daughter, Myla, who’s only 4, is already riding. Cambiaso never pushed the sport on his children; he simply introduced them to horses and let nature take its course. “I put them on the horses,” he explains. “I make them love the horse first, more than the game. “You can say that it is working. The boy is fanatical about playing; [Mia] is fanatical about the horses. ” For Adolfo Jr., at least, the interest may have started at birth. In 2005, while his wife, model Maria Vazquez, was pregnant with their second child, Cambiaso was in the middle of a second-round game in the Argentine Open when he received a phone call from the obstetrician. At the moment, his team, La Dolfina, was leading 12-3 at halftime. “The doctor called me, and I was in the fourth chukker,” Cambiaso recalls with a smile. “I asked him to give me 15 more minutes so I could play one more chukker. He said, ‘I can only give you 15 minutes because Maria is ready [to give birth].’ At this moment, Maria doesn’t know [that I asked for 15 minutes]; otherwise, she would kill me!”
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ALEX PACHECO
ALEX PACHECO
Adolfo Cambiaso, widely recognized as the best polo player in the world, with children Mia (also left) and Adolfo Jr. during the Nespresso 40 Goal Challenge in Wellington.
Cambiaso left the field with his team leading 18-4 (en route to a 27-7 victory) and raced to the hospital, five minutes away. He made it with time to spare and—very soon—welcomed his son into the world. “[Maria] was so quick, I could have come back and played the last chukker,” he jokes. For Cambiaso, family comes first, and his wife and children often accompany him to matches, whether he is playing in Wellington, England or Spain. Even back home at Cordoba, his farm outside of Buenos Aires, horsing around on the field is a regular occurrence. “I try to have pickup games with friends of my kids almost every weekend,” he says. “My breaker, he’s one of my main guys,” he adds. “He has a kid that is the same age as my kids. I give him a lot of help [and] the possibility to play. There are always horses for everybody. It’s the best program for them and for me, to arrange a polo game or a tournament. “I do it because I love it—that’s the truth. And I like that they enjoy it.” Cambiaso also loves horses. While he’s vague about how many he owns—“enough, plenty,” is all he admits—there are reports he owns between 600 and 1,000 polo ponies.
Cambiaso is involved with the breeding side of the sport and is also one of few players experimenting with horse cloning. In fact, he rode cloned ponies—Show Me and Cuartetera—in the 2014 Argentine Open. “It’s already showing that [cloning] works,” he says. “They played fantastic.” Olimpia, another clone, will play in this year’s Argentine Open. His idea of cloning horses emerged in 2005, when Cambiaso’s prized stallion, Aiken Cura, sustained a serious injury at the Argentine Open. Devastated at the loss and hoping technology would soon create new opportunities, he froze some of the horse’s cells. He wasn’t alone in pursuing the concept; by 2010, Mariano Aguerre and Charlie Armstrong had revealed clones. Cambiaso partnered with Alan Meeker of the Texas firm Crestview Genetics and set out to clone several of his top ponies. It was certainly an investment—cloning one pony costs as much as $100,000, plus the added cost of subsequent rearing and training. But for Cambiaso, getting involved with what may be the future of polo was an easy decision. “I like horses, I like cloning, I like all the different parts,” he says. “It’s my work, but it’s my hobby, too.” « palmbeachillustrated.com | APRIL 2015
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