Bentley Scottsdale Polo Championships

In front of a packed house on a sun-drenched afternoon, the Gay Polo League added another chapter in the history books with its impressive debut at the fourth annual Bentley Scottsdale Polo Championships: Horses & Horsepower.

Trailing 6-3 going into the final chukker, the Sophisticated Living GPL team of Dwight Tran, Gordon Ross, Jean-Marc Herrouin and Chip McKenney rallied in the final minutes but ran out of time dropping a 6-5 decision to the Arizona Polo Club Saturday at the Omni Scottsdale Polo Field.

Ross and McKenney each had two goals and Herrouin added one.

It was the first time the Wellington-based GPL was invited to compete in America’s most attended polo event in front of an estimated 15,000 polo fans, many of them cheering “GPL, GPL, GPL,” during the game.
“We have a lot to be proud of today,” said McKenney, GPL founder and president.

The Omni Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Montelucia Arizona Polo Club six-member team of Diego Florez, Bill Clark, Bill Stalcup, Dan Umess, Natalie Grancharov and Andres Camacho had the home field advantage and were more familiar with the horses. But once the GPL all-star team got into a rhythm after a slow start, it didn’t seem to matter in the second half.

“It was a hard game to fight for,” Florez said. “The clock was not long enough for them. They recovered very well in that last chukker. We were matched really well on the field.

“They didn’t know the horses or the field but they stayed with it and didn’t give up,” Florez said. “The horses make a little bit of difference, they are 80 percent of the game. It took them a while to get adjusted but they felt they could dominate the game in that last chukker.”

It also marked the first time a GPL team played without a professional polo player in a major game.
“We played well against seasoned players,” said McKenney. “They had a 3-goaler and two 1.5-goal players that were unbelievable. Our knock-ins were wonderful. It was a solid game. We just needed two more minutes on the clock.

“It was a really good crowd, it was huge,” McKenney said. “It is the largest crowd I have ever seen for a polo game.”

It was the first of four games over two days.

“We think this is one of the most fun eventsLive we can ever have,” Florez said. “I enjoy it year after year. We have been growing every year.This event is putting Arizona on the map for polo.”

While the GPL continues to grow throughout the world, the Arizona event gave the league added exposure.

“It was great fun to be included,” McKenney said. “This is such a huge event. It gave us a great bit of exposure and will help us attract more players and fans.”

The Gay Polo League, created in 2006, is an international organization and only organized gay polo league in the world.

The Wellington-based Gay Polo League’s flagship event is the International Gay Polo League Tournament Week which celebrated its fifth anniversary in April with a record five teams at Grand Champions and moves to world-class International Polo Club Palm Beach in April 2015.

The event was live-streamed worldwide for the first time and featured in a 15-page spread in Polo International Magazine, polo’s premier magazine and other periodicals.

Players travel from all over the world for not only the competition but camaraderie. The GPL has four U.S. chapters in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Wellington.

GPL players come from several countries including France, England, Argentina, South Africa, Canada and Australia.

Attendance at the International GPL Tournament has grown from 1,500 in its inaugural year to more than 5,000. Spectators have grown so interested in the sport several have taken polo lessons and attended other polo games.