Danske Gas Polo Day. A Sunday at Warsaw Polo Club
Two hundred and seventy metres of grass at the edge of a forest, the players of Warsaw Polo Club and a crowd in white. On 23 August Danske Gas lent its patronage to a polo match at Warsaw Polo Club.
Warsaw Polo Club, Jaroszowa Wola near Warsaw
Polo takes some getting to. Warsaw Polo Club lies at the edge of a forest, and the road there sets the tone for the afternoon: with every kilometre, something else that seemed urgent at ten in the morning drops away. The pitch comes into view all at once, and it is too big to take in at a glance. Two hundred and seventy metres of grass, cut so evenly that walking on it in shoes feels like an impertinence.
On 23 August a polo match was played there under the patronage of Danske Gas. On the pitch, the club's own players, for whom this is an everyday game; around it, a crowd in white, because white is what you wear to polo, though nobody has ever written that down anywhere.
Anyone there for the first time learnt fast. That the mallet is held in the right hand, always, even if you happen to be left-handed. That the horse knows more about this game than the spectator does and positions itself for the ball of its own accord. That at half-time everyone goes out onto the turf to tread in the divots torn up by the hooves, and that this is not folklore but necessity, because in the second half no horse should be putting a hoof in a hole. The crowd walks out onto the pitch, glasses in hand, and goes about it with surprising seriousness.
The weather that day had a plot of its own. It began in full sun, with deckchairs along the sideline and shade you had to compete for. Later in the afternoon a sky out of a Dutch landscape painting came in over the forest, heavy and theatrical, and the group photograph was taken beneath it.
Day to day, we work with energy that comes as a cargo, a contract and a tanker. Polo shows it in its elemental form: half a tonne of animal, one rider, no engine and very little room for error. That is reason enough to lend our patronage to an afternoon like this. We looked for no others.
After the final chukka, nobody was in a hurry. The horses went back to the stables; the people stayed on the grass. Someone had brought a dog, someone a basket, and the conversations outlasted the match. There were still presents for the guests from the second sponsor of the afternoon, Krosno.
Polo match: Sunday 23 August 2026, Warsaw Polo Club, Jaroszowa Wola near Warsaw. Patronage: Danske Gas.
Our thanks to Warsaw Polo Club for the invitation onto the grass. See you next time the divots need treading in.
