Monday morning. Does Kim Grabosch have time to make a phone call? “It’s okay. We’re just loading everything for the European Championships in Düsseldorf.” Yes, of course, somehow horse and rider have to get there, otherwise the spectacle that has been considered the game of kings since its beginnings 2700 years ago will not happen. What Grabosch, the dentist with four practices in Munich, does not say: The 24 horses and their four riders are not at home in Holzkirchen, from where it is only a smooth 650 kilometers to the beautiful city on the Rhine. But near Barcelona.
From there, three 18-meter-long transporters travel a thousand kilometers to Chantilly near Paris, the Wimbledon of the European polo scene, so to speak, where the Graboschs have had their headquarters for years, complete with caravans and a ten-hectare paddock for a total of 40 horses . There the animals get a two-day break from the stress of travel before the troop completes the remaining 500 kilometers to Düsseldorf. And with that, welcome to the totally polo-crazy world of the Grabosch family from Thann near Holzkirchen.
The whole family is there in Düsseldorf, from grandchildren to grandpa
When 32 players, more than 200 horses and grooms from eight nations meet at the 14th European Polo Championships at the Polo Club Düsseldorf at the weekend, the team from Italy will start the race as the defending champions and have to compete against the teams from England, Spain, Austria , the Netherlands, Switzerland, Azerbaijan and Germany claim. And the hosts of the European Championship are a purely family team as a national team: the four brothers Paul, 21, Anton, 20, Emil, 18, and Michl, 16, from Grabosch. “It’s never happened before in the world,” says Dad. The whole family is there in Düsseldorf, from grandchildren to grandpa. The mother is responsible for physiotherapy, the little sister for the good mood, and the father is a trainer, team doctor, driver and press officer. He says, “It’s a family affair.”
The work with the horses, on the other hand, is the job of the sons: breaking in young horses, retraining them from racehorses to polo, feeding them, shoeing them – there’s plenty to do. And this work with the animals is shared by the four brothers, with a lot of logistical effort. Paul and Anton, the two oldest, are currently completing their double degree in medicine and dentistry in Vienna, Emil is doing his Abitur at the Waldorf School in Munich, and Michl is still going to school. The plan looks like this: Emil goes to the horse care for two years after leaving school, which the two older ones are currently doing during their studies by commuting back and forth between Vienna, the winter camp in Barcelona and the summer base in Chantilly. They have just organized an international children’s and youth camp there, in the largest polo club in Europe, bringing 18 children from Germany to Paris. The idea: building up European structures, language exchange, next year the children should be placed with French families; the French association supports the initiative from the neighboring country.
To describe the Graboschs as polo crazy is a rather ridiculous understatement. At the last European Championship 2021 in the Ayala Polo Club in Sotogrande, Andalusia, the Graboschs’ first participation in the European Championship, three weeks before the start of the competition, Paul suffered an open fracture of the shinbone after a horse kick – he still played around with a leg cast and an additional cast made by his father the riding boot around. As soon as he got off his horse, he had to use crutches. “It was difficult,” recalls father Grabosch, “the Italians then refused to continue playing against us because they said: ‘Paul is injured! We can’t play to the full.’ Then Michl, who was only 13 at the time, had to step in. In the end, we finished fifth.” Christopher Kirsch, in his mid-fifties, was also there at the time, but now the German national polo team is purely a family business.
With around 300 active players, the German polo scene is quite manageable
Grabosch’s second eldest son Anton is actually to blame for all of this. As a six-year-old, he had seen a film about Argentine gauchos, wanted to become one too and infected his brothers with his enthusiasm. A little later, the family actually moved to Argentina for nine months on a gaucho farm, learned how to handle horses – and then founded the polo team Los Indianos. On the European mainland they play in the highest of three leagues. With around 300 active players, the German polo scene is quite manageable. European polo championships have been held for 30 years. England are the most successful nation so far with six wins, a second and a third place, ahead of Italy with three titles and France with two. A move to the British Isles, where polo has a different status (King Charles was a really good prince with a +2 handicap at his best), is out of the question for the Graboschs: they want to play together, as brothers the pitch, not on another team. Not surprisingly, the young men’s girlfriends are also enthusiastic riders.
Even before the European Championships, the Grabosch foursome was on the road internationally, competing for Bavaria in the Nations Cup in Paris, practically as a dress rehearsal for next year, when polo will be part of the show program at the Summer Olympics. Not a demonstration competition, mind you, but of course no one in the polo scene would object if the oldest team sport in the world were to be included in the Olympic program again, where it had been five times before from 1900 to 1936 due to the high financial and logistical difficulties Requirements flew out again. If anyone at the IOC has any questions about logistics, there is someone who knows.
