On His High Horse Atop prized polo ponies, former American Ten-Goal king Adam Snow rides high at home in Aiken, South Carolina
By Ann Wycoff
Photograph by Bob Scott
POLO RUNS DEEP IN ADAM SNOW’S BLOOD: He grew up playing bicycle polo with his brothers, and “stick and balling” with his grandfather, and he eventually faced his dad at the Harvard-Yale alumni polo match. After Yale, where he also competed in hockey, Snow headed to Argentina and trained under legend Hector Barrantes. In 2003, he reached the coveted ten-goal handicap, the best possible rating in this gentleman’s game. Now, at 44, he lives on a 135-acre farm in Aiken, South Carolina, one site of the prestigious 108-year-old USPA Silver Cup polo tournament, where he’ll compete October 3–19.
The all-pro “big daddy” of high-goal polo tournaments is in Buenos
Aires, where local and international fans gather to watch legends like
Adolfo Cambiaso—the Michael Jordan of polo—play in a downtown field
maintained by the military. De...
SNOW: A lot of people call polo “hockey on horseback.” The movements, the physicality, the quickness of transitions, and skills—like passing into space—are quite similar.
What triggered your ascent to a ten-goal handicap?
In 1997, my handicap got lowered to seven, which was a huge blow. Up to this point, polo was a fun way to see the world. But I had to decide whether or not to accept that I was a pro polo player. So I bought horses and started seeing a sports psychologist. When I hit ten-goal, nine out of ten players at that level were Argentine. All are today.
Where has polo taken you?
I’ve played at the sultan’s palace in Brunei, where the fields are lined with crude oil. At my first game, playing against Prince Jefri, I yelled, “I’ve got Jefri.” At halftime, a royal employee came over and said, “Mr. Snow, please refer to His Royal Highness as Prince Jefri.”
How do you ship your horses?
There’s a lot of creativity that goes into getting mounted on the road. The sponsor pays for my horses to go over and back on a cargo plane. At around $9,000 per horse, it adds up.
The ideal polo climate?
Santa Barbara, California, during the months of July and August. It doesn’t rain, and it’s perfectly cool in the evenings.
What’s the perception of polo in the U.S. these days?
Here, it’s in the social pages; in Argentina, the sports pages.
Why are Argentinians the best polo players?
The cultural heritage of the gauchos, the horse-loving cowboys of Argentina; the country’s passion for sports; and the flat, open land. There’s an aristocracy there, too, who adopted polo and are more English than the English themselves.
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