Third time lucky. Michael Bickford’s La Indiana won the 2018 Cartier Queen’s Cup at Guards Polo Club, beating Andrey Borodin’s Park Place 9-7 in the final and finally getting the better of a tournament that had twice beaten them by a single goal.
The team
La Indiana lined up with Facundo Pieres, Nic Roldan, Bickford and Alec White. Pieres, one of the world’s best players, was at back, and White, a four-goal Australian, played at two. The team had lost the final in 2016 to Adolfo Cambiaso’s Dubai and in 2017 to Cambiaso’s RH Polo, both by one goal. This was their third final in a row, and the cup was presented by Her Majesty The Queen on the Queen’s Ground.
The semi-finals
Eleven teams started the competition, and four remained for the semi-finals. In the first match, Park Place, playing the tournament for the first time, beat Valiente to claim the Hubert Perrodo Trophy. Juan Britos, the tournament’s top scorer going in, scored four goals and was named MVP, with Hilario Ulloa and Tommy Beresford strong alongside him. Valiente never took the lead. Ulloa collected the Best Playing Pony prize for Minchatos Mesquite, a seven-year-old stallion.
The second semi-final was stop-start, with too many whistles, but La Indiana dominated Jean-François Decaux’s La Bamba de Areco. David Stirling scored five of La Bamba’s goals, but they conceded too many penalties, and Pieres and Roldan converted them. In the final two chukkas those two scored six goals to La Bamba’s two. Roldan was MVP, and Pieres’s American-bred Ole took Best Playing Pony.
What the final told us
- Team-building pays off. Bickford and Roldan have worked together since 2016, and the team has been in the final for three consecutive seasons.
- Park Place are a force. A first appearance in the Queen’s Cup led to a final, and they will be back.
- Pieres and Roldan stood out. Their penalty shooting and open-play partnership made the difference in the semi-final.
Spencer McCarthy’s Emlor won the Cartier Trophy, the sub-final, to round off the day. The Gold Cup at Cowdray Park is next, and with both La Indiana and Park Place in good form, it will be an interesting summer.
Sources: Guards Polo Club, U.S. Polo Association
