Crash Course in Polo

This guy was pretty good on the breakaways.

The day before Easter, KP, JoJo, Anne, HBomb and Mark happened to notice that there was some action at the Palermo Polo Grounds.  This is the famous (in Argentina) stadium for polo located about a half mile from the apartment of Anne and Mark.  Anne, Mark and HBomb have been in Argentina for over a year, and polo is a big deal here (not as big as tango, steak, soccer or the Pope, but pretty big), but they still have not seen an actual polo game match contest.  So, what the heck, let's go check out the action.  Now, keep in mind, none of our group is a polo expert, so what follows is subject to wild errors in interpretation.

Does that cup look crooked?

First things first.  HBomb and Mark headed over to the awards table to see what they're playing for.  Apparently, this was the championship of the Copa Libertador.  You can actually see the copa (cup) on the table there.  Surprisingly, there was no security around the cup like there would be around the Stanley Cup or Lombardi Trophy.  Mark and HBomb could have walked right up and touched it.... heck, they probably could have picked it up and walked out.  But they didn't.

The red poles are the outside of the goal.  The guy in the middle is an official, as is the guy in the official outfit on a horse.

The other thing to notice about the awards table is that there are 4 huge bottles of champagne.  That works out to one for each player on the winning team.  Yep, we counted.  Polo teams have 4 human players.  They appear to have about 7-8 horses for each player.  The players change horses between every period and sometimes during the course of play.  We think. But frankly, we were not sure.  Because....

Plenty of good seats still available.

The rules of polo are not clear.  Despite the similar title, it is not the same as water polo.  In water polo, there are a whole bunch of players trying to drown one another and/or chuck a ball in a small goal guarded by a goalie.  In polo, there are 4 dudes on each team kind of swinging what appear to be long croquet mallets, directing a ball to a large goal which is generally not guarded by anyone.  There were definitely periods (apparently called "chukkas").  We saw the end of the third and then the fourth.  Naturally, we assumed the match was over after the fourth.  We assumed wrong.  They changed ponies and kept rolling.  We actually left before counting exactly how many chukkas they were going to play.  We also were not sure why whistles were blowing or why one team kept getting awarded what looked like penalty shots, but we are pretty sure they switched ends after every goal.

HBomb demands more action.

For the record, Navidad was running it up on El Paso, so we didn't feel the need to stay any longer.  Besides, we had other things to do....