Polo in Argentina.

The first matches

The Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) says the first official polo match in Argentina was played on 3 September 1875, the game having arrived with English and Irish engineers and ranchers. Global Polo credits English immigrants who came as landowners in the second half of the 19th century, and puts Argentina's later strength down to that influence, the open plains and plentiful horses. El Marplatense says local estancia owners soon took up the newcomers' game and adapted it to the pampas, where horses were already part of everyday rural life.

Who organised that first game, and where, is less certain. Wikipedia credits David Shennan, a Scottish-born rancher, with arranging it at Estancia El Negrete. A different Wikipedia article, on the Flores Athletic Club, says that club stands on the plot in Buenos Aires where the first Argentine match was played in 1875. We have no primary source for either version.

The Hurlingham Club of Argentina

According to Wikipedia, the Hurlingham Club in Buenos Aires province was founded in 1888 at the initiative of an Englishman, John Ravenscroft, and its statute was approved by the national government on 22 November 1888. Its first polo ground opened on 16 May 1890. The club later became the birthplace of Argentina's national association.

Its own tournament, the Hurlingham Open, has two different starting dates in the sources: Wikipedia's article on the club says 1893, while Global Polo says 1929. Global Polo dates the Tortugas Open to 1907. Together, the Tortugas, Hurlingham and Palermo opens form the Triple Crown, as an EFE report of October 2021 describes it. The Argentine Triple Crown page covers the tournaments as they are played today.

From the River Plate association to the AAP

Before 1922, Wikipedia says, Argentine polo was run by the Polo Association of the River Plate. Wikipedia gives 1892 as that body's founding year, but we found no other source to confirm it. In 1921 a group of players set up an Argentine Polo Federation to send teams abroad, which the River Plate association opposed. When the federation's teams did well in England and the United States, the two bodies negotiated.

According to Wikipedia, on 14 September 1922, at the Hurlingham Club, delegates of 27 clubs signed the founding document of the Asociación Argentina de Polo (AAP). Joseph Monroe Hinds was its first president and Francisco Ceballos its first vice-president. Global Polo also describes the founding as a merger of the River Plate association and the national federation.

Wikipedia says the AAP runs the Argentine Open, sets and interprets the rules and handicaps players active in Argentina, and is affiliated to the Federation of International Polo and the Argentine Olympic Committee. La Nación reported in May 2025 that Benjamín Araya, a three-time Palermo champion and television commentator, had been elected AAP president by 58 votes to 56 over Marcos Di Paola. English Wikipedia, when read, still named Eduardo Novillo Astrada, elected in 2017.

The Open's home, the Campo Argentino de Polo in Palermo, Buenos Aires, opened on 27 October 1928, according to a La Nación guide.

The Argentine Open

The Campeonato Argentino Abierto, usually called the Argentine Open, is run by the AAP and played at Palermo. The records below are from Wikipedia's champions table, as of the 2025 edition.

• It was first played in 1893 and won by Hurlingham. It was known as the River Plate Polo Championship until the early 1920s; the same article gives 1923 as the end of the old name in one place and the start of the new one in another.
• No championship was played in 1914 or 1945, and the 1985 edition was not finished until 1986 because of an equine epidemic.
• The only winner from outside Argentina is the American Meadow Brook team, in 1932, which beat Santa Paula 8-7.
• In 1975 Coronel Suárez became the first team to play the Open at the maximum 40-goal handicap, four players rated 10.
• Most titles by club: Coronel Suárez 25 (La Nación gives 26), La Dolfina 16, Hurlingham 15, North Santa Fe 8, El Trébol 8, Venado Tuerto 7.
• Most titles by player: Juan Carlos Harriott Jr. 20 (1957 to 1979), Adolfo Cambiaso 19 (1994 to 2025), Horacio Heguy Sr. 19 (a footnote suggests possibly 20) and Alberto Heguy Sr. 17.
• Recent winners: La Dolfina six years running from 2015 to 2020, La Natividad in 2021, La Dolfina in 2022, La Natividad in 2023 and 2024, and in 2025 the combined La Natividad and La Dolfina team.
• Adolfo "Poroto" Cambiaso became the youngest winner in 2022, aged 17 years and 6 days.

The Buenos Aires Herald reported on 8 December 2025 that the 132nd Open was won 17-13 by La Natividad-La Dolfina, a 40-goal team of Adolfo Cambiaso, his son Adolfo, and the brothers Camilo and Bartolomé Castagnola. The Herald called it Cambiaso's 19th Open and his fifth Triple Crown, won at the age of 50; an ESPN preview published on the day of the final had already credited him with 19 titles, which would make this his 20th. This page covers results through the 2025 edition; for the current season, see the Triple Crown page.

Women have their own championship. Global Polo says an Argentine Women's Open began in 2017. The women in polo page sets out what is and is not known about women in the Open itself.

Why Argentina came to dominate

The people inside the game give several reasons. In the 2021 EFE report, the AAP's then president Delfín Uranga pointed to easier access to the sport in Argentina and a strong genetic base of horses. The player Juan Martín Nero pointed to land, lower costs in the interior and the ability to play all year. Gonzalo Pieres (the son) pointed to the sheer number of horses and the professional focus of the players. El Marplatense adds the selective breeding of fast, enduring horses, deep family lines of players (it names the Cambiaso, Heguy and Pieres families) and the Palermo Open's place as the sport's world showcase.

The Polo Argentino horse

The horses became a breed of their own. According to Wikipedia, the Asociación Argentina de Criadores de Caballos de Polo was founded on 8 August 1984 and has kept the Polo Argentino studbook since then. Most of these horses come from crosses of Thoroughbreds and Criollos, a practice dating to the 1900s, and despite the name they have no pony ancestry. La Nación reported in July 2024 that the breed's beginnings go back to a talk by Alberto Pedro Heguy at the Sociedad Rural Argentina on possible polo sires, and that the breeders' association had grown from about 50 members to about 400, 37 of them abroad.

The breed's reach is wide. La Nación reported that 862 of the 945 horses at England's 2024 Queen's Cup were Polo Argentino, and that about 90 percent of recent studbook registrations involved embryo transfer, cloning or ICSI. The Argentine polo pony and cloning and breeding pages go into the horses in detail.