Jean-Édouard Mazery: "The Polo Rider Cup, a fundamental competition to develop our sport"

LE FIGARO.

- You should be delighted with the creation of the Polo Rider Cup.

Jean-Édouard MAZERY

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- Indeed, this is excellent news.

In these difficult times, you have to stay focused on the future, have the motivation to create, innovate and develop polo.

This new Club World Cup is an initiative extremely well received by the great polo nations.

Eight countries represented, it is unexpected in these times of Covid.

And we can hope to have even more next year.

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Is this competition important for the development of polo in France?

It is fundamental because it gives France even more credibility on the international scene.

With 31 clubs and 800 players, our country is ranked fourth in the world behind England, the United States and Argentina.

And this competition confirms our ability to attract great players and great teams to our quality infrastructures.

The Chantilly Polo Club is an example to follow, with more than 350 horses, eleven fields including two winter, a polo school.

We must continue to reach out to the public, by creating activities, by developing polo schools everywhere, by democratizing our sport.

Can the Polo Rider Cup create vocations?

It is obviously the objective to take advantage of it to transmit our passion for polo, which is more than a sport.

It is first of all the union between man and horse.

And it is then a team sport on horseback that can be practiced with family, between father and son, mother and son, between friends ...

You were recently elected president of the French Polo Federation.

What is your ambition?

It is first of all to facilitate the emergence of new professional or amateur talents, to structure and develop the high level, to encourage the practice of polo in all regions and to promote the practice of all types of polo, on grass, sand, snow, 3 against 3, 4 against 4, etc.

The objective is also to organize and give credibility to horse breeding, to continue to structure the training of teachers and referees, and to strengthen the visibility of polo.

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It all looks like a democratization of polo ...

Absolutely. This is what we did in Deauville, where I was president for six years. We got to know people by organizing games on the beach and parades in the city. We must continue to reach out to the public, by creating activities, by developing polo schools everywhere, by democratizing our sport. And it tends to work. Even if we have lost licensees with the Covid, we have more and more young people and women who represent 35% of our licensees ...