February brought two very different finals: one on a frozen Swiss lake, the other in a Gulf sandstorm.
St. Moritz: Cartier make it three in a row
The 31st Snow Polo World Cup was played on the frozen lake at St. Moritz between 29 January and 1 February, in front of around 12,000 spectators. Team Cartier won it for the third year running, beating Team BMW 10 goals to 2.5 in the final.
The winning side was British-Australian: Australian captain Jonathan Munro Ford alongside the English pair Max Charlton and Jamie Morrison, plus Chris Hyde. Hyde, Europe’s highest-rated arena player at nine goals, scored five of the winners’ goals. The world’s only high-goal snow polo tournament also came with a Snow Polo Night at Badrutt’s Palace, complete with a fashion show featuring some of the younger players and a gala dinner.
Dubai: the final that survived the wind
On 21 February the tenth anniversary Cartier International Dubai Polo Challenge reached its final at the Desert Palm Polo Club. Winds of up to 70 kilometres an hour were blowing sand across the city and cutting visibility, so organisers from Guards Polo Club pushed the throw-in back by half an hour to 16:30. The subsidiary Desert Palm Trophy, scheduled for earlier in the day, had to be cancelled.
When the final did start, the hosts made it look straightforward. Desert Palm, led by Alan Meeker and featuring Rashid Albwardy, beat the UAE Polo Team 10-4 to finish the week with a perfect record. The UAE side had reached the final by edging the previously unbeaten Cartier Red 6-5 in the semi-final.
- Amr Zedan of the Guards team collected the La Martina Most Valuable Player of the Tournament award.
- The best playing pony award went to Castora, owned by Ali Albwardy and ridden by Desert Palm’s Diego Cavanagh.
- Princess Haya bint Al Hussein was patron of the event and presented the MVP award.
The organisers’ chief executive called it the best tournament in its ten-year history, which is quite a claim for a week that ended with horses and riders squinting through dust. We think they deserve credit for getting the match on at all.
Sources: Horse & Country TV, Sport360
