Wealth BlogHeralded last year as the next big thing, has China’s polo power lost its revs?
Trying to find out about polo, the Sport of Kings, in Asia and China, is not as simple as you might think. Google “polo” and up comes, in no particular order: Ralph Lauren - fashion, not fields: polo shirts - clothing again: snow polo, elephant polo, polo pony and water polo. Very confusing.
But newspaper headlines last year heralded: “Polo power: China's nouveau riche flock to playing fields.” We read that: “Polo enjoys resurgence across Beijing and Shanghai as rich and powerful revel in opportunity to flash their cash.”
But a search for polo tournaments in China, 2013, throws up only a handful of tournaments. One is the snow polo in Tianjin. Correct me if I’m wrong, but where are all these splendid new polo events? Northern China in sub-zero temperatures in January may be novel, but does not sound like a high society show-off opportunity. Elephant polo in some remote place in India would be entertaining, but again, not exactly accessible. Both sound a bit short on sundresses and designer sunglasses, champagne and VIP tents garnished with hunky Argentinian players. Because, as everyone knows, Argentinians are to polo what Serbians are to tennis.
More searching throws up four polo clubs, two in Beijing and one each in Shanghai and Tianjin. The Sunny Times Polo Club, near the Great Wall, is a two-hour drive from Beijing. British newspaper The Guardian reported last year that visitors rolled up in a fleet of Jaguars and Range Rovers for British Polo Day, a series of weekend jaunts designed to push polo as a soft-power tool. "Polo is exploding in China," Ben Vestey, managing director of British Polo Day, the newspaper reported. "China is very much on the radar in a way that it wasn't two years ago."
Granted, it started off a low base, but even tiny Switzerland manages six tournaments in 2013. Apart from the Tang Polo Club in Bejing, which has three listed events this year: The Royal Salute Gold Cup China International Polo Open, The Tang Polo Cup and The Cartier China International Challenge, I can find only two other events, both in Tianjin: the winter snow polo and the Tianjin Maserati Metropolitan Polo Classic.
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