Les Lions win in seventh day of the British Open league
By Herbert Spencer
Joachim Gottschalk’s Les Lions defeated Camilo Bautista’s Las Monjitas 12-11 in extra time in Group A of the British Open Championship for the Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup at Cowdray Park Polo Club.
From start to finish, the action in this see-saw encounter was marred by repeated fouls by both teams, with more than half the total points in the match scored on penalty conversions. All five goals in the first chukka were the results of fouls and the winning goal in the seventh was scored with a penalty conversion.
Eduardo Novillo Astrada and Francisco Elizalde kept Las Monjitas a goal or two up at the end of three of the six regulation chukkas, but the game tied up at the end of the second, fifth and sixth periods. Only in the fourth period did Les Lions’ Merlos brothers, Sebastian and Agustin, give Gottschalk’s side their first lead of the game. After that the lead changed several times.
It was a field goal by Les Lions’ Agustin Merlos in the dying seconds of regulation time that pushed the match into a seventh, sudden-death chukka. He then scored the golden goal on a 30-yard penalty conversion – the match’s tenth foul awarded within the 30-yard mark.
In the day’s other Group A match, Nick Clarke’s Salkeld downed Harold Link’s Thai Polo 15-6.