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I am all in for mixed polo because female polo sucks!
First, sizeless thanks to London for having made this meaningful meeting happen!
Until now, tourneys I assisted were a time machine dropping me forward a clearer polo feeling, better polo understanding. Hell s Belles woke me definitely and hope irreversibly up! Not “all girls” but the “ladies majority” set up we played triggers me now to be deeply and honestly convinced that from some point in the future, while estimating the capacities of a given polo team, the gender of the players in that team will become an obsolete information, that to list some “all girls” teams among the world s top ones will not surprise anyone.
Why? Why do I introduce the topic as “for mixed polo” and then glorify a potentially strong “all girls” team? Simply because in what I d like polo and I wait for polo to evolve, the team mates will be chosen regardless the gender, but according to the play dynamics which rise when a particular trio is creating its own game in and out the polo court.
Why? Why do I bet on the equal valuability of the two genders in our game? As it contributes to withdraw one more fake obstacle in way to broaden the spectrum of enriching actions via the wider team mate choice, it s needed!.. because to rise the average polo up to an absolutely soulstealing level our will it is!
Polo is our game, game means that every team is seeking for the beautiful, elegant, perfect play factually unattainable. The randomness aka chance is a 7th omnipresent player, otherwise polo wouldn t be a game. The team level progress appears to follow a sigmoid curve upon time: hardly flat beginning followed by a sloppy improvement and then!.. more it tends to approach the horizontal limit of perfection, more it becomes parallel to it.
Polo is a sportive game. Sport means competition between the participants with more or less similar physical condition and more or less developed skills. At the top level of other sports genders use to split due to the commonly accepted male superiority in muscular performance. Polo is played on 20x40m^2 court putting the importance of the fastest muscular response under the importance of the skills such as the game reading with the consequent positioning in the court and the fluent, precise passing system. The ball will be always faster than the faster of the players! Positioning and passing are skills, skills are about the time and the way you train. Nothing is proving female disvantage in developing these skills.
Polo rules are minimally limiting and amazing: safety leitmotiv with no age or weight categorising. Care for safety keeps the weight superiority again under the importance of the skills. Rules neither include gender categories, so why the top teams are almost only male teams or teams with the reduced female activity and why should it change? Because at present the most part of female players have one huge disvantage on males, is the time they lived polo. We are at least 5 training years late! But we can recuperate time if we re fond of polo and we look for the awesome play. We re on the sloppy phase now, when already the top male teams are endlessly approaching the perfection limit. We have more polo to bring them up there!! To compete together for more polo diversity, to get even closer to the perfection limit. Very probably not me, but Leah can be in a top team from here to 5-10 years. I don t care I still love and enjoy polo when I don t hate it.
Another pseudo disvantage is the female minority integration in a dominant male context with all possible sad issues. Girls, if you come to polo, come for polo! Girls who come for polo, trust in your abilities and fuck the macho sons of the b..ad education who cannot imagine you re here for play and not for cheerleading or speed mating, fuck also those who cannot accept that you may already be as good as them and who show it by lacking you respect. This kind of male polo sucks! It s limited and has now future. Guys (not the sons of the bad luck), on a polo court we are all players, but often girls are poloistically younger, please, don t offer us the ball, show and advice how to get it from you and how to keep, to pass, to shoot it, how to stay on the bike, as you would do with a guy of the same level to us.
“Ladies majority” was an excellent demonstration of how the male contribution can pull up our motivation, accelerate our progress and how much we have to play ( no pain, only pleasure imagining) to learn, to reach the top. None of the guys I saw played free from the double constrain to satisfy their team mates on one side without deceiving the opponents on another. Usually, everybody plays as well as it s possible, at Hell s Belles guys had to limit themselves to make play the girls, to create situations for them, to distribute, to save, to equal the score, to offer the possibility to play as long as the tourney runned. None of the guys performed at 100% of their habits, but maybe at 100 and more % of care for their team. I m happy of having made part of ”the ladies majority”, I won even more poloistic admiration for guys like Alejandro and Todd.
For instance girls tourneys are necessary to promote girls, to update us- girls, it should t be considered as the beginning of the gender splitting in polo. I saw Tornadoes, I saw Anja and Angie with Till, both teams were mixed from my point of view.
If what I try to explain is an evidence:
MIXED POLO IS BETTER FOR THE ALMOST PERFECT POLO
same as diversity is better for the evolution, sorry for wasting your time. -
+1 to LLPC
Wow, deep. Can't believe I read the whole post, can't say I completely understood it but I do have to disagree about female polo sucking... have you been to London's ladies night? Some ladies have progressed quicker without playing with the guys.
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to the ladies of london polo, thank you so much for the best tournament i have been to yet! so well organized! food, music and beer! Nik and Erin, i do hope to see you in the states! everyone is already gotten an earful about how amazing you ladies are.
and an extra huuuge hug to Nik for savin us last second and letting us stay with you. and the hat! oh i havent taken it off yet. bring some more Mum stuff to Lexington, the girls will love it.Vi, an amazing teammate! way to be there and way to blast some sweet goals! i hope to see you in the states as well!!
Bido, heal up quick! your attitude about the whole thing was incredible. Mike felt horrible.
Elaine and Claire, what a stellar job of keeping everything so fluid! AND telling me about Lucozade. i brought a few bottles home with me. seriously, Claire, you saved me from a bad day of polo with a hangover. It was a pleasure meeting you ladies.
Alexis, i know it was a shite move on our part, but thank you again so much for taking us in the first few nights.
I couldn't imagine a better reason for venturing half way around the world. I hope to do it again. Saving my pennies now and hope to see you again next year!
Jinx!
oh! and all of you who won a wheel cover, and if you put it on your bike, please post some photos for me! jinxywheelcovers@gmail.comCheers!
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hey, where can we see the rest of these? can someone post a link? spanx
Gorgeous...
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great set there, nicely done
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thankyou, it was a pleasure to shoot, massive thanks to the organisers for allowing me to get in their way and steal a jenny for the day, and poots for sorting me with beer and fags whilst i couldn't go to the shop. and especially to corny, if he hadn't bugged me to do it i totally would have sat at home and watched die hard whilst eating pizza in my boxers.
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About
Tourney: Hell's Belles, vol. 1 - 15-16.10.2011
Posted by
@nny
thanks Nik and Erin for the wonderful comments, it was my pleasure to come down and hang out and help out. Always down for supporting the ladies. Was a very fun weekend! I promise I will at least go to beginners enough to make to to ladies polo sometime...
my photos are not nearly as good as any of those posted here, but they do include my favourite use of a hacksaw all weekend as well as London on London action!