The Cathedral of Polo has a champion, and it is the same one as last year. On Saturday 6 December, La Dolfina beat Ellerstina 14-12 in the final of the 2014 Argentine Open to complete a second successive sweep of the Argentine high-goal season.
The line-ups
La Dolfina were Adolfo Cambiaso, Pelon Stirling, Pablo MacDonough and Juan Martin Nero. Ellerstina fielded Facundo Pieres, Gonzalito Pieres, Nico Pieres and Nachi du Plessis. The final was streamed live on pololine.tv, so fans in London could follow it from home.
The road to Palermo
The qualifying fixtures began on 15 November, among them La Dolfina’s 17-6 win over Miramar and a 12-10 win for La Aguada over Magual. The semi-finals were scheduled for 29 and 30 November, with La Dolfina taking on La Aguada in League A and Alegria meeting Ellerstina in League B. The two winners met in the final a week later.
What the win means
The result carries a lot of history with it:
- Back-to-back Triple Crowns: La Dolfina swept the Tortugas Open, the Hurlingham Open and the Argentine Open, which equals the two in a row won by Juan Carlos Harriott’s 40-goal Coronel Suarez team in 1974 and 1975.
- A winning run: it was their twenty-fourth consecutive high-goal win over two seasons.
- Palermo record: eight Argentine Open titles puts La Dolfina level with North Santa Fe and El Trébol in third place on the all-time list. Only Coronel Suarez, with 25, and Hurlingham, with 15, have more.
- Cambiaso: the win marks another final for him, his fourteenth in fifteen years.
A two-goal margin is the closest La Dolfina came all season in the three finals we have followed. They beat Ellerstina 14-8 at Tortugas and 18-15 at Hurlingham, so a 14-12 Palermo final shows how near the Pieres family came to breaking the run at the last hurdle.
The scale of it is remarkable. A single team has now held the three biggest trophies in Argentine polo two years running, and the question for everyone else is whether anyone can stop them in 2015.
Sources: Horse Times, Horse Times: Palermo preview
