The last word AWeekin the life of...
Will Lucas, winning ex-racehorse Chanel at the Arthur Lucas at Beaufort, and Piers Plunket
ON SATURDAY 5 JUNE I went to the Arthur Lucas final to present the Retraining of Racehorses/Lycetts best playing ex-racehorse prize. Much of our business is in the Thoroughbred world, as well as in polo, so it’s great to support the horses having a second career and to encourage trainers to send them into polo rather than to French dinner tables. I was once a stable lad and assistant trainer, before being given advice to get a strong commercial background. In 1981 I went to the City, fell into insurance, found myself managing a book of business at Equiscope, a company I co-founded with Charles Hamilton. Equiscope then became Bradstock Hamilton, then Hamilton & Partners, which took over the HPA business in 2005 and merged with Lycetts two years ago.
MY FIRST CONTACT with polo was in Goulburn, New South Wales, where I broke racehorses and polo ponies after leaving school. I’ve knocked a ball around but never played “properly”. I look at polo as I do golf: it’s an exercise in frustration, because I could never be good enough. I live just outside Wilton, near Salisbury, with my wife Niki, who’s a genius with horses. Between us we have six children: mine are Oliver and Simon (16 and 19), hers are Mimi, Tara and Perdy (13 to 16) and we have a two-year-old son, Ben. We have two ex-racers that event and hunt.
98 July 2010
www.polotimes.co.uk Piers
BRUCE URQUHART, WHO knows both polo and Thoroughbreds, helped us judge the prize. After presenting the award to Will Lucas’s Chanel, I talked to Emma Tomlinson about providing prospective foal insurance that would give buyers a guarantee at her embryo sale at Guards. The next day I went to a lovely racing community lunch, organised by James Stanford, one of the original organisers of the Countryside Alliance. Monday and Tuesday I spent in the office in Marlborough, mainly finalising paperwork for the embryo sale. I usually spend three days a week in the office, and nearly every Saturday or Sunday I have a polo or racing engagement.
ON MONDAY I HAD lunch with Hugh Daly from Equibuild at the Outside Chance, a good racing pub co-owned by the Sangster family, to talk surfaces. In racing, all-weather surfaces have reduced catastrophic breakdown in horses by more than 55 per cent. Hugh is an expert and has developed a hot and cold wax surface that doesn’t freeze in winter or melt in summer. It’s vital I keep up with developments because it affects my negotiations with underwriters over mortality and liability insurance.
Polo’s insurance authority talks to Yolanda Carslaw about judging ex- racers, devising cover for embryos and keeping abreast of arena surface news
Plunket
THAT DAY THE GIRLS were off to an event, so we mucked in to get everything ready and I headed to the Beaufort at noon. There I met Di [Arbuthnot, from RoR] and we grabbed a sandwich before going to the pony lines to talk to players before the game and find out more about the horses eligible for the RoR prize. Without fail players love talking about their horses, but it’s a shame they don’t pay more attention to performance pedigree. In racing, people know what brothers and sisters have won and who trained them. One client of ours tracked down a full-sister to a winning filly on a farm in Turkey and bought her for £28,000; when the sister won a Group 1 race they sold her for £250,000: that could happen in polo.
ON WEDNESDAY I SAWthe Queen’s Cup semis before the embryo sale. It’s fantastic to watch sportsmen such as Cambiaso. He reminds me of Wayne Gretzky [ice-hockey star], an incredible playmaker who didn’t have to look up to know exactly where everyone was on the ice. It was nice to see the stallions’ parade, keeping pedigree at the forefront, but a shame the sale wasn’t better supported. I think it’ll take time for people to get used to the concept of buying something in utero. I drove from the sale to Newmarket, where my brother-in-law, Luca Cumani, is a trainer. I stayed with my mother and watched the horses on the gallops in the morning before some meetings at our Newmarket office. That evening I went to a fund-raising quiz for Camilla Millbank, who worked in racing and had an accident that left her in a wheelchair. Like the polo world, racing is a very benevolent family to its own.
ON FRIDAY I SAWhigh-goal clients near Windsor. For some teams, we take care of everything they need in this country, such as public and employers’ liability, vehicles and possibly a few horses, such as those rented from other players. We insure three high- goal patrons’ strings – and they get a great deal! Losses are infrequent, and usually not on the polo field, but from colic or accidents loading or unloading. Insurance never “replaces” the animal but it mitigates the pain and allows them to buy another. I also deal with the commercial side: helping people who work in polo ensure they comply with the law and can look after themselves if they’re injured and can’t work. F
Photograph by Charles Sainsbury Plaice
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