Dan's Papers - August 10, 2007 - Polo Player Spotlight: Two Trees'Adolfo Cambiaso

Adolfo Cambiaso is known to most who know of him as the best polo player in the world. At the age of twelve, he achieved professional status, attaining a handicap of one goal. At seventeen, he became the youngest player in the history of the sport to be given a ten-goal handicap, the highest allowed in the sport, which he has kept ever since.

When Adolfo Cambiaso emerges from his white, vintage Volkswagen Beetle convertible, his physical presence and aloof demeanor are imposing. Upon his arrival at the Two Trees barn, conversation stops and other players give up their seats to gather around his chair, hanging on his every word. As he settles down with a hot cup of mate and a Marlboro Red, he only half-listens to the conversation around him as he watches his children from afar.

For as long as he can remember, Cambiaso has known that he would be a professional athlete. "When I was younger," he remembered, "it was tennis. I had a coach and everything. But, I like horses and I like polo, so it was easy for me to play this game." Once he turned pro, Cambiaso travelled all over the world with his horses, playing for many teams and helping them all to win championship after championship. However, it was not until the mid-nineties that he finally came to the Hamptons to spend one summer playing for White Birch at the Bridgehampton Polo Club. Since then, Cambiaso has spent his summers vacationing with his family or relaxing at his farm in Argentina.

"This year," he explained, "I had an invitation from David [Walentas, the patron of the Two Trees team and owner of the land and barns used by the Bridgehampton Polo Club] and since this is a month when I usually take a break, I decided that the Hamptons would be a good place to bring my kids for the summer."

Now that he has had a chance to play in the Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge, Cambiaso is looking forward to playing in the Hampton Cup. "I am happy to be here," he said. "It's more competitive than the last time I played here -- it's well-organized and [playing here] feels pretty good."

The caliber of competition is especially high this summer, as the patrons of the local 20-goal teams have convinced many of the best players in the world to come to Bridgehampton to compete in both the Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge and the Hampton Cup. With so many of the sport's finest players facing off on JetOne Jets Field and living in such close quarters, rivalry would seem inevitable. However, "In this sport," Cambiaso explained, "we are used to playing with each other at one tournament and against each other in the next." Instead of rivalry, the players share a close camaraderie as they travel around the world together.

So what does a champion like Adolfo Cambiaso do when he is not playing polo? "I have a clothing line, La Dolfina, which is doing pretty well in Argentina," he said. "We make clothes for polo as well as classic clothes." And although neither of his children are old enough to play polo yet, his four-year-old daughter, Mia, knows how to ride and even his year-and-a-half-old son, Adolfo Junior, has felt the thrill of being on the back of a horse. "He's riding with me already," Cambiaso boasted. "He has no choice."

Although all of the Cambiasos have polo in their blood, Adolfo Cambiaso's father did not start playing polo until the age of 35. "My father was a surfer. I surf and windsurf - that is what I learned from my father," Cambiaso explained. When he was a child, it was his mother who instilled her love of horses in her young son. Her family played polo and she encouraged Adolfo to take up the sport. After twenty years as a professional polo player, Adolfo Cambiaso has become a fine-tuned polo playing machine with the ability to score goals for his team and score enough of them to get his team to the finals. But even after so many years at the apex of his sport, Cambiaso does not feel the need to follow in the footsteps of so many other professional athletes and retire to a life of leisure. "I take it day by day," he said. Today, there's no end in sight.