Polo's Coming Home
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SPORT POLO’S COMING HOME IN THE UNLIKELY ENVIRONS OF A NORTHERN CHINESE INDUSTRIAL CITY, THE REVIVAL OF orses thunder by, barging into one another, POLO IN HONG KONG TAKES A GIANT STEP nostrils flaring, flanks rippling, muscle, bone and FORWARD. STEVE REELS REPORTS sinew working in unison and in curious counter- H point to the delicate plaiting of the horses’ manes and tails. The riders seem almost an afterthought, perched atop the awesome symmetry of these athletic steeds. This is polo, the sport of kings, rugby on horseback, traditional preserve of the aristocracy and the military. Except that this game is being played by Hongkongers at a polo ground in Tianjin, northern China. And half of them had never ridden a horse just 10 months ago. In Britain, the sport is all about the princes Charles and Harry; internationally, dashing Argentine Nacho Figueras is the pin-up boy; here in Hong Kong, it’s business royalty Aron Harilela and former Shanghai Tang boss Raphaël le Masne de Chaumont – but you won’t see them play locally. There’s no polo in Hong Kong. It wasn’t always thus, though the evidence for its existence is tantalisingly scanty. The visiting Prince of Wales played a game of polo – organised by Sir Paul Chater – at Causeway Bay in April 1922, and an aerial photo from the 1920s shows part of Causeway Bay polo ground. Golf pro Joann Hardwick remembers watching polo in Shek Kong as a child, a memory borne out by the photograph overleaf showing the teams at a 1973 Army vs Civilians game posing with a youthful-looking Hong Kong Governor Sir Murray Maclehose and Lady Maclehose at Borneo Lines military base in Shek Kong, now occupied by the PLA and known as Shek Kong Barracks. Former cavalryman Bob Sanders (the player at far right) says, “We played polo twice weekly on a ground adjacent to the Shek Kong airstrip. Civilian and army players on Borneo ponies, some only 12 hands tall and all with mouths of steel.” But as the great open tracts of the north filled up with refugees and new towns, and the British departed, polo faded away. That was until Dave Savage and Andrew Leung took action, albeit from opposite ends of the sporting hierarchy. Leung is a burly, gregarious Hong Kong-born barrister who grew up in Manchester. His father, Stephen, a race- horse trainer and the first Chinese polo player in Britain, introduced him to the sport of polo at a young age. “I was LAU CHI YAN riding at four,” says Leung, “and playing polo at nine. By 114 PRESTIGE | prestigeonline.com #prestigehk | PRESTIGE 115 16 SPORT Polo.indd 114 24/4/2019 7:05 PM 16 SPORT Polo.indd 115 24/4/2019 7:05 PM SPORT CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: ACTION AT THE HONG KONG BEGINNERS CUP; THE TIANJIN STABLES; 1973 ARMY VS CIVILIANS POLO MATCH; THE SOUTH FIELD GRANDSTAND the time I was 19 I was a good player, but then I went to university and dropped it all.” An epiphany at the age of 38 in 2016 – “I suddenly realised what I really wanted to do, and that was to play polo again” – led him back to the saddle and into Hong Kong’s homeless polo community. But the epiphany didn’t stop there. “I realised that I could really make a difference by introducing new people to the sport,” he says. “And I thought the best way to do that was to organise training and competition for them.” But where? Hong Kong didn’t have the real estate for a polo ground, and Leung didn’t have the resources to fund one anyway. It turned out that billionaire businessman Pan Sutong had a polo project underway in Tianjin, northern China, a fully equipped club with ground and stables and Argentinian grooms – so Leung went there. By the end of 2017, he’d organised monthly training sessions in Tianjin and Thailand for his band of Hong Kong starters, and come up with the ambitious concept of the Beginners Cup, a polo tournament for Hongkongers who had, for the most part, never ridden a horse before, to be played at the Tianjin ground. It was an audacious and courageous move, but one which payed off when, in October 2018, the Hong Kong Beginners Cup was staged at Tianjin Metropolitan Polo Club with four teams – EB Communications, Deacons, Lam Tsuen and the host club – taking to the field in Tianjin for what evening. The adjacent Fortune Heights residential development and Central Business District – which along with Tianjin Metropolitan Polo Club comprise Pan’s Goldin Metropolitan project – are unfi nished and barely occupied. Before me lies a vast acreage of luxury townhouses and tower blocks – including a 297-metre-high, 117-storey may well come to be seen as a seminal event. The teams to “mingle with owners of storied French chateaux”. Well, skyscraper – that stand like grey concrete sentinels at the each comprised two beginners, one intermediate-level they’re not here when I check in, but it’s hardly surprising tomb of a forgotten emperor. The polo, it seems, is the only player and one experienced player, with one of the four – the club incorporates a hotel with more than 100 rooms thriving facet of this ambitious undertaking. Its facilities being female. A rule barring each team’s experienced player and suites, a spa, fi tness centre and two swimming pools, seem to be in demand. On the same day as the Beginners from scoring goals offered further incentive to the fledgling and a good dozen restaurants, including the showpiece Cup, the club is also hosting a show-jumping tournament, a equestrians, who found themselves performing on one of Le Pan, helmed by Michelin-starred chef Edward Voon. dog show and a wedding. Apart from the clubhouse/hotel the sport’s most imposing stages. And folk do seem to go to bed early here, judging by the and the stables, there are two international-standard polo Tianjin Metropolitan Polo Club is a staggering ranks of dark townhouses and apartment towers with nary fi elds, one of which – the South Field – is fl anked by a development, a neo-classical-style château set in a a light showing that I pass on my approach to the hotel. stunning double-tiered grandstand in French Renaissance 90-hectare estate and surrounded by manicured gardens, Hoping to visit the complex’s fabled fi ve-storey wine style with spectator paddocks and 20 VIP suites. fountains and life-size statues of polo players and ponies cellar, I take a quick shower and am somewhat bemused I spend the morning in the lead-up to the Beginners Cup captured in full flight. Sumptuous interiors of rich woods, when my bathroom light-switch fi tting falls out of the with Rich McHardy, a British videographer who’s making a leather and marble, and yet more sculptures, leave you in wall, dangling, and again when I open the balcony door fi lm of the event. He shoots the teams at the clubhouse in no doubt that this is a club worthy of the sport of kings, an only to be unable to close it, the handle revolving merrily their tournament livery. He takes footage of them impression reinforced by brochures advocating it as a around the latch. wandering around the hotel and in its courtyard. He fi lms suitable venue for the “new nobility” and a place in which CLOCKWISECLOCKWISE FROM FROM LEFT: LEFT: RICH RICH MCHARDY; MCHARDY; LAU LAU CHI CHI YAN; YAN; STEVESTEVE REELS; REELS; COURTESY COURTESY OF OF BOB BOB SANDERS SANDERS A pre-breakfast stroll reveals what I’d missed the previous at the stables, a vast complex housing 140 polo ponies, a pro #prestigehk | PRESTIGE 117 16 SPORT Polo.indd 116 25/4/2019 5:23 PM 16 SPORT Polo.indd 117 24/4/2019 7:05 PM SPORT HEADLESS GOATEXPERT HORSEMANSHIP ROMP AND THE WARRIOR CODE LIVE ON IN CENTRAL ASIA While the modern sport of polo has its origins in northeastern India — from where the British military adopted the game and spread it around the world in the late 19th century — the real provenance of polo lies in the vast panoramas of Central Asia. Mounted nomads played ancient variants of the sport — which, like the modern game, became gentrified with its adoption by royalty and the elite of society — in Persia and Byzantium, in Tang-dynasty Xi’An and in northern Pakistan. It was here, in 1996, that I saw my first game, in the polo ground at Gilgit on the Karakoram Highway, played by dashing dandies with Errol Flynn moustaches and riding breeches, and cheered enthusiastically by a large crowd of men in shalwar-kameez. More whimsical modern takes on the game include Thai elephant polo and Mongolian camel polo (played on Bactrians), both based on modern polo rules. But one ancient variant never became gentrified and is played to this day across the enormous dramatic sweep of Central Asia: buzkashi, or headless-goat polo. Also known as kok-boru, this brawl on horseback is shop and a members’ lounge. I learn that a polo pony is played in the deserts of Afghanistan, on the steppes of Kazakhstan and not actually a pony but a horse, albeit one with specific in the high pastures of Xinjiang. It’s played under the dramatic peaks of qualities. A polo pony is nimble on its feet, intelligent Tajikistan and in the fastnesses of the Altay mountains. And it’s played in Kyrgyzstan, where I watch it at the World Nomad Games in 2018.