If it was not for a decision he made ten years ago, Argentina’s last season of polo would have had a bitter taste for Adolfo Cambiaso, the world number one and perhaps the best polo player in history. The player no longer had his favorite mare, La Cuartetera, retired because of his age. And in a sport where animals have a role that is often compared to that of cars in Formula 1, that low may have been a hard blow. But in the absence of the original, Cambiaso was able to play with six of his clones. La Dolfina, their team in Argentina, not only made two of the three cups of the Triple Crown. In addition, one of the replicas of La Cuartetera, the 06, won the two awards that are awarded to the best mare of the match in one of the finals. That distinction and the skill displayed by all the clones on the court confirmed the success of what is already considered the latest revolution in polo horse breeding. A revolution that was driven mainly by Cambiaso himself.
“Everything starts when I die the Aiken Cura in 2006 and I keep the cells,” says the telephone by telephone from a hotel in Jesus Maria, a town in the province of Cordoba where every summer a traditional dressage festival is held. Argentine folklore. The Cura, as the Polista remembers, fractured during a final and the complications that followed made it necessary to be sacrificed. The prominent horse’s cells had been stored in a liquid nitrogen thermos at 196 degrees below zero for about three years when the athlete met Texan businessman Alan Meeker, who would be his first partner at Crestview. That company he founded with Meeker, a millionaire polo fan with business in the energy sector, has already seen 70 clones born in his laboratory, located in a field on the outskirts of the Argentine capital. Today it is no longer extravagant that a player pays about $ 120,000 to clone his best horse. Prices, says Cambiaso himself, are on the decline for a second, third or fourth animal, until the offer of a fifth clone without charge.
But what motivated the politician to create the biotechnology company was not the expectation of doing a big business, but the dream of continuing to play with his favorite horses once they died or retired, according to many close friends. “I did it to revive the best and enjoy playing polo, something that I love to do,” says Cambiaso