The success story of St. Moritz
By Lutz Deckwerth, Photos By St. Moritz Polo Club
Reto Gaudenzi will always remember the 26th of January 1985, when the very first snow polo tournament on the frozen Lake St. Moritz was about to be cancelled due to a blizzard. The experienced hotelier, current President of Worldpolo, and founder and CEO of the Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz had been working to make this event happen for two years. “It had snowed all night and the polo field was no longer recognisable under the fresh snow”, remembers Reto Gaudenzi. The 40-centimetre ice sheet was too thin to withstand large snow ploughs. But polo players are fighters. The organising team managed to recruit two dozen volunteers from the area with small snow blowers, and after six long and strenuous hours, a 40-by-80-metre field was cleared – and the weather no longer stood in the way of the world premiere of snow polo.
The birth of the world’s most prestigious winter polo tournament
“But getting there wasn’t easy”, remembers Reto Gaudenzi. “There were hurdles everywhere. And of course, it was also difficult to get funding for the tournament at the beginning. The local authorities had turned us down, so we didn’t get any public funding.” But the well-connected hotelier managed to win luxury watch manufacturer Cartier as main sponsor. “A commitment that has worked out well for both sides”, adds Reto Gaudenzi. For 35 years now, the teams have been competing for the Cartier Trophy in St. Moritz. The snow polo project on frozen Lake St. Moritz started with a budget of 100,000 Swiss francs.
Players from Argentina, India, Switzerland, Germany and the United Arab Emirates competed in the two-day tournament: one match a day, 1,000 spectators each plus free admission. Today, the budget for the largest snow polo tournament is two and a half million Swiss francs and the event is attended by 20,000 spectators and 4 world-class polo teams.
Preparations are in full swing all year round
“After the polo tournament is before the polo tournament”, states Reto Gaudenzi. “We keep looking for sponsors all year round. Ticketing, marketing, planning and PR are always ongoing. And when the lake is frozen, about a month before the event, we start building the infrastructure.” Some one hundred specialists set up the polo field, grandstands, support, kitchen and catering tents, sanitary facilities, horse tents, childcare facilities, shops, heating systems, sound systems, lighting, etc. – often in cold and windy weather. There’s tens of thousands of tonnes of material which need to be taken onto the ice to cater for the approximately 20,000 spectators who come to see a unique sporting spectacle in the breathtaking scenery of the Engadine mountains every year. “We set up a whole city on the lake for it”, says Reto Gaudenzi with a hint of pride. “We enlist help from all trades – from electricians and tent builders, caterers, kitchen builders and piste preparers to grandstand, steel and heating engineers and decorators.” All of them work towards the same goal: the three-day polo tournament on snow on the last weekend of January. “And if the weather plays along as well, visitors can experience a deep blue sky above the snow-covered mountain scenery and glistening snow crystals whirled up by the galloping hooves on the playing field”, says Reto Gaudenzi.
The founder is back
The fact that annual polo tournaments have been taking place in St. Moritz for 35 years is not to be taken for granted. The pioneering team led by Gaudenzi spent 15 years organising the tournament and establishing it as a socially and athletically important gathering of the worldwide polo community. “It’s always important to be backed by a great team. Just like playing polo, the organisation can’t be done by one individual. In 1999, he and his team handed over all responsibility to somebody else and were looking forward to the continued success of their initiative. But after 2014, the tournament was left without an organiser, thus facing an uncertain future. Reto Gaudenzi, who now organises polo tournaments around the globe, had to act fast: “Given the uncertainty about the future of this top-class sporting and social event, we simply had to act. So we registered ‘Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz’ as a trademark and gave it to the community.” Together with other Swiss polo enthusiasts, Gaudenzi then founded Evviva Polo St. Moritz AG – with 60 wealthy shareholders with an interest in polo – and celebrated his comeback as the organiser of “his” tournament.
This put the tournament back on a solid financial footing. And so, the 31st edition of the event was aptly themed “The founder is back”, and thanks to the “Godfather of Polo”, everything went smoothly. More than 15,000 spectators in total turned the tournament into a great public sucThe fact that annual polo tournaments have been taking place in St. Moritz for 35 years is not to be taken for granted. The pioneering team led by Gaudenzi spent 15 years organising the tournament and establishing it as a socially and athletically important gathering of the worldwide polo community. “It’s always important to be backed by a great team. Just like playing polo, the organisation can’t be done by one individual. In 1999, he and his team handed over all responsibility to somebody else and were looking forward to the continued success of their initiative. But after 2014, the tournament was left without an organiser, thus facing an uncertain future. Reto Gaudenzi, who now organises polo tournaments around the globe, had to act fast: “Given the uncertainty about the future of this top-class sporting and social event, we simply had to act. So we registered ‘Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz’ as a trademark and gave it to the community.” Together with other Swiss polo enthusiasts, Gaudenzi then founded Evviva Polo St. Moritz AG – with 60 wealthy shareholders with an interest in polo – and celebrated his comeback as the organiser of “his” tournament. This put the tournament back on a solid financial footing. And so, the 31st edition of the event was aptly themed “The founder is back”, and thanks to the “Godfather of Polo”, everything went smoothly. More than 15,000 spectators in total turned the tournament into a great public success. “When organising an event of this magnitude, you have to be service-focused”, says Gaudenzi. “This means that you’re organising the event for the entertainment of others.” The relaxed and informal atmosphere during the 2015 tournament triggered a particularly positive response. “I think the most important thing was that we handled the organisation of this mega-event with passion and the know-how of a super-crew of professionals and volunteers.” In the meantime, the tournament has become an important economic factor. “The Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz generates more than 10 million Swiss francs worth of value added for the region”, explains Reto Gaudenzi.
“I’ve been in the polo business for 40 years”
Reto Gaudenzi’s CV is closely linked to the history of St. Moritz. He grew up in Silvaplana in the Engadine, just around the corner from St. Moritz. “My family has lived there for 700 years”, says the Swiss national. Via commercial school, his training as a chef and the hotel management school in Lausanne, he became a hotelier. “I’ve run businesses around the world, including the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in St. Moritz, the Schlosshotel in Berlin, the InterConti, the Schweizerhof and many more.” But in his spare time, the hotelier has always been a top athlete. He used to play ice hockey, be a bobsleigh pilot (among others on the Swiss national team), began to play polo in 1978 and later founded the Swiss national team. “I’ve won polo tournaments around the world, including 11 German championships. Polo is my passion-turned-business.” Gaudenzi has got 40 years in the polo business and more than 100 successfully organised polo tournaments under his belt, and he describes his relationship with horses as follows: “Apart from women, horses are the most fascinating creatures in the world.” He has passed on his love for his four-legged friends and for polo to his children. His son Tito also plays polo and organises tournaments such as the one in Kitzbühel or the Beach Polo tournament in Miami. And even Gaudenzi’s daughter Carolina (a musician) and his second wife Irina frequently make an appearance at his polo events. Reto Gaudenzi and his family couldn’t imagine a life without polo.
Reto Gaudenzi as ambassador of the polo sport in Azerbaijan
There’s neither archaeological evidence nor historical documents to prove the origins of polo, but researchers assume that the sport dates back to the time around 1000 BC in Persia. Via the Persian Empire, polo spread across Asia and arrived in the western world with the British troops via India around 1850. English ranchers also brought polo to South America. And strictly speaking, Reto Gaudenzi, the inventor of Polo on Snow, is now bringing the sport back to the Caucasian Republic of Azerbaijan. “I’ve built a local polo community with Elcin Guliyev and Bahruz Nabiyev. We’ve taken horses and players there, trained them, built two stadiums and have been organising a major tournament for 6 years.”
Azerbaijan joined the FIP (Federation of International Polo) in 2013 and invests a great deal in the sport in order to promote the country’s image. “Azerbaijan is a country of horse lovers and the birthplace of polo”, explains Reto Gaudenzi. “I have a contract with ARAF, the country’s equestrian federation, and I’m an ambassador of polo for Azerbaijan.” In Reto Gaudenzi’s opinion, this is a fruitful collaboration. Azerbaijan sends a team to St. Moritz, for example, and the Swiss participate in tournaments in Azerbaijan. And then there’s also the Elite Horse and Polo Club in Baku – the first polo club in the country to operate both an indoor and an outdoor arena. “Within the next few years, we’ll be seeing the development of an infrastructure which is unique in the world”, announces Reto Gaudenzi with pride. Each year, the Arena Polo World Cup is held in Azerbaijan. And in 2020, the country will be hosting the FIP European Championships.
Rumour has it that Reto Gaudenzi once said: “God must be a polo player!”, when the weather in St. Moritz didn’t let him down. But this sentence could also be applied to the success story of polo around the world. And it doesn’t matter which God he referred to in this case.