Marco.....Polo!

If you ever found yourself tailgating and thinking, "Man, I just wish I could swap my beer and brats for some champagne and brie", then you need to get yourself to the nearest Polo match!

Welcome to the sporting world's most upscale tailgate, complete with tents, couches, caterers, and of course, delicious food and drink. Polo games are really popular here and are almost exclusively attended by our UK expat friends. We were lucky enough to be invited to the outing by friends, who had wine and cheese, chicken sandwiches, pasta salad, grilled veggies, chicken skewers, new potatoes, and chocolate, on hand to "snack" on through out the game.
It was really entertaining, and mercifully easy to understand the game unlike some of the other UK favorite pastimes (you know who you are - cricket and rugby). Quite simply, there are four riders on either side and they try to get the ball into the goal. For those of your that want to brush up on the details of the game you can click here.

I did learn a few things, turns out that the horses are actually quite lean and are called "polo ponies" even though they are actually thoroughbreds. As it was explained to me in a car analogy, they are the Lotus of horse world. Essentially, they are bred to be able to stop and turn on a dime and have no "extra parts" weighing them down, if you will.

My only other Polo experience has been watching the scene from Pretty Woman about 50 times on TBS across my teenage years and this real-life experience did not disappoint! I got involved in the all important divot-stomping ritual in between halves and felt just like Julia Roberts, minus the hat and the gloves. I did manage to steal a boater hat from our friend, Basile, to partiallly complete the look. Only problem is that 3" high heels tend to create a lot more divots than they replace, so I'm not sure my contribution was all that welcome!