wine, leather, and wool.

But in no other field does Argentina dominate the way it does polo.

There are 18 polo players in the world with the highest skill ranking, a 10 handicap. Nearly all were born, raised, and trained in Argentina, and nearly all ride Argentine ponies (the best-trained polo ponies). One exception is American Mike Azzaro, with a handicap ranking of 10. He was here in Buenos Aires, playing on the Chapa II team. In the match I heard him screaming at the umpire in English. "You AREN'T going to call that!"

This was the 110th Argentine Open, formally called the Campeonato Argentino Abierto de Polo Movicom Bell South. The Argentine Open is held every year in November and December at the Palermo polo grounds in the heart of Buenos Aires.

The match I attended pitted two branches of the Heguy family against each other; Chapa II (mainly sons of Alberto Heguy) and their cousins at Chapa I (mainly sons of Horacio Heguy).

In interviews, the Heguys said they wanted to win, and if they had to beat their cousins to do it, so be it. I believed them. These players screamed and yelled, drove their horses into each other, and attacked and ran. Yet they played with astonishing precision, passing the ball from player to player, smashing out fast breaks, then dribbling for better control in front of the goal.

We take these things for granted in basketball, for example, where players have their feet on the ground. But these young men rode polo ponies at breakneck speed, swinging mallets at a small white ball on the ground, hitting both forwards and backwards. Think of Tiger Woods trying to play golf on horseback with only one club in his hand but facing away from the pin. Think of Serena Williams charging the net with her tennis racket, but on horseback with another horse crashing into her. Yet these 10-handicap polo players almost never missed.

Very impressive.

Paul Terhorst
for International Living