Luis Escobar
Polo Star Recalls The Past While Looking Toward The Future Story by Lauren Miró Photos by Gregory Ratner/RatnerSportsPhotography.com
Luis Escobar has lived through more than three decades of polo in Wellington, from its fledgling years as a pastime sport, to the present, professional competitions of today — and he looks forward to the future of polo as his sons begin to follow in his footsteps.
(Above) Luis Escobar with Lucchese team owner Paul LaVoie. (Left) In action at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington. (Below) Escobar celebrates on the sidelines with his father Francisco.
Although Escobar, currently a 7-goaler, has long since made his mark as one of Wellington’s top polo players, he continues to improve his game and looks to the day when he can watch the next generation play the very same fields he has dominated. “I love the game,” Escobar said. “I love the adrenaline, the competition and preparation for games. I can’t see my life going any other way.” Escobar, 38, arrived in Wellington from Costa Rica in 1976 as a wideeyed youngster. His father, Francisco, was an avid polo player who came to Wellington when it was just a friendly game of stick and ball. “The school that we were assigned to go to was in Greenacres, but I’m not that old,” Escobar joked. The family lived in Wellington until 1978 before returning to Costa Rica, where Francisco worked as a developer. Each winter, they would return for the polo season; but there’s a stark difference between his father’s polo games and the professional, highgoal action in the spotlight today.
“My father didn’t play professionally,” Escobar said. “He came to have fun. It was a different time then; polo has changed. It became more professional, and in the past 15 to 20 years, it became super professional.” Watching his father from the sidelines, Escobar knew what he wanted to do more than anything else: play polo. “For me, that was it,” he said. “Since day one, I’d watch him play polo, and that was all I wanted to do.” And learning to play polo in Wellington meant playing with and learning from legends in the sport. “I learned all my polo here in Wellington,” Escobar said. “That was the good part of playing in Wellington, it would bring in high-goal players — some of the best players in the world, like Memo Gracida — and we were exposed to that. That was the reason that we were able to play.” Escobar was a part of the very first youth polo tournament in Wellington, where he played with some of today’s top players, including Julio Arellano and brothers Pite and Sebastian Merlos.
WELLINGTON THE MAGAZINE • APRIL 2010
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