Feature Patrick Beresford
Patrick’s family tree and polo relatives 7th Lord Waterford*
Lord Patrick Beresford*
Valentine Beresford
Samantha Ware
Richard Le Poer*
* Indicates polo player 8th Lord Waterford (Tyrone)*
The Earl of Tyrone*
Marcus Beresford* Charles Beresford* William Beresford* James Beresford* Tommy Beresford*
From top left: Patrick in the Guards pony lines; with great-nephew William; in Borneo (front right)
Championships and four European Championships, we won six team gold medals and two team silvers, as well as six individual golds, six silvers and six bronzes. That is more than any other team, British or foreign, has ever achieved in an equivalent period before or since.” Patrick’s own career as an amateur point-to-point and national hunt jockey started in
X action in Borneo, and completed his military career in the SAS, retiring in 1974 with the rank of major. “My grandfather and father played polo and I took it up early on in the military,” says Patrick. “I suppose it wasn’t bad to reach a five-goal handicap despite being an amateur without my own ponies and missing several crucial seasons whilst serving abroad or through injury.”
In high-goal he played for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Windsor Park team from 1966 to 1971. “We won the Cowdray Park Gold Cup in 1966,” says Patrick. “The team was Prince Philip, that great Argentine Gonzalo Tanoira, my brother Tyrone and me. We took the cup again in 1969 and reached the finals for a third time in 1970.” Patrick played for England in 1966 and again on International Day in 1972, losing the Coronation Cup to the USA. He won the Queen's Cup in 1982 with Boehm. Other victories included the Warwickshire Cup, Butler Handicap in the US, Copa d’Oro in Mexico, and South African Open. He retired as a player in 2000 “after a broken neck from racing and other injuries just made everything too arthritic”. Several members of his family continue to play, including his nephews the Earl of Tyrone and Lord Charles Beresford and great- nephews Richard Le Poer and William Beresford.
64 July 2010
www.polotimes.co.uk
In 1955 Patrick was one of the founding members, with Prince Philip, of the Household Brigade Polo Club, now Guards, in Windsor Great Park. He served on the club’s committee for 45 years, until new rules in 2000 set an age limit of 65. Did he ever aspire to be chairman of Guards? “No, rather the reverse. Whilst it was still a military
“We went to countries such as Mongolia, Cuba, Kyrgystan and Ecuador”
club, the major general commanding the Guards Division appointed the chairman. “Two major generals, Simon Cooper and Robert Corbett, tried to persuade me, but it was unpaid and I already had two pretty time-consuming unpaid jobs, as chef d’equipe of the British three-day event team and chairman of the Windsor Park Equestrian Club. If I was ever to pay the gas bill I really couldn’t afford to get involved in another.” Patrick served the British team from 1985 to
1992. “We had some wonderful riders and brilliant horses,” he says. “In the nine championships I took them to, that is to say, two Olympics, three World
Ireland when he was 15. “Over the years I rode more than 50 winners,” he says. “The best horse I rode was Mr Super Flash who won with me at Sandown and took the Gold Cup at Cheltenham.” Meanwhile Patrick hunted in Ireland and England, lastly with the Beaufort from 1984 to 2002. After leaving the army Patrick joined the Anglo- Irish Bloodstock Agency. While there he syndicated the stallion Sharpen Up for £130,000, and eight years later sold him to the Gainesway Stud in Kentucky for £2.4m, a staggering sum at the time. Patrick’s later business as an organiser of riding safaris took him to 22 countries, mainly for the luxury travel firm Abercrombie & Kent and Ultimate Travel. “These were for small groups, up to eight riders. I would recce routes a year in advance, then make all the arrangements. We went to countries such as Mongolia, Kyrgystan, Ecuador and Cuba.” Patrick hasn’t been in the saddle since major open-heart surgery in 2008. Looking back on more than half a century as an equestrian, he considers his pioneering work in pony care his “greatest achievement” in polo. “Our HPA committees have had phenomenal success in improving the care of polo ponies,” he told me, “not only in this country but also, by example, gradually throughout the world.” F
Photographs by Herbert Spencer and courtesy of Patrick Beresford
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