MINT POLO IS BACK IN TOWN
MINT Polo In The Park, taking place this year between June 8-10, is London’s ultimate summer networking and socialising event. What better way to spend a Friday with clients and colleagues than in the glorious sunshine of Hurlingham Park – the crowd cheering as ponies thunder past on perfectly manicured lawns, whilst you sip champagne next to a white picket fence?
But whilst MINT Polo In the Park has charged up the social and hospitality calendar in the last five years (it won London Sporting Attraction of the Year in 2010 and 2011), the event’s heritage goes back much further.
Hurlingham Park has a special place in the history of UK Polo – the second recorded game of polo played in the UK was at The Hurlingham Club in 1876 – and it was the home of all UK and Commonwealth polo from 1900 until 1939.
The pitch was even home to England’s Olympic polo triumph – the ground was the venue for the final of the polo competition, when London hosted the Olympics in 1908 – and in the early 20th century it was the ground that every polo player – from Argentina to Assam – wanted to play on and today the players are clothed by La Martina, the ultimate polo brand.
In 1939 the pitch was turned into allotments, but 70 years on, UK polo returned to its spiritual home with a contemporary Twenty20 spectator friendly revival of this great tradition: the high-octane MINT Polo in the Park tournament.