09. May 2004.

La Estancia Polo Club, inaugurated in 1998 in Etyek, staged Hungary's perhaps greatest polo event to date, La Estancia Polo Open Budapest 2004, between 7 and 9 May this year.

The exceptional event drew players and prominent guests from Hungary, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain and Argentina, who thoroughly enjoyed the three-day tournament in Etyek.

Polo as a sport is believed to have developed from certain games played on horseback by the peoples of the Central Asian steppes. It first spread in Persia in the centuries before Christ and later gained popularity in China, Japan and eventually in India. The sport was taken up by the British colonizers in India and introduced in England in the 1860s. (Hurlingham became the headquarters of polo in 1874 and even drew up the first rules.) The game was introduced in the USA in 1886. Its influence spread to Argentina, where it became the national sport. In Hungary it was introduced by Count Géza Andrássy in 1896, the year of the millennium.

Polo is a sophisticated sport played, like golf, according to strict rules by the elite. Beyond well-mastered expertise, playing this game also calls for a good tactical sense as well as determination. As it is a game played by no more than a few thousand people (both men and women) around the world, everybody seems to know everybody else on the polo circuit.

The spirit of polo, beside the simple love of the game, joins people of different nationalities, religious and political creeds - spectators and players alike. Moreover, it symbolises homogeneity between nature and mankind as well.

Our manufactory has opted to sponsor the event precisely because its products reflect the same kind of professionalism, organisation and quality as the game of polo.