Pachyderms in paradise: Anyone for elephant polo?

MANILA, Philippines - Every year, almost two dozen VIPs are invited by a popular resort in Thailand to spend over two weeks of fun, frenzy and frolic.

These guests, considered icons in the kingdom nation, are pampered with relaxing daily baths, sumptuous buffets and services fit for royalty.

Acting as gracious hosts is the Anantara Resort and Spa in Hua Hin, a sleepy seaside city, which is just a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Bangkok.

And the VIPs? They’re actually very important pachyderms.

The Anantara chain of resorts, which recently hosted the 10th Kings Cup Elephant Polo Tournament, has long taken a larger-than-life approach to help raise awareness and money for Thailand’s national symbol — the Asian elephant.

Mark Thomson, Anantara assistant director of public relations, noted that since its inception in 2001, the tournament has raised funds which are donated to several projects intended for the care of Thailand’s elephants.

“The welfare of elephants used in the polo tournament is paramount, with strict rules in place to ensure the pachyderms are well cared for at all times,” Thomson said.

Each elephant attending the tournament has a unique microchip number, as required by law. By imposing a “no microchip, no game” rule, Anantara guarantees that all elephants that play have been domestically bred and are not captured in the wild or smuggled in from neighboring countries.

The elephants that play in the tournament are under 20 and still at an age when they thoroughly enjoy the sport, but large enough to carry a player with ease.

Most of these elephants beg on the streets as their day jobs.

“The annual polo tournament allows almost two dozen Asian elephants to be taken off the streets for the two-week period, providing them with a native forest environment and the best food possible as well as the only veterinary check they would probably receive all year,” Thomson said.

A polo player from the Soco International team battles for the ball with a member of the British Army during the annual King’s Cup Elephant Polo Tournament in Hua Hin, Thailand.

In short, host Anantara ensures the elephants are treated as well as its two-legged resort guests while raising much-needed funds to help protect all of Thailand’s majestic creatures and their heritage.

No Trunks Allowed

Like most guests invited to watch this year’s tournament, I had to brush up on my elephant polo rules.

Elephant polo is played much like horse polo, but involves only three riders and mount per team instead of four. The objective is the same — the riders must score goals using long-handled mallets.

There are some key differences, however. All elephants carry two persons — a player and a mahout (trainer), and only female players are allowed to use both hands to strike the ball.

Also, if an elephant picks up the ball with its trunk, it’s considered a foul.

In the 10 years of trunk-to-trunk action, here are several fun facts and highlights:

• Each elephant polo match takes a total of 14 minutes and is divided into two seven-minute chukkas or halves.

• The longest polo stick used in the game is 94 inches.

• Each fully grown elephant eats 250 kilograms of bananas every day.

• The elephants on the field are street elephants, which, for the duration of the tournament, are given proper food and medical care that they would not necessarily receive otherwise;

• The tournament has raised over US$300,000 primarily for the National Elephant Institute, which provides medical care, sustenance, employment and mahout training to Thailand’s elephant population.

• The world’s first elephant-assisted therapy clinic for autistic children was sponsored by the King’s Cup Elephant Polo tournaments in 2009 and 2010.

• The record for the quickest goal to be scored in a match was in 2005 when Peter Prentice scored in the first nine seconds of play — nobody was more surprised than Prentice who was unaware he had scored the point.

• The New Zealand All Blacks, which had a team in 2004, were almost beaten by a Thai lady boy team — the final score was 2-1, but the Auckland Herald headline the following day read: “All Black Greats nearly beaten by the Fairies of Siam.”

• The most unusual auction piece sold at the tournament’s gala dinner was in 2005 when CEO of Minor International and owner of Anantara, Bill Heinecke, was paid US$3,000 to shave off his beard — his wife won the bidding and Heinecke was clean-shaven for the first time since the 1970s.

• During the first game of the 2004 championship, the umpire elephant — a bull named Plai Kampeang — took a liking to the star striker, Pang Dodo, and decided to indulge in a bit of mid-match romance. (A change of rules saw umpiring of the game now done on foot.)

What started out as a whimsical conversation between two sportsmen from Europe has emerged as one of the largest annual events in the Thai tourism calendar.

It was at the St. Moritz Tobogganing Club in Switzerland in 1981 that international polo player and Olympic tobogganed James Manclark was introduced to Jim Edwards, owner of the Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge, which had a place for elephant trekking in the jungles of Nepal.

Manclark, founder and president of the World Elephant Polo Association which supervises all matches, narrated what took place after that fateful meeting: “I sent a telegram to Jim on the first of April that read: ‘Have long sticks. Get elephants ready. Arriving April 1.’”

He said Edwards was left wondering to himself if this Scotsman was serious or just playing an April Fool’s joke.

Traditional dancers and a marching brass band join the elephants on parade during the opening of the polo tournament.

Edwards nevertheless prepared the elephants and the field, and, much to his surprise, Manclark showed up with a group of other eager players. Elephant polo was born and has grown ever since.

 Opening day

The weather forecast for opening day of the King’s Cup was “cloudy with afternoon rain showers.”

But not even stormy skies could dampen the spirits of players, team sponsors and journalists as they picked their spots on the sidelines of the beautifully manicured pitch of the Somdej Phra Suriyothai military camp.

The army camp, which was just a 10-minute drive from the Anantara resort, offered a perfect venue for the matches.

The military camp, where the elephants are “billeted” for the duration of the tournament, offered huge grazing spaces and a nearby lake where these magnificent creatures can frolic and beat the heat.

Opening day was highlighted by the procession of elephants. The mahouts and players carrying national and team flags paraded around the pitch on elephant backs — their mounts adorned in colorful silks. Accompanying the elephants were a marching brass band and numerous traditional Thai dancers who mimicked the gentle swaying of the elephants.

The entire ceremony was overseen by spirit men, called khru ba yai.

Thomson said the three spirit men attending this year’s tournament are a vanishing breed.

“A khru ba yai is traditionally the highest attainable rank as an elephant capturer and is believed to possess spiritual control over all elephants,” he explained.

In Thailand no one can capture an elephant in the wild without these spirit men.

When an elephant is domesticated, the khru ba yai are believed to speak to spirits to bring good luck to the capturer and give their blessings to be the master of the creature.

The practice, however, ceased some 40 years ago, making the elephant whisperers attending the tournament the last of their kind.

As the 22 elephants entered the field, sacred garlands were placed on their necks and they were blessed with a trickling of scented water by Thai monks.

The spirit men then gave a final blessing to the elephants, chanting and whispering words that we laymen could only hope to understand.

The words could have been mystic elephant codes or the spirit men could have simply told those creatures, “Play fair, guys, and let’s give these chaps a good show.”

Twelve teams took part in this year’s tournament, including watchmaker Audemars Piguet (the defending champs), Mercedes-Benz, Johnnie Walker, IBM, the British Army, PWC All Blacks from New Zealand and Anantara.

The parade ended with elephants lining up at the goal lines in front of two massive buffet tables that had been piled up with an assortment of fruits.

The pre-match fruit buffet was amusing, and spectators applauded each time the elephants stomped on a pineapple or watermelon and picked up bananas with their trunks.

As storm clouds started to gather overhead, the first match quickly commenced. The Jim Edwards Memorial Game, in honor of one of the inventors of the game, saw two all-star teams composed of legends of elephant polo taking the pitch.

The game was eventually rained out, but this proved to be a blessing in disguise for spectators and journalists as the elephants took shelter from the rain near the media tower. The rain delay turned into an unscheduled photo session with the two-ton athletes.

As cameras flashed, the elephants must have thought to themselves: Here they are getting all excited and we haven’t even scored a goal, much less broken into a sweat.

In each match, or mahout, player and elephant must perform as a cohesive unit in order to score goals or prevent the other team from scoring.

Hosting this year’s tournament is the Hua Hin Anantara Resort, which surround guests in atmosphere of a traditional Thai village

During the tournament, the mahouts, who sit on the elephant’s neck, all wore black shirts with Thai command and their English translation on the back for the players behind them to read.

Pai tee noon meant “go over there,” you tee nee meant “stop here” while sai nee translated to “go left a little. If a player scored a goal, he would say “Dee mak,” meaning “Good work” (although the mahouts also added that command to their shirts just to boost their egos).

One of the more exciting matches that followed was the one pitting the Mercedes-Benz team against the All Blacks from New Zealand.

The All Blacks controlled the game early as they had the more agile and quicker elephants. The first chukka ended with the All Blacks up 2-0. The rules call for elephants to be swapped for the second and final chukka, and Mercedes-Benz took advantage, scoring four unanswered goals. The highly defensive match ended, 4-2, in favor of Mercedes-Benz.

Celebrities Lend A Hand

To help raise awareness and much-needed funds, Anantara organized a celebrity auction as a sidelight to the polo action on the field.

Anantara partnered with some of the world’s biggest personalities of the silver screen, stage, fashion and business world and asked them to share their artistic talents to help raise money through an “ele-auction.”

The auction’s concept was for each celebrity to paint and decorate “George” — which is a small elephant statue that needed color and a personal touch to make it larger than life and help brighten up the future for all elephants of Thailand.

Among those who contributed their talents were Grammy Award-winning band Lady Antebellum, Louis Vuitton head designer Kim Jones, Thai beauty queen and actress Charm Osthanond, supermodel Cindy Bishop, Korean pop star Park Jung Min and Anantara big boss William Heinecke.

“We are very excited and grateful to the celebrities who donated their valuable time and support to help raise much-needed funds for the struggling Asian elephant,” Heinecke said. “The theme of the auction is Larger Than Life and these celebrities have shown that their generosity is just that.”

Osthanond, a former Miss Thailand, painted her George in the Thai flag colors and added eyelashes and a tiara as a special touch. The colorful Georges were on display at a booth near the polo field for the duration of the tournament.

Bids started at 8,000 baht for each statue. All proceeds from the auction would be donated to the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation which will, in turn, donate the proceeds to various elephant projects all over Thailand.

Proceeds from the auction of elephant statues painted by celebrities like Grammy Award-winning band Lady Antebellum will help fund projects for the welfare of Thai elephants.

During the tournament, the elephants were not the only guests receiving royal treatment from Anantara Resort. Through the Tourism Authority of Thailand, several journalists from across Asia as well as TV crews like BBC and ESPN were able to witness the unique sport of elephant polo.

When not watching elephant polo matches on the pitch, guests managed to experience moments of Thai discovery and inspiration at the Anantara Resort in Hua Hin, a place considered the seaside vacation enclave of Thai royalty.

In Sanskrit, anantara means “without end” and evokes the freedom, movement and harmony that are the spirit of the experience in the company’s various resorts.

Guests were surrounded by the atmosphere of a traditional Thai village since most of the buildings housing the suites are located near the pool, lagoon or the beach.

Among the interactive immersions offered during our stay were Thai cooking classes, art sessions and a trip to a vineyard in the mountains of Hua Hin.

A Mammoth Task

The King’s Cup charity event has raised US$300,000 to date, with funds used to care for more than 60 elephants and their mahouts at the Thai elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, in northern Thailand. Elephants are taken off the streets while they are still young, usually under 20 years of age. They’re provided a forested environment, food, veterinary check-ups and their mahouts are given a salary.

In 2010, fundraising from the event came to almost two million baht, which was donated to the Thai elephant therapy project under the guidance of the National Elephant Institute. This program successfully uses elephants in the therapy of severely autistic children with amazing results.  

In addition, money raised will be used to launch the first and only elephant hospital in southern Thailand as well as a human-elephant conflict project, which calls for the development of an elephant corridor that provides them a natural migration path without infringing on the land being tilled by farmers.

The important work is carried out by Anantara’s own elephant charity — the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation. The foundation works closely with the Thai Elephant Conservation Center and the National Elephant Institute — two government agencies that have been endorsed by the king of Thailand

John Roberts, who manages the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation, said it is a common misconception that they own the elephants that play in the tournament.

“While we have 30 elephants in the Golden Triangle camp, they do not play polo. What we try to do is find working elephants that are worse off and try to give them a break from their regular jobs which could mean walking on the streets for 10 hours a day,” he said.

No one is as dedicated to the welfare of the elephants as Roberts, who holds not only the cool title of elephant director, but also acts as lone umpire in the all the elephant polo matches during the tournament.

He admitted, however, that the task at hand is a difficult one.

“In an ideal world, all street elephants would be free to roam in their natural habitat,” Roberts said. “Through the charity events and tournaments, we can offer realistic alternatives — a break from their regular routines while they are with us and enough funding to ensure the survival of these magnificent creatures.”