• • 
• • Tournament
  Tweet

  

Dubai, in the last second

Winners of the Queen's Cup

A penalty by Adolfo Cambiaso secured the title for the Albwardy's team

By Diana Butler

Dubai defeated Ayala in one of the closest finals in the 52-year history of this great high-goal polo match played at Guards Polo Club. 

The final of the Queen's Cup, the premier tournament of the club founded by the Duke of Edinburgh back in 1955, featured once again the live broadcasting by PoloLine TV, and was watched by 6,000 people worldwide. Following the large success of each live streaming of all the finals of the Palm Beach season, as well as the Dubai Gold Cup final, PoloLine TV, continues to bring all the details of the world's most important polo events, an experience that started three years ago as the absolute pioneers in this technology in polo, with the semifinals and the final of the Queen's Cup. And that has improved and increased non-stop since then on, adding more and more viewers each time.

Regarding the match, it was a very tight final. The scores were tied, 11-all, when the timekeeper rang the bell to warn the teams that there was just 30 seconds left of this match. Almost immediately, Ayala committed a foul for which Dubai were awarded a penalty. Adolfo Cambiaso lined up the shot and successfully scored, ensuring that it was his patron Ali Albwardy that stepped forward to receive the Cartier Queen’s Cup from Her Majesty The Queen and Arnaud Bamberger, Executive Chairman of Cartier.

Victory this afternoon puts Dubai as firm favourites to win next month’s British Open Championship and, as Cambiaso said in the post match press conference: "We will be the only team not under any pressure." With such a great victory already under their belts and knowing that the onus is on the others to play catch up, Dubai will surely the team to watch?

This is the fifth time that Albwardy’s Dubai team have won this trophy, with either Ali or his two sons, Rashid and Tariq, playing for the winning side. This victory also saw Dubai’s Cambiaso, considered by many to be the Best Player in the World, win his 8th Queen’s Cup winners’ prize and be named Most Valuable Player. It was Ayala’s Gonzalito Pieres though who received the Cartier Best Playing Pony Award for Centimetre. Pieres had played his own 10-year-old chestnut mare in the fifth chukka.

Although Cartier has sponsored the Queen’s Cup before, as a one-off in 2006, this event is the first of a new sponsorship agreement with Guards Polo Club. After 27 years’ support of International Day at the Club, Cartier announced last year that it was transferring its sponsorship to this earlier, high-goal fixture in June. They wanted to support a more tournament-based event and with 16 teams entering this most prestigious of tournaments, including five of the greatest exponents of the sport in the world  (those elusive 10-goalers), Cartier has not been disappointed.

The Cartier Queen’s Cup Final 2012 began with a subsidiary game for the Cartier Trophy. El Remanso defeated EFG Bank Aravali 13-10 in a match for the newly created Cartier Trophy. Played as a subsidiary final, it featured the losing semi-finalists who had battled so hard last Wednesday (13 June) to earn a place in today’s’ final.

This sold-out day, which attracted a crowd of some 5,000 people, concluded with a unique display on The Queen’s Ground. The Royal Cavalry of Oman, who were already in the country as they had taken part in the All The Queen’s Horses Pageant at Royal Windsor Horse Show and Beating The Retreat in London, put on a magnificent display of equine skill, featuring some 70 magnificent Arab horses as well a couple of flag-bearing Shires too.