On April 19, Liu Ziwen, a polo polo player from China and the chairman of the Imperial College Polo Club, led his "Ming yun" polo team to the spring tournament of the British Royal Forest Army Polo Club.
Liu Ziwen is currently studying for a Master of Science in Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London and has four years of polo training and competition experience. As the manager and captain of the Imperial College London Polo Club, he has led the varsity polo team to participate in university polo tournaments such as the All England University League for many times, and achieved good results. At the end of 2021, Liu Ziwen officially became one of the club's 65th amateur polo players through the application for the right to participate in the Yulinjun Polo Club League, and he is also the only young Chinese polo player in the club.
The name of the team ,"Ming yun" is taken from the table character of Li Xian, the prince of Zhanghuai in the Tang Dynasty, and the related story can be related to the mural "Polo Diagram" of the tomb of Prince Zhanghuai of the Tang Dynasty excavated in Xi'an. Ming yun, as a polo team led by Chinese of the Yulin Army Polo Club, will participate in more than 20 matches in the 2022 season (which lasts from late April to late September).
Equestrian magazine in February
In the February issue of Equestrian Magazine - Equestrianism and Study Abroad, Liu Ziwen also talked about his polo life.
In October 2018, I stumbled upon the Polo Club while attending imperial college club recruitment. Out of curiosity and love for horses, I signed up for an experiential class. The first time I managed to swing the ball on a horse, I realized that this was the sport I had always dreamed of, and until now, this feeling has become more solid every day – polo is the perfect blend of ball sports, team competition, and collaboration between people and animals.
Two months after joining Imperial Motorsport, I and two other fellow rookies ushered in the first game of our polo careers, the "College Challenge." I was very nervous and even a little flustered, but thanks to the usual hard work and the tacit cooperation of my teammates, the result of the game was still satisfactory, and we won the 2018 "University Challenge" newcomer group for the Imperial College team. In the months that followed, the Polo Club also participated in friendly matches against university teams such as the University of London, Oxford University, Royal Holloway College and other universities. During these friendly matches, I met a group of alumni who loved polo, and we still have regular appointments to play with each other to this day.
In January 2019, through the recommendation and sponsorship of Imperial Polytechnic Polo Club, I joined the Royal Forest Army Polo Club as a member of the society. It is recognized as the best polo club in the world, but membership in society is not eligible for club leagues, and in June of the same year, I was invited to watch an Oxfordshire Polo match with my friends at the Royal ForestErs Polo Club and was deeply struck by the skills of a Oxford Player 1 named Charlie Hitchman, who single-handedly scored 11 of Oxford's 15 goals. It also made me realize that my polo career still has a long way to go.
Royal Forest Army Polo Club
The Royal Forest Polo Club is the most famous polo club in the UK, founded in 1955 in the heart of Windsor Grand Park in south London, with a total area of 53 hectares and ten polo venues. Notable competitions include the Queen's Cup, the Royal Windsor, Archie David and the Hurlingham Polo Association's International Day.
In the summer of 2019, I returned home and missed the fascinating sport on the other side of the ocean, trained under the guidance of two Argentine polo coaches Hugo Palacios and Ferchu Erreguerena, and learned some more advanced on-field coordination skills. When I returned to the UK in October, I was appointed acting captain and began systematic, targeted training with other players under the direction of Charlotte Sweeney, coach of the Imperial College polo team.
In February 2020, the All England University Polo Winter League was held as scheduled. Imperial College Polo registered two teams that year, and although the final result was not bad, it did not win any trophies. The experience of that tournament is still unforgettable to me, not only because it once again made me realize the importance and necessity of teamwork in polo, but also because of the size and efficiency of the league. The three-day tournament rotates every 10 minutes from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the more than 200 collegiate polo players present rushed in and out of the playing field in groups of the registered teams without dragging the mud and water.
After the winter league, after discussing with the varsity coach, we carefully analyzed our previous tactics and cooperation shortcomings with all the varsity team members, and formulated individual special training and team cooperation training for each member. These trainings helped us achieve a good result in the championship and runner-up in regional polo matches such as the South West University Polo League in England and the "Oxford-Cambridge-London" friendly tournament that the Imperial Polytechnic polo team participated in.
At the end of July of the same year, I returned to the Plaza Premium Polo Club in Tianjin and began polo training under the guidance of Hugo, greeting the sunrise on horseback every morning and bidding farewell to sunset on horseback in the evening, which lasted until the end of August. I remember Hugo saying to me before I started training, "At the end of the training, you don't even realize how much you've improved." "Indeed, my polo skills have improved unconsciously after experiencing ordinary bats, conceding balls, ordinary emergency stops, rushing, passing, and scoring goals.
Liu Ziwen's polo coach Hugo
One ordinary night during this time, after dinner, Hugo and I chatted in the taxi about the Chinese polo we felt. Hugo's deepest feeling was a sense of powerlessness. Because the epidemic has lost foreign professional polo related personnel, Chinese polo is on the verge of derailment from the world, and at this time, China's new batch of young polo players have no signs of rising, he is worried that he is willing to leave his hometown, relatives, girlfriends, and spend seven years of hard work on Chinese polo will decline. "What if we could set up an organization that trains young Chinese polo players, as a university club did?" I asked, followed by the surprise and a glimmer of hope in Hugo's eyes, "I've been thinking about this for a long time, let's do it!" ”
On September 7, 2020, the new generation of polo teams was officially established, With Hugo as the head coach and I as the captain, and Zhao Xiaohui, Xing Yiming, Lang Lang, Deng Haoze and Zhang Tongkai were admitted as the initial team members. The original intention of Hugo and I to create a new generation of polo teams is to let China's young polo players have their own platform, communicate, train, compete together, and be able to connect with the international standards in theoretical knowledge and technology, and lead by example to spread the culture and spirit of polo to domestic polo players, thus promoting the development of Chinese polo. Hugo and I also hope that the young polo players who join the new generation of polo teams will not only compete on the field to win the championship, but also understand and participate in all aspects of the polo industry under the polo field, such as how to choose, take care of and train their own polo horses, rather than handing over everything off the field to other staff.
On October 24, 2020, The Touria Polo Club hosted one of the biggest matches of the year, with three participating teams including the Royal Qilin Polo Team from Beijing, the Silk Road Guanshe Team from Xi'an, and the New Generation Polo Team from Tianjin. Before the start of the game, the new generation of polo teams experienced two consecutive players who were injured and had to retire from the game, and urgently recruited two young polo players, Jiang Hanxi and Shu Qing, to join the team to fight alongside me and Zhao Xiaohui. But the four of us had never trained together, and that game became the bottomless one in my heart. At one o'clock in the afternoon on the day of the race, two hours before the race, I gathered at the stables with Hugo and three other members of the team to start preparing the horses I would ride in the afternoon. From shoveling horse dung, brushing horses, preparing horses, to tying horsetails, all the preparation work is done by each team member himself. Now that I think about it, perhaps because of these inconspicuous work, always hidden behind the scenes, the four members of the team have tacit understanding and trust with each other. After two days of competition, the new generation of polo teams did not lose a single game, and finally won the championship. This was my first time as a captain to lead a young Chinese polo player to compete, and it was also the first time I won a championship in a domestic polo tournament.
In September 2021, the epidemic eased slightly, and after 14 months of online classes and polo life in China, I boarded a flight back to London, England. On my return to school, I was unanimously elected manager and captain of Imperial College Polo Club for the second consecutive year. At the same time, the Royal Forest Polo Club also approved my application to change my membership from a member of the society to a participating member. Since then, I have officially become one of the 65 patrons and amateur polo players of the Yulin Army Polo Club, and the first young Chinese polo player in the club's history, qualifying for all club competitions, including the most prestigious Queen's Cup. In the 2022 British polo season, there will be Chinese polo players. I also hope that with my own efforts, Chinese polo will be active again on the world stage.