Under the official timekeeping of Hublot, the 27th edition of Europe's highest altitude polo tournament was held from August 23rd through the 25th at one of the Bernese Alps’ most prestigious resorts in Gstaad. Players and horses went head-to-head against a dramatic backdrop of Swiss mountains. Amid the majestic, snow-capped Alpine peaks lies a verdant valley, nestled at an altitude of 1,000 meters, through which a lively river runs. It was here, on a cancha —the name given to the polo fields— specially created on the grass at Gstaad-Saanenland airport, that the public was treated to a unique spectacle of polo.
Invented almost 3000 years ago in Asia, the oldest sport in the world represents the point of perfect coordination between humans and horses and is known as the ‘King of games and game of kings’.
Four teams of illustrious international players competed in the Hublot Polo Gold Cup Gstaad tournament. These teams, each made up of four players, and for the first time including a female player among the male competitors, battled it out for victory in the best of three rounds: the qualifying round on Thursday, the semi-final on Saturday, and the final on Sunday, in matches divided into four quarters of seven minutes each known as chukkers. Each chukker is carefully timed by Hublot, a privileged partner of the event since 2008. The ultimate victory went to the Kielder team.
Max Charlton, Nacho Gonzales, Philipp Mueller, and Jaime Robert from the winning team were each awarded a Hublot Big Bang Original Steel Ceramic model engraved with the words "Hublot Polo Gold Cup Gstaad Winner" and equipped with the MHUB4100 chronograph movement, a self-winding Manufacture calibre with a 42-hour power reserve.
Ambassadors and Friends of the Brand were in attendance, including sprint champion and Friend of the Brand Mujinga Kambundji. The Swiss athlete joined the crowd of elegant spectators taking to the field between each chukker to replace the clods of earth and tufts of grass raked up by the horses' hooves during the matches, a time-honored polo tradition that has been the subject of memorable scenes in Hollywood cinema.
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