Famous High Goal Player to Manage Great Meadow Polo
The Board of Directors of the Piedmont Polo Association today announced the appointment of John Gobin as General Manager of the Great Meadow Polo Club (GMPC). Ranked one of the top ten players in the United States, he will be the first professional player of that stature to head up a Virginia polo club.
“We are really fortunate to be able to attract professional talent like John Gobin and believe he is going to help take polo in the Piedmont to a whole new level,” said Dr. Phillip A. Karber, President of GMPC. “The year 2008 is the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the first polo club in the state, just a couple of miles from the current Great Meadow facility, and John will offer perfect leadership as we head to that Centennial and the biggest polo celebration in the history of the
region.”
According to Jim Burton, Vice Governor of the U.S. Polo Association Eastern Circuit and a GMPC Vice President: “Polo players are ranked with a handicap between -2 and +10. Gobin is rated 8 goals in the arena, attained a rating of 7 on the grass, and is currently 6. He has played in the highest matches in the country (the superbowls of polo): starring in the U.S. Open twice, winning the Pacific Coast Open, and three time champion of the U.S. Arena Open.”
John began his polo career at the age of 15 in Rehoboth, MA, in the arena. At 17, he went to Argentina and spent a total of 2 years there in training. His professional career began a few years later playing with Geoffrey Kent, the famous British polo sponsor. As a young player, John was a member of the World Cup winning Budweiser team, played for the U.S.A. team in Chile and was also a member of the 1992 U.S. team that defeated England in the famed Westchester Cup. That game went into double overtime and John scored the winning goal and he was awarded the Polo Magazine Young Player of the Year. He has played in many locations – Calgary, Santa Barbara, Chicago, Bridgehampton, and Saratoga for White Birch, Mercedes-Benz, Cellular One, Excalibur and locally the Tully Roan and Golden Zebra teams from The Plains, as well as Hidden Creek and Banbury Cross from Middleburg and Normandy Farm of Great Falls. Gobin played in last year’s successful Ambassadors Cup at Great Meadow with thousands attending and will again be starring in the season grass opener” on
Saturday afternoon, June 16th.
Great Meadow is one of the most successful public venues for polo between the Hamptons in New York and Palm Beach in Florida. “The summer long presence of Gobin will give even more excitement to our audiences,” said Burton. “High goal players attract other high goal players and sponsors, and this year we will be the first Club in the country to have our
weekly games televised.”
GMPC Board of Director, Debbie Nash, whose Tiger team from Warrenton won the national arena championship this year, is enthusiastic: “I am really excited about John organizing our Twilight Saturday Night games in the stadium at Great Meadow. He puts on one of the best shows in polo, the audiences love it when he plays.”
“John Gobin is a great role model for our kids,” said Ahmad Pirasteh, who coaches the region’s Interscholastic Team and whose Natania Farm trains young equestrians in polo. “He came up through the sport in the same kind of kids programs we are trying to develop locally. Our kids play arena polo in the Interscholastics; over the last decade, with three National Championships, John is seen as one of the most successful arena athletes in the world.”
As a Board Member of GMPC, Pirasteh stressed another important attribute: “Polo is a global game and often associated with the lifestyles of the rich and famous but here in Virginia it is a family sport of horse lovers. Gobin has been a success at the highest levels of polo but fits
in with our type of environment.”
Gobin has a home in Wellington where he plays High Goal polo in the winter and trains horses at his Four Oaks Farm in Aiken in the spring and the fall. This summer, his wife Kathleen, an equine veterinarian, and five-year old daughter Schuyler, will be living with John here in the Piedmont. In being notified of his selection after a nation-wide search of high goal professionals, Gobin said: “It is a great honor to be a part of the Great Meadow family, to be here all summer with so many old friends, and to start the preparations now for next year’s celebration of Virginia’s 100th Anniversary of Polo.”