I got the news last night that the S’pore polo team has won its appeal, along with S’pore’s dressage team. We are going to December’s Thailand South East Asian Games. It will be my fourth SEA Games since 1983. How’s that for longevity!
Amazingly, at 47, I won’t be the oldest on the team. In fact, I’m one of the youngest! There are three players older than me, two of whom are in the 50’s.
Maybe it’s not my last SEA Games.
I was in Kuala Terengganu last week, checking out the breathtaking Terengganu Equestrian Centre, where the SUKMA 2008 Games will be held. The facilities are magnificent. There is a 45 x40 m covered arena which adjoins the competition arena of 95 x 40 m. There is warm-up of 70 x 25 m nearby too. All the footing has to be fixed but potentially it is a fantastic set-up. I counted two covered 8-horse walkers. Stables are big and airy. And TER is right next to the beach, which you can ride on. There is a cafe and a sports hall nearby, which has badminton, bowling, squash, tennis and fitness facilities. It’s almost everything you could wish for.
Then there is the adjacent polo field. That’s another story. There is a humongous clubhouse and even a grandstand, but the field is unplayable. Some brainiac came up with the idea that they could lay the field with beach sand and water it with seawater if they used special type of hybrid grass. Well, it didn’t work. It’s a beautifully brown field, completely dead. I took this picture of seashells on the dead field with my Treo 680. Hope it is clear enough to see.
It was great catching up with Ted Dwyer at the Malaysian Open Polo Tournament and Equine Night. The bonus was that Ted Dwyer didn’t know that his mate Graeme Watts was designing the World Cup class. I met Ted at the Putrajaya showgrounds on the morning of the World Cup. We sat up high in the wonderful grandstand overlooking the huge arena and the course that Wattsie had built. “Not a bad course”, Ted said. “One can’t be too critical nowadays.”
It’s going to be fun this weekend at the Malaysian Open Polo Tournament, not just because I’m playing but because it is paired with a South East Asian World Cup Jumping qualifier. I jumped in the SEA League from 1997 to 2002, and was very involved in conceptualising and getting the league approved by the FEI and started in 1997. The league is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and I was asked to write an account of what we went through to get it started. As this Sunday’s Equine Nite seems to be a celebration of it, I posted my article on the Origins of the SEA World Cup League on ECM this morning. Check out the photo of the very young and skinny Quzier Ambak on Red Cloud.
I was selected for the Singapore polo team (yes, still hold a Singapore passport despite 13 years in Malaysia) for the South East Asian Games this December only to have the Singapore National Olympic Council decide not to send a polo team to the SEA Games. I was looking forward to it as it would have been my 6th SEA or Asian Games. It’s under appeal, so I might still get to go. If I do get to go I know I won’t be the oldest athlete there as my SEA Games polo team-mate from ‘83, Asad Jumabhoy, has also been selected and Asad is a year older than I am. There’s obviously something to be said about the playing lifespan of polo players. Either that or polo in Singapore sucks.
