Polo team hit by deaths of 21 elite horses last season returns to Fla. for new start

Polo team hit by loss of horses returns to play

WELLINGTON, Fla. — A Venezuelan-owned polo team that endured the deaths of 21 horses from a mineral overdose earlier this year is preparing to start a new season next month with a fresh fleet of horses.

The season in Florida starts Jan. 3 and Lechuza Caracas, one of the world’s top teams, plans to come back with a new resolve to not let the past keep them from a sport they love.

“We have a tight knit group and we’re all happy to be here again,” team manager Esteban Scott said Wednesday at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, about 70 miles north of Miami, the same site where the team’s horses began collapsing in April.

“Recovering all those horses and replacing them will take more than a year,” Scott said. “We’re far from it yet, but we have enough to play.”

He said some of the team’s horses were brought over from England to allow them to compete in Florida this season.

“What happened is very tragic and obviously you don’t just get over it, but we’re trying to put it behind us,” Scott said. “Lechuza is looking to have a fun season. We have worked really hard for the past year to recover.”

Meanwhile, the United States Polo Association announced in November that random drug tests would begin in January for all polo matches in the U.S., something that has been occurring in England for years, players say.

“The trigger for this whole thing was the unfortunate event of last” season, said well-known Argentine player Nacho Figueras, who has been the face of Ralph Lauren’s Black Label line and the designer’s Polo fragrances.

While he said he doesn’t see a need for drug testing in the sport, he supports anything that will better the game.

“Our horses are our tools. Without them, we can’t work, so we take very good care of them,” Figueras said Wednesday.

Figueras has been working hard to promote the sport, often seen as a game for the rich and elite, to larger audiences, and said the “unfortunate” deaths of the horses actually boosted the sport’s visibility by gaining more mainstream media coverage.

“Unfortunately, that event gave us a starting point for promoting the sport,” he said. “Ten years from now, we’re going to remember that day as maybe one of most important starting points for polo to go to the next level.”

Horses from the Lechuza team began collapsing April 19 by the edge of a field at the polo club as they were unloaded from trailers before the match. Some died at the scene, others hours later.

Florida’s top veterinarian later ruled the deaths were caused by an overdose of a common mineral — selenium — that helps muscles recover from fatigue.

A Florida pharmacy that mixed the brew of vitamins and minerals for the team has acknowledged that the strength of selenium was incorrect in the product it delivered. The compound also contained vitamin B, potassium and magnesium, and is similar to a name-brand supplement known as Biodyl, which is used around the world in the sport to help horses recover from fatigue. It hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S.

The Lechuza horses had been injected with the compounded substance just hours before they began dying in a dramatic scene that unfolded before hundreds of shocked spectators gathered for the match.

On The Net:

International Polo Club Palm Beach: www.internationalpoloclub.com/