“Strip factor” in Exhibition match raises hackles at Eldorado Polo Club
By DIANE HENSLEY
INDIO – The “Battle of the Sexes Polo Game,” scheduled for noon on Saturday Jan. 5 at Eldorado Polo Club has ignited a battle of its own among club officials, players and members and event promoter Randy Russell following reports published in The Desert Sun playing up the potential for nudity in the match.
The exhibition match pits a men only team against a women only team, featured as part of the Ford Trucks Red, White and Blue Polo and Balloon Festival organized by Polo America. But the match was also touted to include a “strip” component, though organized for entertainment purposes only. Upon scoring by the men’s team, a mare would be stripped of an article of “clothing,” and as the women’s team scores, a gelding would similarly be stripped of an item, Russell told The PoloZONE.com. Removable items would reportedly include bridles, saddle pads and wraps.
“It will be California’s first G-rated polo game,” Russell said.
But early reports by Denise Goolsby trumping up the strip factor in the apparently sanctioned match, fomented turmoil among club officials who reacted in attempts to protect the club—and the sport’s—reputation.
“The members and owners were furious,” General Manager Albert Lansdorp told the newspaper.
Matters worsened when players Freddie Harris of La Quinta and Mark Register of San Diego dramatized their roles in the Battle of the Sexes polo match in a subsequent news report. Goolsby wrote, “Though she’s no Lady Godiva, Freddie Harris, an avid polo player who teaches English at an area university, could be riding nude in Indio next weekend.” Harris reportedly said of herself and her teammates, “We’re always up for something.”
Register said in the report that the stripping would “go as far as when we start yelling out ‘It’s illegal,’” and that he knows the women he’d be playing against. “They want to get our clothes off bad, I guess,” he said, adding that extra layers of clothing would be in order.
Polo America President Randy Russell reissued a press release on the Battle of the Sexes Polo Game aimed at quelling the misunderstanding and clarifying the rules. He emphasized the event was a fundraiser, organized to benefit the armed forces. A previous Battle of the Sexes polo match held in Aiken, S.C., that benefited the servicemen and women at Fort Gordon generated no rancor, he said.
“The one thing we’ve advertised from Day One is that the festival and the match is an event for the entire family. That’s what our intentions are, and that’s what they’ll always be,” he said.
Watch the “Battle of the Sexes Strip Polo Game” at noon Sat. Jan. 5 at the Eldorado Polo Club in Indio. The exhibition match is a featured event of the Ford Trucks Red, White and Blue Polo and Balloon Festival hosted Jan. 4-6 at Eldorado Polo Club and Indio’s Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. Admission is free with a donation to the families of the servicemen and women stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms.
For more information, visit the Fantasy Springs Resort web pages at www.fantasyspringsresort.com or contact Eldorado Polo Club at (760) 342-2223.