Players on a frozen lake in St. Moritz.
Photographer: Andrea Frazzetta for Bloomberg Businessweek
Champagne! Fur! Caviar! St. Moritz’s Snow Polo Lures the Jet Set
The annual post-Davos tradition gets more luxurious with every passing year. But don’t call it undemocratic.
The hills are alive with the sound of private jets. The aircraft glisten in the sun as they thread their flight path into the Engadin valley toward St. Moritz, flanked by snow-coated slopes. Photographers hoping to score a celebrity shot mill around on the edge of the runway, where a vintage Rolls-Royce and a racing-green Porsche Macan await their masters. Passengers in cashmere shawls and cascading furs are swiftly reunited with their Gucci weekend bags, then whisked down the hill for one of the glitziest gatherings on Switzerland’s social calendar: the Snow Polo World Cup St. Moritz.
On the last weekend in January, the ski resort becomes the icy diadem of the elite polo circuit. The three-day tournament features four teams of globe-trotting players in white jeans and knee-high leather boots atop artfully groomed horses, chasing a cantaloupe-size red plastic ball across a frozen, snow-covered lake as they swing willowy mallets. Equally impressive is the display on the VIP grandstand: Spectators, who’ve paid 680 Swiss francs ($684) each for a day pass, are stacked eight rows deep, holding glasses of Champagne and puffing on cigars. Not to be outdone, their canine companions also arrive in style: Pugs are pimped out in lacquer-shiny Moncler puffers, papillons peep from Hermès handbags, and dachshunds don cashmere cozies.