Argentina: A Quantum Leap

After our adventures at The Palermo Final, we all headed out to Pilar.

Dato’ Sri Raza Khan, his son Kayser, Kuhan Kumaran, Kamrul Choudhury and his son Qaid had booked a house in Manzanares, while Datuk Kannan, Camilla Sugden, Neville Stewart and Audrey Nichol were in a house in Pilar Golf.  There was no place for me at the inn, and I moved into a studio apartment in downtown Pilar.

Agustin Andrada was recovering from a serious playing injury to one of his kidneys, having been rammed into, while playing for Mumbai El Paisano in the 14-goal Thai Polo Cup.  Agustin still did an amazing job of curating nice horses.

We had a wide range of horses, from A grade ponies, to schoolmasters for the beginners.  Everyone got a chance to try out horses on the first day, and there was a little mixing and matching, but really not much – Agustin had excelled in his selection of the horses.

Kamrul and Qaid were a little surprised I wasn’t out there stick and balling with them, but this was Argentina, the land of polo dreams, where everyone is on a fast-track to glory.

Horses having been sorted; it was straight into actual polo the next day.  In Argentina, a game is six chukkas.  Of our group, only Neville was doing this full tour of 6 chukkas a day, while all the rest were playing a half tour of three chukkas daily.  Kudos to Neville, who was the oldest in the group, but also the most gung-ho, playing his full 6 chukkas each play day.

Fitness was a bit of an issue for many, but everyone improved quickly in this aspect too.

Kamrul and Qaid, who had never played before, would stick and ball daily, sometimes with help, and sometimes on their own. By the second day, they were happily stick and balling around the fields at Gines Bargallo’s  Santa Agueda club.

Playing in club chukkas in Argentina is a lot faster than playing chukkas at home.  The speed, the fields, the hitting, the quality of players, the horses – playing in Argentina is a quantum leap in levels.

Gines Bargallo and Agustin worked on the teams – our players went out to play in chukkas with a handicap range of anything from 2 to 10 goals.

Yet the players kept it safe for the newbies, giving them time to adjust to the pace of the Argentine game.

Polo immersion, is what I call it.  From stick and ball in the mornings, to lunch at the Tack Room or Chapa Bar, visits to Logi Polo, J&M, Top, or having your boots measured by Carlos Lascano, we lived and breathed polo.

By the third day, Agustin and I decided that Qaid and Kamrul would get a chance to play, probably by the end of the tour. Even this was accelerated, and Qaid played by the fourth day, and Kamrul by the fifth.

Kayser Khan improved out of sight.  He really had a fantastic tour, playing some amazing polo.   I’m predicting that if Kayser gets some decent horses, would make a great -2 for a low goal team next season.   He has a great future and won’t stay -2 for long.

Kuhan unfortunately had to cut his trip short to return to Malaysia because of a medical emergency in his family. He too improved in the time he was there, and will certainly play well in tournaments in 2023, especially now that he has bought a pony in Malaysia. Kuhan is another KLAP graduate that won’t stay -2 for very long.

Kannan found himself a nice grey and will look to bring her to Malaysia in 2023. Camilla also found herself a good looking grey, which she will take back to the UK.

Neville wasn’t in the hunt for horses, but playing in Argentina was an ambition fulfilled, and he returned to Western Australia a more complete player.

I played just one day, when I hopped on to try horses that our friends were interested in buying.  One thing I know was tested was all the horses’ speeds.  Polo there is quick, as I knew it would be.  I got into it with the right mindset and shot off in top gear.   Enjoyed myself immensely, no inhibitions playing against others who could all play.  It was great fun.

The next day I stick and balled horses at a different place to try them there.    And that was enough for me.  I wasn’t there to play, but to support my tour group.  Job done, I went back to the side lines.

We had a few fantastic evenings, wonderful dinners.  And plenty of tack shopping of course.

The ‘blue market’ of currencies there meant that it was much better to change cash at a rate of USD $1:300+ Arg Pesos, than take the official rate of US$1:160 Pesos.  It meant a virtual discount of 47% if you could pay by cash rather than use your foreign credit card.

If there was one drawback, it was that we hadn’t brought enough cash.  Almost all of us ran out of cash, as we tried never to use our credit cards.

It stormed on the final night, and that put a dampener on our final day.   Truth be told, trying to play six days of polo in a week was probably too much to ask of our bodies.

It has been said that your handicap goes up by at least a goal if you play in Argentina. I know I didn’t play enough to warrant this, but for all the rest, it was a quantum leap in standards.