Queen Elizabeth presents the Coronation Cup to Eduardo Heguy.
The news went around the world, but it exploded above all in England: “An Argentine player broke royal protocol by putting his hand on the queen’s back“.
The man in question is none other than Facundo Pieres. In June 2019, the Ellerstina polo player won the Queen’s Cup and was the most valuable player of the match. In addition, Open Galáctica, his mare protagonist of the tournament. The ruler of the United Kingdom came to present him with the prize for the best horse of the Open and then they posed for the protocol photo. Protocol? Pieres did not remember that no one could touch the back of the Queen Isabella. The rule says that, at most, the monarch can be given a handshake. But the Argentine, who he had touched her shoulder earlierin a popular gesture, then he did not hesitate to hug her from behindso that the photo had a fraternal gesture.
There was no scandal or exile for the polo player who acted naturally. “It’s just that the queen loved talking about horses, she was curious“, says Clarín, Eduardo el Ruso Heguy.
On more than one occasion the back of Indios Chapaleufú II was close to the royals. One of them was in the Coronation Cup, where the Russian was the captain of the Argentine team and received the trophy from Queen Elizabeth.
“And there you had a moment of exchange and she was very affable, she liked horses. After that there was a reception, a tea, and there I had a chance to chat with her and his eyes lit up when he spoke of horses, he was a fanatic. I remember that at that moment we were already beginning to talk about embryo transplantation and she asked me about this topic “, remembers Ruso Heguy, one of the continuers of the dynasty started by Alberto Pedro and Horacio Antonio.
The incredible thing is that Alberto Pedro and Horacio Antonio, the duo who have won the Argentine Open in Palermo 17 times, have never managed to lift the Copa de la Reina. The fact is that those were other times and they didn’t even play it: “They never played the Queen’s Cup. They played with the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth, when she was in Argentina in 1966”, recalls Eduardo.
An anecdote emerges from that meeting that re-emerged in April 2021, when the queen’s husband died: “Prince Felipe said he would change the Falklands if they gave him two Heguys.”
Beyond the bad taste, the words of the queen’s husband came 16 years before the conflict in the South Atlantic, between Argentina and England.
What was he doing in Argentina? There was a tournament at the Hurlingham Club, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and the British Polo Association had ruled out the prince who, with a handicap of only five goals, could not enter the top quarter that England had formed.
But the polo has that way of matching. So, a normal player can be improved if he joins two 10s. Therefore, the Argentine Polo Association did not miss the opportunity to have royalty in his tournament and placed him in a team with three young local rising stars, including two real crepe: the Heguy brothers, Horacio and Alberto Pedro.
The chronicles of the time tell that, pushed by the creators of the Chapaleufú Indians, the prince played the best polo of his life and his team defeated the British team that had rejected him by 15 to 5. Later, they would lose the final against a team of four Argentines but only one goal.
After the final, the reporters approached the prince on the Malvinas issue and that unhappy sentence came out of his mouth: “If they gave me these two Heguys, I’d give them back the Malvinas“, he launched, more or less words, dazzled by the brightness of those two cracks.
In the case of the Russian, he played some finals in Windsor but never managed to win the Queen’s Cup. That yes, between the last two Argentine champions of the traditional tournament with Isabel alive, a Heguy appears: it is none other than Cruz, son of Eduardo and grandson of Alberto Pedro, together with Juan Martín Nero, the historic defender who will play again with Il delfino this year. Even if he wasn’t.
But the last chapter of the Argentine queen and polos took place in 2019, in the midst of a pandemic. When England reopened the doors to immigration with a much stricter immigration policy than we knew in normal times, Isabel quietly but effectively lobbied for permits to be made more flexible so that both players and the petiseros could enter his country.
Source: Clarin
