PQ international Summer Issue 2010 #72

Page 136

History

Guards Polo Club Prestigious and English-Style Polo

It was 1955 when the Household Brigade Polo Club came into being with HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as President. It is located in an exceptional area of natural beauty surrounding Smith’s Lawn, in Windsor Great Park, near Windsor Castle, where the club currently boasts ten polo fields within 130 acres that belong to the latter. From the very beginning, the institution was under the stewardship of an important person within English polo,

Colonel William Gerard Leigh, a polo lover who served his country during World War II. Gerard Leigh, known to everyone as “G Leigh”, found his way into the polo world as a child, when he used to sit on a wooden practice horse to learn the basic shots under Lord Wodehouse, who years later would become the third Earl of Kimberley. With a 3-goal handicap, G Leigh joined the Duke of Edinburgh's medium-goal Windsor Park team, and

134

in 1962 accompanied the Duke on a polo-playing trip around some of the South American clubs while the Duke was promoting British industry. In the year 1966, at the invitation of the Argentine Polo Association, an English squad flew out to take on the United States and Argentina for a "three-cornered" tournament. G Leigh accompanied them as part-time equerry to the Duke, who was among those selected to play. When G Leigh was invited, in 1960,


Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.