The European polo season ends in early September at Sotogrande. The serious one begins ten weeks later, on a wider field, in a hotter country, with the only horses anyone who plays the sport actually wants to ride. The Argentine Triple Crown — Tortugas, Hurlingham, Palermo — runs from late September through to the second week of December, and the Palermo Open is the tournament that the players themselves treat as the only one that counts.
The 132nd Argentine Polo Open will be contested at the Campo Argentino de Polo in November and December. La Natividad La Dolfina arrive as the holders, with Adolfo Cambiaso the younger and his brother-in-law Camilo Castagnola anchoring the team. Ellerstina, the Pieres family franchise, is the other side everyone is watching. Don Ercole, the side that took the playoff last year under the name La Aguada Don Ercole, returns with a re-drawn line-up. Eight teams play, the field is forty handicap goals, and the tickets to the final are the hardest in the calendar.
The week to be there is the week of the final. Buenos Aires in early December runs hot, the season at Estancia La Bamba de Areco — the Bovaird family property an hour and a half north of the city — is at its fullest, and the dinners at Don Julio in Palermo book three weeks ahead. The estancia handles the polo lessons, the day rides, and the long Sunday lunches under the ombú trees. The city handles the rest.
The honest comparison with the European season is unflattering to Europe. Sotogrande is a beautifully run social tournament with a serious final. Palermo is the sport at full extension, in front of fifteen thousand people, with horses bred for nothing else. Cambiaso's string in any given final is worth more than the prize money of most European tournaments combined. The clients who make the trip once tend to stop talking about the Mediterranean season altogether.
Fly into Ezeiza on a Wednesday, do the estancia Thursday through Saturday, return to the city for the matches Sunday onward. Book the corner suite at the Palacio Duhau, take the Saturday lunch at Elena, and have somebody local handle the Palermo box. The trip can be done in nine days. It will reshape every November you take afterward.
— Camille Vedy
