Polo legends: Nacho Figueras, East Coast Bronze Cup awards presenter and Ralph Lauren Polo spokesmodel, hugs Mariano Aguerre, a mainstay of the victorious White Birch team. Photograph by Robin Costello.

Father's Day at Greenwich Polo Club

June 24, 2021

White Birch, Greenwich Polo Club’s home team, came from behind to defeat Palm Beach Equine 11-8 for the East Coast Bronze Cup on a hot but picture-perfect Father’s Day that saw the start of summer. All afternoon, White Birch’s Pablo Llorente Jr. and Palm Beach Equine’s Gringo Colombres mixed it up in what was a seesaw match for most of the chukkers. But in the end White Birch pulled away, anchored by tournament MVP Chris Brant, son of club founder Peter Brant.

Nacho Figueras’ ‘High Season’

June 1, 2016

“Criterion” – the third planned book in my series “The Games Men Play” – is a tale of bloodlust and bloodlines set amid rival families in the equestrian world. So I was more than a little excited to see that Nacho Figueras – the polo star and Ralph Lauren spokesmodel – is presenting a series of romances, “The Polo Season,” written by Hudson Valley, N.Y. writer Jessica Whitman.

The first, “High Season” (Forever/Grand Central Publishing, $13.99, 351 pages) follows an upstate New York veterinarian as she threads her way among the 1-percenters of the winter equestrian circuit in Wellington, Fla. Will she find love with the dashing polo star who, too, has his challenges? Is there any doubt? ...

Are women Trumped by gender, still?

March 21, 2016

It’s intriguing – though infuriating might be the better word – that Our Principles PAC should have to release an ad with actresses mocking Donald Trump’s sexist comments on women at precisely the moment that a new study shows women’s presence in male-dominated professions being heralded by a decrease in salaries.

The moral in each case is the same: To be a woman in the 21st century is still to be devalued.

And, by extension, so are so-called feminine qualities and professions, such as compassion and the arts. These are viewed as weak and decorative at best.

But why should this be, given wave after wave of feminism? ...

Greenwich Polo Club gallops into another season

May 31, 2014

There’s no Prince Harry to spice up the Greenwich Polo Club this year, but that doesn’t mean fans aren’t in for an exciting season.

Things get off to a rollicking start Sunday, June 1 with the White Birch home team – named after club founder Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm and White Birch Paper – in action against CT Energia. The home team will be led by Argentina’s Mariano Aguerre, considered one of the all-time greats, and his fleet countryman Hilario Ulloa. In April, the two teamed to help Alegria take the U.S. Open title.

The polo club is set in Greenwich’s verdant, undulating backcountry. Recently, I had a chance to chat there about the season with Australia’s Nick Manifold, who’ll be playing No. 2, an offensive position, for CT Energia Sunday. What a treat it was to sit out in the grandstand on a picture-perfect spring day, the cottony cumulus clouds so ripe and low that they seemed ready to touch the Jim Dine sculpture (think a huge, modern “Winged Victory”) that stands guard across the field. As the staff put the finishing touches on the immaculately manicured expanse and added patrons’ nameplates to the box seats, Nick gave this relative newbie a polo primer, something I was extremely grateful for as my one experience with the game had been last May’s Sentebale charity match starring Prince Harry and Nacho Figueras that was an otherworldly media event. (Polo does, however, figure in “Criterion,” the third novel in my “The Games Men Play” series, the story of a star-crossed equestrian family told in part from the viewpoint of a horse trying to win the Triple Crown.)

Adventures in the book and mag trades

March 25, 2014

Boy, nothing like a day spent meeting members of the public to measure character – yours and theirs – as I discovered when I appeared wearing my deux chapeaux, as WAG editor and author of the new novel “Water Music,” at the recent Hudson Valley Gateway Experience in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.

First, a big shout out and thank you to Chereese Jervis-Hill of Events to Remember in Mount Kisco, N.Y.; Deborah L. Milone, executive director of the Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce in Peekskill, N.Y.; and The Mansion at Colonial Terrace in Cortlandt Manor for a truly terrific day. Some 500 guests milled about the antebellum manse, with its Doric columns and brocade wallpaper, savoring carrot-ginger soup, gluten-free crab cakes, mango ice and sweet potato tartlets. Attendees saw cooking demonstrations; got a chance to meet authors like young Claribel Ortega, who’s on her way with the teen witch novella “The Skinwalker’s Apprentice” (more on her in my upcoming women warriors post); and received freebies like the sweet plants provided by Manzer’s Landscape Design and Development and the smart, sturdy canvas bags from Entergy. Who doesn’t love free stuff?