Cibao La Pampa secured their second victory in this year’s Cartier Queen’s Cup after a tough match against last year’s finalists, La Magdeleine. The teams were neck and neck in the early chukkas, matching goal for goal. However, Alexandre Garese’s La Magdeleine secured a slender, one goal advantage (6-5) at the half-time bell. Juan Pepa was determined that his Cibao La Pampa squad should take command in the second half though and fired through two goals himself. His team-mate, Gonzalo Ferrari followed suit and fired through four more, appropriately riding a horse called Messi. La Magdeleine had no reply to this onslaught and were trailing by four goals (10-6) at the start of the fifth. Incredibly, they fought back in the last two chukkas, regularly assaulting Cibao La Pampa’s goal, but could not push this game into extra time.
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The second game of the day saw a first win for Sheikha Maitha’s UAE Polo Team but had to battle until the final whistle. Brigitte Boher was playing in place of the Sheikha and this UAE team were 3-2 up after the second chukka. Things changed massively in the third with White Crane firing through goal after goal off the sticks of every member of the team, Alexie Calvert-Ansari, James Harper, Lucas Criado and Tomas Panelo. At the break White Crane were leading 7-4. UAE got themselves back into contention in the fourth (8-8) and then these two teams traded goals, desperately looking for that much-needed advantage. With very little time left in the sixth chukka – and the scores reading 9-9 – Tommy Beresford and his pony Kenya, a lovely, dark bay/black gelding, made the most of some unexpected space to score. Then with just 40 seconds of game time left the umpires’ whistles blew. A penalty two was awarded to UAE, which Beresford fired home to give UAE their first win (11-9) in this year’s competition.
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