![]() He was signed by Bristol Rovers FC in 1965 but found the training exhausting and left after one season. ![]() Meanwhile, there was his career to consider. He joined the VWH Pony Club in Cirencester and at around the same time discovered a set of polo sticks in his grandfather’s attic that were quickly pressed into service. “Julian and I used to take them out and play cowboys and Indians, jump fences, enter gymkhanas or do cross-country,” he recalled.Īt the age of nine he was thrown from his mount at the 1959 Cherington Gymkhana but picked himself up and continued, winning all three prizes in the junior jumping event. Soon the brothers were riding ponies on their grandfather’s smallholding at nearby Minchinhampton. The family returned to England when he was four and his father became owner of a garage in Chalford, near Stroud in Gloucestershire. Howard John Hipwood was born on Main Karachi, Pakistan, the second of three children of Brian Hipwood, who was stationed there with the RAF, and his wife Marion, née Brice, who weaned him with buffalo milk. “Any money we had was always spent, and the challenge was always to play in the right spirit.” “I started very young, and the money, or at least earning money, was not an issue for us,” he said. Life as a professional polo player was a year-long circuit, taking in America, Argentina, Australia, Malaysia, France, Mexico and the four-month season in England, though Hipwood insisted that he played for the love of the game rather than for the money. “A poor horse will make your life a misery a good horse will make it like paradise,” he said, adding that there is no relationship in sport as close as that between a rider and his horse. Hipwood, whose older brother Julian was also a formidable player, was a fine horseman, arguing that polo was as much about the animals as the players. The novelist Jilly Cooper described him as “strong and dazzling”, adding: “He storms on to the field like a god, straight-backed like a Prussian officer, and thunders down the pitch taking no prisoners.” On the field he was known as “the bionic arm” thanks to his superb striking of the ball. He took part in the revival of the Coronation Cup in 1971, captained England to victory in the US Open, was twice finalist in the Argentine Open, and was on the winning team in all the principal English tournaments, including the Cowdray Gold Cup and the Cartier Queen’s Cup. Howard Hipwood, who has died aged 73, was often described as the country’s most famous polo player after the King despite hailing from outside the sport’s natural milieu, he was one of its greatest representatives, playing off a handicap of nine goals for more than a decade.
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