In Jaipur at the Polo Club we met (after the 1st time a decade or more ago) Raghuvendra “Bonnie” Singh Dundlod and an American horsewoman named Francesca Kelly, who breeds the best Marwari horses in the world. Many years ago we took the girls to Rajasthan to trek in the Thar Desert on their Marwari horses. Such wonderful memories and also a Ham Polo Club Magazine article in the past. Coincidence?
A staunch supporter of BPD is Chivas Regal led by Peter Prentice, a long-time supporter of Whisky, not to mention Ham Polo Club for years... Coincidence? So who remembers that Clarita won a Ham tournament? In what year, we shall not tell. Abby was presented with a 62 year old Royal Salute bottle of whisky even though she was too young to drink it, (her parents weren’t mind you!) We first met Peter when I took Chris to play Elephant Polo in Nepal for his 40th birthday – I’m sure I wrote another article for the HPC magazine at the time... another coincidence. We have to tell the stories as we have been given such wonderful contacts through the sport of polo.
Our neighbour in Sotogrande, Spain is Edwina Haynes, also known to HPC a decade or two ago... Coincidence? Edwina actually persuaded us to go on this trip to India during one of her famous dinner parties last summer while we were playing the 6 goal in Soto. She was ‘minding’ a young Gibraltarian artist called Christian Hook who was on a mission to paint
His Highness the Maharaja Gaj Singh II of Marwar-Jodhpur. The horse in the painting is owned by Angie Rutherford whose husband Mike, of Genesis and personal fame, also played polo. The music world can play anything they wish!
Bapji, as the Maharajah is known, has a son Shivraj who was seriously injured in a polo game in 2005. The final Gala Dinner on the lawns of the Umaid Bhawan palace raised significant funds for the Indian Head Injury Foundation... an organization that was united back in 2012 as HITS (Head Injury Through Sport) a UK Charity, of which the Chairman’s wife Annie, coincidence, was part and together with Chris’ brother-in-law, Raj (who happens to be a neurosurgeon) was very involved in Shivraj’s treatment and subsequent recuperation. All this makes up for the very Small World which makes the polo world so special and involved.
Then off to Kolkata to work on our Prevention of Trafficking Programme --- an unbelievable contrast, No Coincidence ---but all the important – MAYBE I SHOULD GET OUT MORE
www.britishpoloday.com for more! Search on YouTube for Christian Hook
A proportion of the profits from the sale will go to the Hummingbird Foundation – so cool! HPC • THE LONDON POLO CLUB
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