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pound animal and someone on a 1,500 pound animal bangs into you,
and of course a helmet. “There are a lot of people in polo that like to look
cooler than I care about so they won’t wear a face mask, but now at least
people universally wear helmets that are safe and virtually all wear safety
glasses, which is an improvement from even five years ago,” Leigh explains.
Other than the expected wear and tear on her wrists from riding,
Leigh says she went for about 20 years with no injuries. “I have many
horse scars, I shattered my ankle pretty bad about two years ago and was
on crutches for ten weeks, but of course I instantly went back to polo and
about a month later someone ran into me and rotated my other ankle and
fractured it, but it wasn’t displaced.
“You’re running those horses in some cases as fast as they’ll go
which is upwards of thirty to thirty-five miles per hour, so it’s fast
and I have seen some really horrendous accidents,” says Leigh, adding
that the rules of polo are designed to prevent accidents, “but there are
always personality types who push the limits and polo tends to attract
entrepreneurs, so you do get people who are always pushing the edge
of the line. If you make a mistake, even a slight error in judgment
when you’re going thirty-five miles an hour and someone else is going
that fast, it can be really pretty scary. I was playing in Indio a few
weeks ago and stuck up my mallet to stop a ball and it hit the mallet
but it also hit my thumb and sort of sliced off a little piece of bone – it
is a ridiculously risky game.”
Leigh reports Diana Palmer, EMT can be found with a line of polo
players in front of her cart getting taped up before every game, “She
also teaches emergency medicine, has worked at three Olympics, lives
here, and she taped up my slightly fractured ankle for eight weeks every
game before I went out.” Leigh reports that she and Diana both want
to make the sport of polo safer; Diana is very involved with the Santa
Barbara school system to do neurological testing on high school athletes.
The idea is to have a baseline so if you suffer a concussion, medical
professionals can actually look to see if you’ve truly recovered. “We think
we should do this for polo, too, and we’re working with the United
States Polo Association to incorporate it. I think it is essential to bring
a certain amount of science and technology to caring for horses and
improving safety.”
That said, Leigh notes, “I have helped a start-up that has developed
an adaptation of the same coil technology that is used in bridges to
absorb and diffuse the impact of earthquakes for use in sports helmets.
Science has so much to contribute to making this and other beloved
sports safer, so I think it is incumbent on all of us to support such efforts
when we can.”
The Horses
The horses “are the most magnificent part of the game,” says Leigh. “I
have about fourteen horses now, and every one of them has a completely
distinct personality. I mostly have mares and prefer them. I think mares
have more heart; they don’t quit on you. They may give you a hard time,
but will not quit on you. There is no other sport I can think of where
you and another being are completely codependent for your survival. It
is you and the horse; it’s like the Vulcan mind meld.” Leigh describes that
experience of a seemingly shared brain as imperative because polo players
cannot be so separate that the whole time they’re thinking, “What is the
horse doing and am I communicating it?” She goes on to explain, “It’s all
happening so quickly that you have to act as one and you feel like that
– that’s why it is so exciting. It’s as though you could be in the body of
Kareem Abdul Jabbar or something, and you can run thirty miles an hour
– it feels like that. You and the horse are the same thing; you’re doing this
as one entity and it is just amazing.”
Leigh says the horses that play love it and the horses that don’t like the
traffic on the field just don’t work out as polo horses. In complementary
fashion to their owner, Leigh says, “My horses are incredibly competitive.
They’ll learn the rules and know when the whistle blows they stop and if the
ball goes over the back line, they’ll check out by themselves…and slow down
on their own. They somehow know that once the ball is over the line, they
no longer have to chase it. It is amazing how intuitive great polo horses are.”
She also notes that most polo horses are thoroughbreds, and some are bred
for polo and specific traits. Leigh says there have even been some instances
of cloning and embryo transplants to replicate the great polo horses.
“I’ve played in Argentina, South Africa, and I will probably play in
England this summer, but, she says, “I honestly think Santa Barbara is the
most beautiful, perfect polo destination in the world. It is such a beautiful,
elegant place, there’s nothing like it.”
Polo
on the American Riviera
Leigh says polo players love watching polo, “so anytime you’re over
at Santa Barbara [Polo & Racquet Club] there are tons of polo players,
including professionals watching other games. You can sit with them and
hear what they have to say and observe your potential opponents.” Game
day is exciting, she says, “You get up early, there are butterflies in your
stomach, you check all your horses and make sure they’re in a good mood.
I’m the ‘Carrot Queen’ so I always feed them before they get saddled up.
a passion for Polo