Julius Bär Dubai Polo Gold Cup 2015
We are almost half-way through the Dubai Gold Cup and it has been very exciting, 4 out of the 12 matches played so far have gone in to Over Time.
Especially Sunday’s match between UAE and Abu Dhabi had a surprising twist at the end. By the end of the 4th chukker UAE was behind with 3 goals, they managed to even it out in the 5th chukker and went in to OT where their star player 9-goaler Lucas Monteverde secured the winning goal.
The status so far is as following:
| Team | Matches won | Matches lost | |
| Julius Bär by Habtoor | 2 | 0 | |
| Zedan | 2 | 0 | |
| Bin Drai | 2 | 0 | |
| Desert Palm II | 2 | 1 | |
| UAE | 2 | 1 | |
| Mahra | 1 | 1 | |
| Ghantoot | 1 | 2 | |
| Desert Palm I | 0 | 2 | |
| Abu Dhabi | 0 | 2 | |
| Edrees | 0 | 3 | |
The next matches will be on Tuesday, first up we will see a battle between brothers, Rashid Al Habtoor’s team Mahra will play against his brother Mohammed Al Habtoor’s unbeaten team Julius Bär by Habtoor polo at 2.30 pm and at 4.30pm we will se Bin Drai, who so far are also undefeated play against Edrees, who have yet to win a match.
Rashid Al Habtoor’s Team Mahra
Mohammed Al Habtoor’s team Julius Bär
The finals of the Gold Cup will be held on Friday the 13th of March and until then we still have 7 days of exciting matches, at this point it is hard to tell who will be in the final, let alone win it, so we must wait and see. For those who cannot attend the matches, the great people over at on pololine.tv will be filming and streaming it online.
The Julius Bär Dubai Polo Gold cup is with 18-goal teams the highest handicap tournament in the Middle East and Asia. After Argentina, USA and the UK it is the fourth largest tournament in it’s category.
Mohammed Al Habtoor getting in the right mind-set before the match
The tournament was founded by Mohammed Al Habtoor in 2009, where it started out being a 12-goal tournament with 6 participating teams and has now grown to 18-goals and 10 teams, which is internationally recognized and has also become part of the prestigious World Polo Tour.
The winning team of the Julius Bär Dubai Polo Gold Cup 2015 will receive a cash prize of half a million dirhams and each playing member will also receive a limited edition Breitling for Bentley watch.
For an explanation of the sport of polo read my blog post What is polo?
