Temporary Loss of Polo Hits Local Businesses

For those who come to the Indio Empire Polo Club strictly for the horses, no festival or other event will keep them there.

“I think they’re having some wine-tasting and so forth. I probably won’t go now,” polo fan Jack Hamilton said.

Those who come to the desert strictly for the horses, local businesses wish something else will keep them here.

“It’ll probably cut our business by 25 percent at least,” Mario’s Italian Cafe owner Peter Delguidice said.

Canceled polo games put businesses in the line of fire.

“All summer long we waited for this time of year to come, where people come to town. And then polo comes to town,” Delguidice said.

One woman who grew up riding says the virus warrants the quarantine, however.

“If you have an outbreak of meningitis, you wouldn’t want everybody back into the population,” Jeannie Gilbert said.

She says it also keeps the healthy horses healthy — to avoid any more economic damage.

“Polo ponies are very expensive, and to play polo you have to have a string of horses,” Gilbert said. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars, as far as I know. And that was back in the 80s.”

Will the lack of polo, whether it’s three games or one game, affect the community economically?

“We’ll do makeup games, so I don’t see a big impact if we can stay on schedule, so I think that’s a post-quarantine question,” the general manager of the Eldorado Polo Club, Jan Hart, said.

“It might create more interest, now that they know there’s problem. They might come out and find more about it,” Gilbert added.

“I think it’ll just postpone some of the profits, but in the long run I don’t think it will have as much an affect,” Hamilton said.

Business owners disagree, though.

“It usually affects the whole weekend, not just Sunday. People come into the area on Friday and stay all through Monday,” Delguidice said.

The Indio Chamber of Commerce wasn’t comfortable commenting on any economic impact this will have for the community.