HORSE MASTER

Adam Snow describes his integral role as horse master at the XII FIP World Polo Championships, the first to be held at the National Polo Center in Wellington, Florida

Opposite:

Berazadi (red helmet) on J5 Matilde, showing why he was MVP and she was BPP of the tournament. Below: Adam Snow with horse lists in hand, making sure Mexico’s string is in order

When I heard the title of the position – horse master – I knew I wouldn’t be able to say no. It’s not that I harboured any illusions of mastery – or that I think it’s even possible – but rather that I could use the experience as another step in the process of learning about these animals and what makes them tick. And what a great group of horses to get to know!

There were 183 names on the first list that dropped into my WhatsApp. Distinguished by grades of A, B and C, these were the J5 polo ponies that would be used to mount the eight teams – Argentina, Australia, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Spain, USA, Uruguay – competing for the XII FIP World Polo Championships in Wellington, Florida. My first job was to oversee the distribution of these ponies into eight equal pools for the competing countries to draw from out of a hat. I had two weeks to get to know them, but I wasn’t alone.

I was well aware of the quality of breeding, care and management that constituted Bob Jornayvaz’s J5/Valiente operation. Manager Roberto Zedda, and his assistant Juan Vidal, knew the horses cold. And many of the 30-odd grooms had worked with these ponies previously. When I arrived in Florida, there were 130 horses stabled in the Valiente barn and approximately 50 more living in the surrounding corrals.

In the afternoons, I liked to arrive at the barn during siesta, and walk or bike the aisles with my clipboard, just observing all the horses. I remember one gelding, Swamp, who was as curious and friendly as can be – he thought the clipboard might be for him – and I never passed his stall again without stopping to give him a rub. In the evenings, Roberto drew up lists (of roughly 88 horses) for the following day’s practice.

I think I practised or rode close to 100 ponies. And the more I rode, the more my favourites began to present themselves. I remember my very first practice chukka on a tall, six-year-old gelding named Java. I started quietly – it was only his second or third chukka of the season – but he did everything, and it all felt smooth, and soon I was just enjoying the polo and trusting that I had a nice horse under me. Later I learned of his parents – Valid Expectations and Julieta. At least in American polo breeding circles, it’s hard to find more decorated parents.

And this quality was no exception. Some were the sons and daughters of Hartman Trophy winners, and many were the offspring of famous mares from around the world – Beckon, Bruma, Cuartetera, Digit, Hannah Montana, Medalla, Lapa, Raptor, Small Person, Sugar and Tula, to name a few. It was certainly a confidence-builder to know the quality of their bloodlines.

On the eve of 24 October, just days before the tournament’s launch, we gathered around a long wooden table by the fireplace on the upstairs porch of the Valiente barn and made our first attempt at eight even horse groupings. Our team consisted of Alex Taylor and Felipe Del Sel from the FIP; Carlucho Arellano and Cristina Fernandez representing the USPA; along with Rob Jornayvaz (whose idea this J5/USPA collaboration had been), Roberto, Juan and

myself. I noticed engraved wooden signs on three sides of the stone chimney – J5, La Dolfina, Valiente – symbolising the association between Adolfo Cambiaso and Bob Jornayvaz’s polo and breeding operations.

For added colour, we used the names of football teams – Manchester City, Liverpool, PSG, Barcelona, Real Madrid, River Plate, Boca Juniors, Nueva Chicago – to head the eight columns of horses that countries would draw from. Once again, Roberto held the pen, and we started at the top – where I was most opinionated about my favourites – and began entering horses one at a time. Nina, Matilde, Premiada, Scuffle, Puntana, Chaqueta, Pigmea and Loteria filled the first row, from left to right. And then we entered what we deemed to be the next best eight horses, returning back from right to left. In this manner, we worked our way down the list, row by row. It took a couple of hours, but in the end, we had distributed 174 horses into eight groupings of 21 ponies plus six reserves in case of injuries. Rough draft complete, we tucked into Micky’s BBQ, and agreed to finalise the lists in the morning.

Not surprisingly, we had made some mistakes. For example, River Plate had fewer A-ranked horses than any other team, and Real Madrid and Liverpool had too many Cs. Roberto, Juan and I studied the dry-erase boards, and made some “executive decisions”. By making a handful of trades between teams and bumping a couple of the best Bs and Cs up a grade, we created a final draft that showed as much parity as we could imagine. Each team now had 21 horses: 9 As, 11 Bs, and 1 C. We were ready for the draw.

At the technical meeting the following morning, coaches selected folded pieces of paper from a polo trophy held high by Alex Taylor. Argentina drew Real Madrid, Australia drew River Plate, Pakistan drew Barcelona, etc. Team members then proceeded to the Valiente polo fields, where they rode their 21 ponies for the first time. The following day, teams practised with their horses. And on Saturday, 29 October, tournament play commenced.

The most challenging part of my role was complete, but there were ongoing assignments. For each match, I was responsible for picking a Best Playing Pony, assisted by Maureen Brennan and Francisco Lanusse. When injuries occurred, we chose the best available replacement from the group of reserve Cs, and coaches were notified of the substitution. After each round of matches, any issues were assessed by a veterinarian, and it was her decision when a horse had to stop playing. I tried to be transparent, and teams appreciated that we were making the best decisions possible for the horses. After zone play (a total of 12 matches), we redistributed the top 10 ponies from the unsuccessful teams to the four proceeding to the semi-finals. Having watched all these ponies play three matches, it now felt relatively easy to select the top 40. Four new soccer clubs were chosen, we divided them up into four balanced pools and coaches from Argentina, Spain, Uruguay and the United States drew their lots.

Each team now had 31 horses, and the number of chukkas increased from four to five. When teams remained tied after regulation, we had to quickly determine how many horses each team had eligible for sudden death (no horses were allowed to play more than two half chukkas, or a total of seven minutes, during the course of a match). If a team ran out of available mounts, the match would have to be decided by a penalty

shootout. This required FIP volunteers who timed the spares’ minutes with a stopwatch in the pony lines of each team. Fortunately, there were enough spares available that no matches, including the finals which went two half-chukkas deep into overtime (OT), needed to be decided on penalties.

When Spain’s #3, Pelayo Berazadi, sent a 90-yard bomb through the uprights in the second half-chukka of OT, he brought the tournament to a dramatic close. My host nation, USA, had come within a whisker of winning the title. And they had made us all proud. From the tournament organisers, one could sense a collective sigh of relief for a job well done. Spain had secured its first-ever FIP World Championship, and the USPA had successfully hosted its first final at the newly acquired National Polo Center (NPC). The tournament’s success had required a close collaboration between the USPA, FIP and the J5/Valiente polo operation.

Reflecting on my role later that evening, while enjoying pizza and beer back at the Valiente barn, I felt privileged to be accepted by the group of grooms, managers and horses. I also felt exhausted, but being “all in” for a few weeks never hurt anyone. The horses will always keep me coming back for more.

H�ctor Martelli explores why the Pieres breeding line –which produces so many great Polo Argentino ponies every year – is now considered one of the best in the world

The story of the famous Pieres breeding line begins in 1980 in Veinticinco de Mayo, a town that lies to the southwest of Buenos Aires. Here, Gonzalo Pieres partnered with his brother Álvaro and their friend Fernando Monteverde to start breeding polo horses, using ex-playing mares and a thoroughbred stallion.

This partnership continued until 1992, when Kerry Packer, the Australian media tycoon best-known internationally for revolutionising the sport of cricket, but also a keen polo player, bought the 2,500-hectare “La Grappa” farm on the outskirts of Casbas to the west of Buenos Aires. Joining forces with Gonzalo Pieres, Packer founded Ellerstina, a polo team that would go on to dominate Argentinian polo. Although Packer passed away in 2005, the club endures and has recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. And the breeding continues there with the mares that belonged to Gonzalo, also supplemented by those imported from England and Australia. The offspring born at Ellerstina are now the most coveted and highly valued in the world.

Gonzalo’s philosophy of breeding is as simple as it is successful: ‘Breed the best to the best.’ Using different combinations of blood, he produces ponies of excellence, following in the footsteps of Robert Bakewell (1725-1795), the English geneticist and pioneer in animal husbandry. Indeed, although genetics is not an exact science, if two superlative bloods are combined, there is a greater chance that the product will be excellent.

Gonzalo’s reproductive method is still essentially embryo transfer, although some cloning is being practised. The cloning which is taking place involves outstanding mares, such as Guillermina, the daughter of Hall of Fame star, Luna.

The best of Ellerstina’s breeding comes from this great mare. Among her offspring are such notable ponies as Chita, Xelene, Califa, Geisha and Espacial. The line continues as her grandchildren include Z Jones, and there are some notable great-grandchildren too, such as Chequera. They are also cloning Lambada (mother of Cuartetera, Cambiaso’s great mare), who Gonzalo received along with Luna, from Hector Barrantes, the legendary player, perhaps best-known in England as the stepfather of the Duchess of York.

Gonzalo does not practise very close breeding (ie fathers with daughters), although he does use more distant ones with grandmothers and great-grandmothers. The current annual output is about 170 births per year, the mothers being excellent current players and former players with the same characteristics.

The preferred stallion is Ellerstina Pícaro, son of Pucará and Simpática. Pucará is a Polo Argentino stallion, son of the thoroughbred Séquito and Rubia, Gonzalo Tanoira’s excellent player mare.

Ellerstina Pícaro enjoys an equally impressive lineage on the maternal side. His mother, Simpática, was also an outstanding player who played in all the Open games of the Argentine Triple Crown. All the animals mentioned in these pedigrees are of extreme quality and their mothers are great players.

Injecting thoroughbred blood into the offspring is a principle that Gonzalo Pieres has always followed. Thoroughbreds used over time have been Rainbow Corner, Bagual, Optimun and one that produced some exceptional offspring was Sportivo, who was Pieres’ sire in service for 13 years. Sportivo is the father of Cuartetera

(Sportivo and Lambada); and lately they have imported a clone of thoroughbred Valid Expectations from the US to test it as a stud.

About 60 employees work at La Grappa, helping with the care and supervision of the breeding stage (pregnancy, birth and rearing) and the animals are then weaned so they can be broken in and trained.

Of the 170 annual births, around 160 foals reach the breaking-in stage, with those carrying poise defects unable to be trained for polo.

Pieres practices a breaking-in process that consists first of the horse accepting contact with man, showing him that man is not a predator, but rather a friend of the horse. Once this is achieved, the rest of the learning is much easier. Two “tamers” are employed in the establishment in Casbas and break in approximately 30 horses. There are others who work exclusively for Pieres in a property near the city of Buenos Aires, where they take care of another 30 and the rest are broken in by outsourced professionals. The broken-in animals are almost all females.

Of the 170 foals born, only around 10 or 12 males are broken in.

All the tamed animals are trained for polo, with 16 to 18 pilots, some at La Grappa itself and the rest at Ellerstina Polo Club, in the General Rodríguez area of Buenos Aires.

The 30 best horses are reserved annually for Gonzalito, Facundo and Nicolás to ride. The rest are destined for sale, either locally or abroad.

The results of this hard work are witnessed every year, as Ellerstina ponies pick up awards in Argentina, England and the US. The ponies are not only played by the Ellerstina team, but many are acquired by other players as they are some of the most in-demand horses in the world.

Finally, it would be a mistake not to recognise the role played by the legendary Héctor Barrantes in all this, as he was a key figure in the professional life of Gonzalo Pieres. He was the person who guided Gonzalo in his early days in England and provided many brilliant mares to play in the Argentine Triple Crown, who today are mothers or grandmothers of Ellerstina ponies.

Florida’s National Polo Center saw England put up a strong ght in a fast-paced nal that resulted in them taking the trophy in the Westchester Cup with a decisive victory over the USA.

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