& More 2015
World #1 Adolfo Cambiaso at the
Ibiza Beach Polo Cup
How the game of Maharajahs and Kings
has prospered in the sand
H
By Caroline Stern
ow many of us polo players have stood on a beautiful beach
over the years and wished we could play polo on it; or sneaked a
pony and trailer into a beach carpark, only to be caught, mallethanded by some dyspeptic park-keeper type?
Over the years, a few countries have taken a less regimented
approach to polo players enjoying beaches in their own inimitable
manner; as evidenced by eye-catching photos of animated ponies,
beach-type balls and players in trunks on beaches from Australia to
Uruguay. However some have held fast; for example the popular Ibiza
beach polo event which attracted the world’s best player, 10 goaler
Adolfo Cambiaso to play for 2 years running, isn’t played on a beach
at all. According to Gabriel Iglesias, CEO of 4Polo and the organiser of
the Ibiza beach polo event “Polo is not allowed to be played on
16
Spanish beaches, so in the first two years we played in a place that was
a few meters from the beach. So it really looks like it was on the beach,
but it wasn’t. The other editions, number three, four and five we played
in the Ibiza Polo Club, in front of the club house where we created a
beach field.
We brought in about 50 trucks of sand to the field and we had to
create a beach there on the grass. This made the games faster because
the horses didn’t go deep into the sand and we played with the indoor
arena ball.”
Competitive beach polo first came into being when Irish player Mark
Selway began running tournaments on County Kerry’s Inch Strand in
2002. Overlooked by the dramatic mountains of the Dingle Peninsula,
players used a grass ball on a full sized sand pitch, something which