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some highlights....
playing with horatio and hugo.
finishing early in the day saturday so there was plenty of time to drink shitty beer and watch good polo.
ireland/grass representing.
tour de ville party
watching james brown thread the ball at high speed through two bottom brackets.
trying to score against Vidal.
hoxton square.
all the games that Zombie played in the losers' bracket.
monmouth & neil's yard.
those awesome germans. all of them.
refs.
swapping bike/mallet support and STDs with rotten apples.
putting red franklins in the organic ice cream cart.
watching barcelona face down barcelona.
london bridge with a hundred polo players.
playing two games @ downham tonight, both of which went 5-4 (we call that Beer Point where i come from, none of this Golden Goal rubbish).
ray for being a wicked host even though he went to bed instead of drinking whiskey with me right now.
getting another saddle from brooks.
L'Équipe!
inviting myself and a few hundred other people to have winter polo vacations in sicily. catania anyone?
tomasito's shots.
8 x full english breaky with Ray and Hugo and the Rouen crew this morning.
all the organizers, volunteers, sponsors. thanks all of you, wicked jobs.
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london, you should all come to paris next weekend or the weekend before the worlds to play some polo. DO IT! see you soon hopefully.
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i just started a thread at bikepolo.ca about the great reffing:
http://bikepolo.ca/forum/tournaments/2009/08/03/refs-at-ehbpc
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nice article on NYT travel blog!
http://globespotters.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/riding-bikes-not-horses-in-these-polo-matches/
vidal, about to score?
reposted/archived at http://bikepolo.ca/forum/in-the-media/2009/07/28/london-bike-polo-in-the-nyt
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Seabass, Drew and Soren, from Seatle, won
Nano, Justin and Leon, fron Seatle runner's upActually the Cog tourney (if that's what the question was about) was won by East Van's "Ballz deep". A Milwaukee/Portland team (Brian, Crandall, and Drew) took second, and a Seattle/Ottawa team (Leon, Seabass, Alexis) took third.
Regarding that other video of the disputed goal, there's a long, boring, dated, and generally speaking irrelevant discussion where it was originally posted on bikepolo.ca.
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its definetly a bit less obviously wrong than the madison t bone
The "Madison t bone" was a joke move pulled by Ben against NYC, at a tournament called "NYC (i.e. new year's championship) in Madison" named that way as a joke because of the rivalry between those two teams, who have played physically against each other and are also good friends. Everyone on the court was laughing at the audacity of ben's move, including the goalie who got taken out, and me as i swept up the loose ends and scored. We still lost that game, so it's irrelevant. But damn straight it was illegal.
That said, "taking out the goalie" was quite common, and allowed, at the ESPIs, and will likely remain at N.A. tourneys until it gets outlawed--if it gets outlawed. It can involve, in order of intensity:
- Pulling the goalie's mallet
- Hacking the goalie's mallet
- Shoulder checking the goalie when the ball is nearby (this is what i consider happened in the video here)
- Shoulder checking the goalie when the ball is not nearby
- Bike on bike, aka "t-boning" the goalie (if anyone in London can explain the difference to me i'd love to hear it), like Ben did in January in Madison.
My guess is that 1, 2 and 3 will remain legal, but i dunno, maybe only 1 and 2. I wish mallet hacking would be made illegal. In any case, I hope this rule gets clarified at some point soon.
- Pulling the goalie's mallet
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I think the worlds was:
- East Van
- NYC
- MKE
- Madison
1st: NYC (Doug/Paul/Zach)
2nd: East Van (Martin/Rory/Pieter)
3rd: TIE. Madison (Kev/Jonny/Ben) and MKE (Jake/Joe/Eric) (3rd place game didn't happen due to thunder and lightning)NYC had the same team at the ESPIs, East Van had Seabass subbing for Martin, Madison had Jon A subbing for Ben, and MKE had Joe, Brian, and Kremin.
- East Van
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So i'll defend the n.a. polo community here for a sec, cause this useless hostility between people who don't even know each other has got to end, it's so unproductive and i don't understand why people don't give each other the benefit of the doubt. These are BIKE POLO players, not fucking SUV drivers.
But specifically about this controversy: there are 500+ users of bikepolo.ca, probably about 150 active North American users, and only about 15 complained, while a few others defended the decision. But to defend even those 15 dissenters: most of them have been already to a dozen or more tournaments, and they have never been excluded from one. Little do they know that there will be lots of "closed" tournaments in the coming year, due to size restrictions mainly. It's just that yours was the first one to be organized enough to announce eligibility, so it got people's ire. I'm sure that the N.A. championships, the World's, and other tournaments will also piss people off when they finally get around to deciding who's going to be excluded and why. Read the post by Ken (from NYC--Los Marcos organizer) on on 12/22/2008, which will hopefully put this issue to rest in the minds of those who were complaining. http://bikepolo.ca/forum/tournaments/2008/12/16/2009-european-hardcourt-bike-polo-championship-london
And now, back to the discussion of the Federation...
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you all might also be interested in this: http://www.bikepolo.ca/forum/stuff-that-breaks/2008/12/15/new-modular-mallet-head-design-presented-by-total-polo-laboratori
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sorry about all the changes y'all. hopefully we'll find each other.
drinks tonight at 7pm at:
22, cour des petites ecuries,
polo tomorrow at Champs de Mars,
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=104508741430920099651.00045a7bf624e06e26a4d&ll=48.853604,2.30082&spn=0.004454,0.010214&t=h&z=17those maps are actually the same and show all other locations for the weekend (BFF film, and afterparty saturday night).
we'll be sending out scouts to look at the other locations to gather people, it's all within 10 min bike ride. sorry about all the confusion. sucks about the weather and our lack of decent backup plan. this was a last-minute tourney (organized since BFF london).
can't wait to see y'all.
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Cecily from NYC and maybe Nick from Australia/Chicago are looking for a team. Let me know if any of you are looking for another teammate: www.bikepolo.ca/contact
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pocket bike bags £50 at wiggle http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/Cycle/7/Scicon_Pocket_Bike_Bag_-_Smart_Pocket_Design/5360037699/
full size bike bags (excl. wheels) fold up really small to put in your rucksack when riding... although not really suitable for travel do you think they'll be okay for eurostar hand luggage?
would be good for taking a bike into a hotel room.
by the way, my last comment was a reply to this.
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hey londoners, you've already hosted the paris crew twice in the last two months, and i'm worried that we're not going to be capable of reciprocating... a lot of people live in tiny flats and sleep on their own couch. we'll do our best to drum up floor space, but i guess i'm saying that if you have somewhere to crash already then that's great.
i'll be offline a bunch in the next week cause i'm on the road, so Hugo is the one trying to round up some places for people to crash, you can contact him here: http://bikepolo.ca/user/203/contact (tho you need to be logged in on bikepolo.ca to see that form)
You can reach me at bikepolo.ca/contact (no login necessary).
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turd, you should definitely contact that madbikepolo kids. mikey q knows them. a few will be in philly but there will probably still be games in madison. write to sundaysundaysunday AT madbikepolo [ dot ] org
as for the rest of you, come to philly! the more londoners the better.