Back in the saddle

During the 1980s and 1990s, professional polo games at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center on Saturday nights drew Hollywood’s elite to the local equestrian center as spectators and players.

Famous faces seated around the arena included Sylvester Stallone, Tommy Lee Jones, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Elizabeth Taylor, Bruce Boxleitner and Wilt Chamberlain, to name a few, said Randy Russell, president of Polo America, a marketing firm that specializes in the sport of polo.

Organizers of the 25th annual reunion of Professional and Celebrity Polo on June 28 hope to rekindle that excitement.

A pregame match begins at 7 p.m., reuniting former celebrity polo stars Bill Devane, Doug Sheehan, Alex Cord and Grainger Hines, followed by the professionals at 8:30 p.m.

“It’s a chance to see these guys in a different light altogether,” Russell said. “They are so down to earth. There are no airs to them. You can get any of them to talk about horses for six hours straight. Once you are out on the playing field, everybody is treated equal.”

After the pregame, the pros take to the field. Domingo Questel and Joel Baker will return to the center’s equidome on June 28 to relive the golden days of polo there, Russell said.

Back in the sport’s heyday, more people learned how to play polo at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center polo school than any other place in the country, Russell said. More than 1,000 polo players have been taught at the center since 1983.

“Eighty percent did it for pleasure, and 20% became professional polo players,” he said.

Russell credits polo’s popularity at that time to actress and equestrian Stefanie Powers.

“She wanted to do a celebrity game, and she brought in Bill Devane, Alex Cord, Doug Sheehan and Pamela Sue Martin, who had never played before in their life and taught them to play polo,” Russell said. “And I’d say of the 50 who have come to the equestrian center, about 75% turned it into a lifestyle.”

Sheehan continued to play on the celebrity team for 15 years after learning the game.

“I flew around with Pamela Sue Martin, Bill Devane and Alex Cord to play the pregames to raise money for various charities and raised a lot of money,” he said. “It was great. We got to meet everybody in the polo world at the time.”

After Cord and Devane quit the celebrity team, Sheehan continued to play and international invitations started coming his way, he said.

“I played in South Africa, Argentina, Jamaica, Canada, and in England I played with the pros,” he said. “I was never a star, but by that time, I could hit a ball and stay out of people’s way.”

To inspire others to join the sport, the California Polo Club has put together a promotion for the June 28 event, Russell said. Anybody who attends gets a certificate for one free polo session.

With the 25th anniversary coming up, he said, it was the perfect time to bring everyone back together.

One of the professional players returning is Questel, who is originally from the Dominican Republic.

“He still plays professional polo,” Russell said. “He plays out of the California Polo Club in Sylmar for arena polo and at the Eldorado Polo Club in Indio for outdoor polo.”

Polo is one of the most exciting things you can do, Questel said.

“For seven minutes you don’t think about anything else but just aiming for the goal and hitting it,” Questel said. “It’s one of the best therapies you can have. Everybody wants to play polo, children to seniors, age 7 to 65.”

For the game on June 28, the professional players will play four seven-minute periods, called chukkers, Russell said.

There are two types of polo, arena polo, where the playing field is the size of one football field, and outdoor polo, played on a space of 10 football fields, Russell said. Arena polo uses three players to a team, and outdoor has four.

“For people who like to watch, it’s more fun to watch arena polo because the action is so close to you,” he said. “If you are sitting in the box seats at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, you are sitting on the same level as the players.

“You feel like you are part of the game.”