1st International Univeristy Polo Challenge at Acquedotto Romano Polo Club
Last weekend, Acquedotto Romano Polo Club (www.arpc.it) hosted the 1st International Univeristy Polo Challenge. Players from Harvard, Cambridge, Univeristy of London and La Sapienza participated in the first FISE-sanctioned tournament during the second week of June 2013.
The first matches were won by University of London and La Sapienza on Friday. They went on to meet in the final on Saturday which was very well fought. La Sapienza eked out a victory 6-4 and won the first prize. Univeristy of London’s combative and competitive team (composed of Reda Shetty, François De Nicolay, George Shelton and Thijs Povel), playing on horses they had met for the first time the day before, did an amazing job and showed great riding prowess.
Harvard and Cambridge, having lost the Friday game, faced each other for the third place. Harvard’s men and women proved too much for the Cantabridgeans and ended up winning by a score of 5 to 1. The Harvard team formed by two men and two women, proves once more that polo can have great women players: Marionne Dierickx and Danielle Lussi helped Casra Labelle and George Bailey (in his first international match on grass) overpower Cambridge (Nickolaus Roessner, David Leigh, Tripurdman Singh and Francesca Andrews, the lone Cambridge female player).
The field 280m x 145m, was in great condition throughout all the matches. Hundreds of students showed up for the Saturday game, which was followed by a dinner and night out in the Rome disco scenes. There were rumours that more than one team ended up going to bed after sunrise at 6 am the following day.
Peter Elser, the organizer for the event and a player for the Kings College Team (Univerisity of London) commented that it was thanks to all the foreigners that the event ended up being a success.
Unusual prizes were distributed after the tournament ; for the first time, a prize was given for the best-looking player: the winner was Thijs Povel of Univeristy of London; a daredevil prize was given for the rider who was able to successfully ride some of the more challenging ponies: George Shelton of Univeristy of London.
Peter Elser plans on making this an annual event in the future. If there are college team who are interested in participating, please get in touch with him at peter.elser@arpc.it or peter@elser.us
The event came to a close on Sunday when the Harvard team played a youth formation of the Roma Polo Club at the Rome Polo Club. This is the sixth time Harvard visits Rome on its worldwide tours of the polo team.