ch Polo
Image courtesy of Cable Bea
banning horses from the island’s beaches between the hours of
10.30am and 6pm throughout summer, to enable Jersey’s first ever
beach polo event.
Animal health issues naturally and rightly also concern the
international powers-that-be. Goa’s first beach polo event was
sadly a one-off. The Lalit Suri Beach Exhibition Polo Goa in 2009
featured some of India’s top professional players playing on the
beautiful Raj Baba beach and had Goa’s Chief Minister as Guest of
Honour. Sadly according to Webbe “Horse health issues meant that
the animals could not be moved to the resort area the next year.”
Aislynn Price knows all about moving horses to inaccessible places
for beach polo. She works as events manager for Polofix, a company
created and managed by former England Captain Andrew Hine,
which more usually concerns itself with the running of high-goal
and international polo. Aislynn was responsible for the logistics
of the inaugural Jersey Beach Polo Tournament, sponsored by Jersey
Pottery, in 2012. “With beach polo, particularly the first time you
run an event, it’s vital to have perfect organisation” she explains.
On a small island things have to be planned with military precision.
“Absolutely everything had to be flown in. We had to get roads
closed just to get the HGV’s containing the horses off the boat at 5am
on the day before the matches. The lorries were then driven under
police escort up to the farm where the horses were to stay! The players
were spread across three hotels, plus we had to make our own pony
lines on the beach too, the day before.”
On the day of the event itself, Aislynn speaks of “battling against
the tide” to create the playing arena. “The event itself was great,
though, and the players, sponsors and spectators enjoyed it”. She
continues, an assertion borne out by local visitors. “Thrilling and so
close up,” was an enthusiastic opinion from one of the 2000 spectators
who watched Andrew Hine himself captain his team to victory.
Jersey was an event that allowed the public to turn up in their
beach shorts as and when they liked. This freedom can be one of
beach polo’s greatest assets, there’s no social pressure involved in
attending a beach polo match; women don’t have to agitate about
what they are going to wear, it’s a more casual approach. Also,
people can see what’s going on really easily, so you don’t hear
the standard complaint from the newcomer that “polo is a game
always played on the far side of the pitch!”
Beach polo can serve as “entry level polo” for first time polo watchers,
in Alex Webbe’s experience. According to Johnny Wheeler,
Director of Sandpolo and organiser of the BRITISH BEACH
POLO CHAMPIONSHIPS in F