We talked with the President of the Egyptian Polo Federation about the growth of the sport in the country.
How do you see the growth of Polo in Egypt?
My vision of growth is how much the Egyptian polo game has improved in the last few years, now we have 3 regulations fields ( two in Elgieza County and one in Alexandria) that can host an international competition. We also have two more in the making , an option that we didn’t have few years ago. I would say that all the teams are mounted on Argentine polo ponies and more come every year ( roughly 95% of the competing ponies come from Argentina) that improves the polo game and allows us to have a local competition up to 6 goal polo which we never had before. In the last two years we allowed teams to hire professional players up to 5 goals to participate in the local tournaments and that has helped to improve the sport in general ( last year we had 4 professional players from Argentina participating in the local tournaments) . I would like to emphasize that those changes have been a game changer for the Egyptian polo.
Where is Egypt going with respect to polo?
Our country is focusing on improving the horse related sports in general and now we have a new world class facility under construction in the vicinity of our new capital and polo is a part of it . This should be a great addition to our sport.
How many clubs are there in the federation and what is the next objective for polo to grow?
We have 5 registered clubs in the federation and again 2 more to join hopefully before the end of 2024
Our highlights of 2024 is having an international event including 6 teams during the month of May, we already presented our proposal to the FIP during the general assembly 2023 early this month and l haven’t received the feedback from our representative only because of scheduling conflicts, I can update you on that issue in the near future.