Cibao La Pampa 12 – 11 La Magdeleine

UAE Polo Team 11 – 9 White Crane

Cibao La Pampa secured their second victory in this year’s Cartier Queen’s Cup after a tough match against last year’s finalists, La Magdeleine. The teams were neck and neck in the early chukkas, matching goal for goal. However, Alexandre Garese’s La Magdeleine secured a slender, one goal advantage (6-5) at the half-time bell. Juan Pepa was determined that his Cibao La Pampa squad should take command in the second half though and fired through two goals himself. His team-mate, Gonzalo Ferrari followed suit and fired through four more, appropriately riding a horse called Messi. La Magdeleine had no reply to this onslaught and were trailing by four goals (10-6) at the start of the fifth. Incredibly, they fought back in the last two chukkas, regularly assaulting Cibao La Pampa’s goal, but could not push this game into extra time.

The second game of the day saw a first win for Sheikha Maitha’s UAE Polo Team but had to battle until the final whistle. Brigitte Boher was playing in place of the Sheikha and this UAE team were 3-2 up after the second chukka. Things changed massively in the third with White Crane firing through goal after goal off the sticks of every member of the team, Alexie Calvert-Ansari, James Harper, Lucas Criado and Tomas Panelo. At the break White Crane were leading 7-4. UAE got themselves back into contention in the fourth (8-8) and then these two teams traded goals, desperately looking for that much-needed advantage. With very little time left in the sixth chukka – and the scores reading 9-9 – Tommy Beresford and his pony Kenya, a lovely, dark bay/black gelding, made the most of some unexpected space to score. Then with just 40 seconds of game time left the umpires’ whistles blew. A penalty two was awarded to UAE, which Beresford fired home to give UAE their first win (11-9) in this year’s competition.

Copyright Pablo Ramirez