Many international league matches see one player with two horses per chukka, doubling the horse count to 64 per match! Winning in any sport requires talent, training and dedication, but in polo, you require the added factors of harmonious teamwork and careful management of the health and fitness of the horses. A team thus consists not
just
the four players on the field but the entire crew of grooms, trainers, farrier and vet. Tis year I teamed up with my good friend Ali Mazlan to form TEAM WINDHORSE. He brought to the team his vast knowledge and experience playing polo for many years. He manages his family’s Polo Club, Tanamera, so he is also extremely knowledgeable about horse care. Plus he welcomed my feng shui input s , so we complemented o n e
a n o t h e r
very well. While gaining victory in any competitive endeavour stems from how well you perform on show day, our team was not above the adage that you always need a little bit of luck on your side. And so we put careful thought into how indeed we should go about tapping these good luck energies. Ali left naming the team to me. As our team’s debut comes in the Year of the Horse, we called ourselves WINDHORSE, after the magical horse of King Gesar of Ling, the great warrior king of Tibetan legends. King Gesar’s horse, also known as Kyang Go Karkar, was his equal partner in all his battles for enlightenment and peace. In feng shui, the Windhorse also represents one’s “success factor” – a low Windhorse or lung ta means you need to boost it to achieve success, while a high Windhorse heralds a time of good fortune and achievement. In more generalized terms, the Windhorse represents basic goodness and an increasing positive life force in our world. To me this was important, because I have played on
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Saluting HRH Tengku Mahkota Pahang at the opening of the Royal Pahang Polo Club National League Tournament.
many different teams in the past, and above victory and winning I have always found that the best part of being in a team is the comradeship that stems from the positiv e rapport between teammates. O u r
astr ological animal signs, coincidentally
or otherwise, fit together textbook- perfect. Our team consisted of allies and secret friends, with Dragons (Chris Yeo, Marco Focaccia and Saladin Mazlan) and Snake (me) forming the House of Magic, Ox (Sally Ann Tan) and Snake forming an alliance of intelligence and intellect, and Dog (Ali Mazlan) our secret weapon, calming the fiery energies of the year by complementing the Tiger-Horse appearance in the 2014 Paht Chee chart. We solidified our alliance by building our team crest around this idea – with all five of our animal signs surrounding the Victory Banner. For our team motto, we chose “Happiness in Polo” rather than success. I have found that if you have to choose between the two, happiness is far more important than success; and besides, success usually follows on from happiness rather than the other way around. Wise advice from my mum, which I took and which worked incredibly
well indeed. Since I am the go-to feng shui person in my sport, the most common question I get asked before the start of each season is “so what’s the lucky colour for the coming year?” I share this information freely and this year told whoever bothered to ask “Blue and Yellow.” Te 2014 Paht Chee chart - which lays out the foundation for the year - is exceedingly unbalanced, and the two missing elements are Water and Earth. Our own team followed this advice, making these our team colours. Our gear sponsors TEAM PG
found us some bright sunshine yellow and royal blue shirts for our Home and Away shirts, and we added on our “Happiness Crest” to all our gear. We really got into the spirit of the team and kitted out our horses with blue and yellow saddle pads, bandages, boots and browbands. If we won, we wanted to look good doing it; and if we didn’t, well then we needed the consolation of being the best-looking team. Winning even a single tournament in polo is not easy. Winning the whole league harder still. It is a competitive and gruelling sport, and any number of things can go wrong. Team Windhorse weren’t without our obstacles. We started the year playing the MERDEKA LEAGUE (at 3 goal level), looking not so much to win but also to use as a warm- up to the National League (8 goal level) immediately following. Marco
JUNE 2014 | F ENGSHUIWORLD 19
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