and lively bars, Mahiki and The Punch Bowl Pub - all with direct views of the polo field.
Since its debut in 2009,
Polo in the Park has rapidly established itself as one of the leading central London sporting events, selling out to both the corporate market and general public in 2010 and, in the same year, winning London Sport Attraction Of The Year. In a similar way to how
Twenty20 has changed the image of cricket, Polo in the Park has adapted the traditional rules of polo to create a high octane, fast moving and dynamic sport which attracts both spectators and the media alike. Six teams - Mint Team London, City AM Team New York, Gaucho Team Buenos Aires, Otkritie Team Moscow, Team Abu Dhabi and IG Index Team Sydney - play in a round robin format over three days, culminating with the final and the presentation of the MINT Trophy. The job of changing the park into an elite polo playing field has been a testament to the skills and hard work of Rob Kendle, operations manager for AT Bone & Sons, who took up the challenge back in 2009. The company is a successful sports turf contractor which, under Rob’s guidance, has secured many interesting jobs in terms of sports turf provision, with this being one of their toughest challenges to date.
In less than six weeks, Rob and his team have to turn a swathe of public open space into a top quality playing surface for horse and rider to perform on.
The park generally
provides the local community with a number of rugby and football pitches to play on, with both incurring a lot of wear during the playing season. It is upon these pitches that the polo field is created. Work begins in earnest as soon as Rob can gain access to the park - this year they managed to get on site on the 26th April. Rob will have already inspected the site to ascertain the level of input required. In the first year it was a bit of a guess on their part, as they had to tender against other companies and were not fully familiar with the possible outcomes; it was a case of suck it and see.
However, now into his third
year, he knows, with some confidence, what can be achieved in a relatively short period of time. The public, however, still have access to the park until two weeks before the event - this year the park was closed to the public on the 23rd May. Closing the park is important, as it allows Rob and his staff the freedom to get their job completed without the worry of kids coming on to the playing surface to play football. Rob enlists the help of two other staff members to help set up and maintain the polo field during the three day event - Rob Draper and Pat Bradfield - who remain on site everyday once the park is closed, spending their valuable time mowing, watering, feeding and overseeding.
No two years have ever been the same; the weather is the driving factor and the condition they receive the park in dictates the way forward. This year’s dry spring did not help, with grass cover being thin with little vigour. Rob’s plan was to decompact the area using a vertidrain, topdress to restore levels, overseed and feed to promote quick growth. The polo field area was sown with one of Rob’s own blended rye grass seed mixes. With the experience of the last two years under his belt, the one driving factor to the success of the project is having the availability of water on site. Last year they worked closely with the local environment agency and gained permission to drill a bore hole to extract twenty cubic metres of water a day, back up by the mains supply. This enables them to provide with the large amounts required to water the new polo playing area of two hectares (200m x 100m). A twenty four hour step test was carried out to ensure the borehole could produce the allocated amount of water required under the terms of the licence. The test was successful, thereby ensuring they had enough water to cope with the likely demand. A T Bone have designed and built a number of specialised mobile pumping containers which can store up to twenty six cubic metres of water that can be pumped, at pressure, using Grundfos pumps to operate their self
Pat Bradfield, Rob Kendle and Rob Draper, the team responsible for ...
turning this ...
into this ...
with spectacular results
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