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August 29 - September 1st. Chicago, Illinois. See Chicago Bike Polo for more information.

A hastily and non-judiciously edited video of Le Tour De Polo II. This match was between Seattle’s best players (the guys in the orange shirts & green cap) and one of Portland’s better teams. The Seattle team ended up coming in second place for the tournament. Not much of spectacular note happens, except for Seabass’s five tap-outs in a row. Some nice ball handling though.

With 9 years of experience under their belt, the birthplace of Starbucks and Urban Bike Polo has a stunning amount of skill stored in their muscle memory. That’s the thing that makes this coast so much different from the East. EVERYone is good at this game. Not just a few marquee players. Everyone. On the East, we’re building to something just as great. In the past two years, Ottawa, Boston, Philly, DC, Richmond, New York and all those others have started traveling and sharing all our skills. We’re like the savages to the enlightened West Coasters. Brutal, relentless savages of course, but it wouldn’t be to our disadvantage if the West were to explore the East and bring with them their horses, weaponry, white women, and diseases. Is this metaphor going too far? Fiona doesn’t think so. And I think you catch my drift. We can and will learn a lot from each other.

I don’t want to give the impression that players from the West Coast are inherently superior to anything on the East Coast or that the East Coast plays an uncivilized game of Polo. That’s just not true. All of the best teams from both sides of the country could throw down against each other in spectacular ways. We’ve already seen that in Toronto, when East Vancouver’s “Balls Deep” beat NYC’s “Doug and the Dalrymples” (or whatever they were unofficially called that time), only to be beaten in a tournament ending rematch a day later.

Balls Deep went on to win this weekend’s Tour De Polo II in an epic, 11 point final match with Seattle’s best - Leon, Seabass, and Soren (probably mispelled your name. sorry). East Van seemed to have the game locked up with an 8-2 lead when Seabass turned on the heat, bringing it back to a 9-9 tie. It was a dramatic push, and it was almost enough to top one of the best teams in Bike Polo. But not quite enough. In the end, after two days and 124 games of polo, the unsurmountable abilities of the lumberjack-sized Canadians prevailed.

Playing against Balls Deep again brought back some horrible memories of them dismantling my team 5-0 in the Quarterfinals of the Worlds. Rory does this thing where he swerves around you real fast and scores effortlessly. I really hate that. It worked on us in Toronto, and there was no shortage of flashbacks this weekend when he played my team, “Kill Kill Hate Hate Murder Murder Mutilate”.

It was easy to lose to East Vancouver’s best team. It was all the other second-best teams from all the cities that were a bit more difficult to lose to. And there are a lot of second best teams out here. That’s the advantage to playing with people who have been honing their skills for the better part of a decade. You’ve got a lot to learn from. We’re already seeing it in New York - when new people come to play, they’re picking up the game much faster than they were a year and a half ago.

It was in 2003 when Seattle hosted the Cycle Messenger World Championships. That was the year Messman and his crew introduced their new version of this old sport to the rest of their world. The bug spread like a virus. It was their intention to grow the sport by introducing it at the Worlds five years ago. And it worked. In the past few years particularly, things have been exploding. Seattle was extremely excited to have Fiona and me out there representing New York City. They’ve heard a lot, and everyone asked us how things compare. I couldn’t honestly say that New York or Philly or Richmond or Ottawa could squash Seattle or Vancouver or Portland. Because it wouldn’t be that easy. But it would be amazing. And everyone can’t wait until we can all play together. From the sounds of things, it looks like there will be at least two teams from the West for Los Marcos Madness…. It will be interesting…

By far the most ingenious plot Fiona and I devised for this tournament was bringing our solid “B” game to the table. Even with the addition of Drew, a local who was part of the winning team for the West Side Polo Invite, we managed to hold back our prowess to an unimpressive 2-6 record on the first day of the round robin. With 7 games remaining, we’ll be sure to maintain our mediocrity, and give the Vancouver-Seattle-Portland battery the impression that New York City is mostly hype.

Do you see the genius of this plan? Through deception, we’re weakening the strengths and dismantling the defenses of the West Coast should they ever truly competitively face the East. Now, one might note that the World Championship finals between NYC and Vancouver was a premiere East vs. West matchup, and they’d be right. Balls Deep is here with the “A” game they bring so well, in a tenuous grip on 1st place after one day of gameplay. But in Toronto, did we get to face the best of Seattle and Portland? Not so much. We didn’t get to see the tight, close game that this side of the country has been practicing and perfecting for at least twice as long* as we’ve been trying to.

It’s always hard to judge the gamesmanship of any place when the court they’ve set up for their tournament is different from the courts they normally play on. Seattle’s TDP courts are two side-by-side tennis courts, rimmed with plywood and planks high enough to stop the ball from flying out of the court most of the time. It’s far smaller than the Pit, and smaller than the many spaces Seattleans regularly play on out here. The game can’t accelerate very much in such small spaces, but tight gameplay is where the West Coast excels. Everyone out here seems to know exactly where the ball *could* go at any given time, and they put themselves there. This works to a great advantage when those people are your teammates (providing you can accurately pass the ball), but is really goddamn frustrating when you’re playing against players with that kind of ability. There were many times when I thought I had the ball safely protected on the left side of my drive when an opponent’s mallet would dash under my bottom bracket, knocking the ball to another waiting opponent. It’s like these guys have been practicing since 1999.

While I’m pretty sure I spelled “reconnaisannce” wrong (twice), I’m absolutely positive that Seattle polo players are good. Real good. I flew out here yesterday on a information gathering / vacation mission for their second annual “Tour De Polo“. At 11pm (2am NYC jetlag time), they were still playing in a parking lot under the expressway. All sorts of bikes where moving at one general speed: fast. A couple amazing shots were being taken, but mostly, people were passing the ball constantly. Under the bike, in front of the bike, behind the bike, and just about always DIRECTLY to their teammates. Spills were dramatic, some of the play was intense, and this was what they call “gentleman’s polo”, which is apparently a more civilized version of the grassroots full-contact polo that Seattle can greatly be accredited with inventing somewhere between 6 and 9 years ago.

Registration is open for the North Side Polo Invitational in Ottawa from August 1-4. It’s going to be a Round Robin tournament like the NYCPWRRPT&BBQMDE, so you’re required to register ahead of time. Email mrfixedgear@trackbike.com before August 1 to pre-register your team. See below for more information:

OK. I would really like to know what teams are FOR SURE coming to Ottawa so I can work out the scheduling for the round robin. The sooner the better. Teams MUST be registered by Friday, August 1 @ 21:00, but before then would be ideal. If your team has never played in one of the various tournaments on the east side of North America please tell me how long you’ve been playing or let me know your general level of skill. Keep in mind that this is one of the premiere polo tournaments in the world and the skill level of the top-end teams is EXTREMELY high. This is not meant to discourage any teams from participating, but simply to properly spread the teams out into groups. The sooner I get teams registered, the sooner I can let you all (y’all?) know how the tournament will work out. Registration will be $20 CAN per person and will include a tee shirt and entry to the alley cat, gold sprints, and all that other fun stuff. Thank you in advance for coming out to the “Little Tournament That Could”

My good friend Kipp (www.kippwettstein.com) took this photo with his 8×10 camera during the BBQ Tournament.

…It’s pretty awesome.

Click the photo to see the larger image, then zoom in.

Recently discovered footage sheds light on the mysterious origin of these…monsters:

Ottawa is hosting the North Side Polo Invitational again from August 1-4. On Monday, they’re encouraging participants to hang around for the first “Open Forum” for bicycle polo.

We really encourage folks to try and stay for the awards party and the open forum. We understand that there is a lot of travel for some and most of us have jobs to go to. If ya gotta go you gotta go, but we’d love to have you for the whole sha-bang, so book Monday off if you can.

Any New Yorker’s thinking about sticking around for this?