Claire Tomlinson

For the Sky Sports Presenter, see Clare Tomlinson.
Claire Tomlinson
Personal information
Birth name Lucas
Nationality British  United Kingdom
Born 1944 (age 71–72)
Spouse(s) Simon Tomlinson (divorced)
Sport
Sport Polo
University team Oxford University
Club Beaufort Club
Team England Polo Team
Coached by Maharaj Prem Singh, Jorge Marín Moreno
Achievements and titles
Highest world ranking +5, highest ranked woman world-wide
Updated on 4 August 2013.

Claire Janet Tomlinson (born 1944) has become one of the most successful women polo players and most influential polo coaches today. She was the highest-rated female polo player, and coached the English national team she once captained.[1]

Biography

Claire Tomlinson is the daughter of Ethel and Arthur Lucas, founder of Wolmers Park Polo Club who was instrumental in the revival of polo in England after the Second World War.[2]

She went from Wycombe Abbey to take A levels at Millfield, and while there she was selected for the British junior fencing team. Going on to study agricultural economis at Somerville College, Oxford, it was not long before she was awarded a squash blue and a fencing half-blue and got short-listed for the Olympic fencing team. When she was told that the Oxford University Polo team was short of players, her father's approval was obtained, and she took up polo seriously.[3] Her participation in the Varsity Match 1964 as the very first female player was a milestone in the history of the match. Cautiously the club had entered her as Mr Lucas. In 1966, she became the very first female captain of OUPC.[4] In her final year at university, she was rated at nought-goals.

Her first job for a British company brought her to Buenos Aires, Argentina. There she accompanied her brother John, who was a 6-goal player who won the Queen’s Cup and Gold Cup in 1967 to buy horses and got to know Jorge Marín Moreno with whom she started playing. Her standard of polo improved to such an extent that on her return to England she formed the Los Locos (the Mad Ones) polo team with a cavalry officer (Simon Tomlinson, whom she later married).[5] She became one of polo’s few true masters of the number one position and the first woman in the world to rise to five goals in 1986.[6] She swept away the rule forbidding women in British high-goal and became the first to compete on equal terms with men at the top tier.[7] She was the first woman to win the County Cup (1972) and the Queen's Cup (1979) having fought for her participation after the Hurlingham Polo Association repeatedly denied her entering the high-goal tournaments. And all this despite the fact that her handicap was higher than of many other male participants in the Queen's and Gold Cup.[8] She still holds the women’s high goal handicap record today.[9]

Claire is the Chairman of the Beaufort Polo Club which she and Simon Tomlinson reestablished in 1989.[10][11][12] In 1993 with Hugh Dawnay she instigated and set up a coaching system for the H.P.A. from scratch, which has had a profound effect on how players are taught. She also taught the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry at Beaufort.[13]

Claire has also been successfully breeding polo ponies since the 1970s and is pro-active with the modern breeding programme presently in operation, which includes Beaufort Embryo Transfer.[14] She is one of six official H.P.A. team coaches, and regularly coaches British squads at F.I.P. championships as well as holding sessions for the H.P.A. Junior Development Squad at Down Farm.[15]

Personal life

1968 she marries Simon Tomlinson who she got to know at university. Claire is the mother of Emma Tomlinson, a successful veterinarian and registered polo coach. Her sons Mark and Luke Tomlinson are high goal polo players who compete internationally.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Born to be king. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  2. ↑ "Arthur Lucas Cup". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  3. ↑ "Horsey". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  4. ↑ "Oxford University Polo Club". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  5. ↑ Watson, John (5 September 1981). "The high-scoring lady of Los Locos". The Times.
  6. ↑ Terry Allen: The Pimm's Book of Polo. London: Stanley Paul 1989, p.90.
  7. ↑ Horace A. Laffaye: The Evolution of Polo. McFarland & Company: London 2012, p. 207.
  8. ↑ Horace A. Laffaye: The Evolution of Polo. McFarland & Company: London 2012, pp. 238, 239.
  9. ↑ "Horse hero". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  10. ↑ "Gloucester Echo". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  11. ↑ "HPA website". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  12. ↑ "The Hurlingham". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  13. ↑ "Polo Player Edition". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  14. ↑ "Breeding horses". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  15. ↑ "Claire Tomlinson". Retrieved 4 August 2013.

External links

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