“I met Nacho!” one woman shouted.
Meet Argentine heartthrob Ignacio Figueras, known simply as Nacho.
“Nacho’s a typical nickname for Ignacio,” he said.
“And it’s a memorable name,” said
“I guess, yes. Everyone always called me Nacho. Only my third grade teacher called me Ignacio.”
With his rugged good looks, it’s easy to see why he was chosen as the poster-
Longtime
“He’s been good for the sport of polo, and polo’s been for Nacho,” said Walentas.
Nacho grew up outside Buenos Aires – considered the polo capital of the world – and started playing when he was nine years old, on a farm with friends.
“I come from a middle class family,” he said. “I had one horse that I took care of myself.”
And despite his modest upbringing, in a country where owning a horse is common, Nacho dreamed of one day becoming a polo star.
“I had this polo shirt that my uncle gave me for my birthday. I remember it was a white- and green-striped polo shirt, with a little polo player on it. And I thought it was so cool. It was in Argentina, we didn’t have that many. They were expensive. So that was, like, my treasured shirt that I had.
“So now, 20-something years later, it’s something that’s
Shortly after he came to the United States in the late ’90s, a photographer spotted him and suggested he’d be a perfect fit for Ralph Lauren. Soon Nacho’s face was everywhere, including on his own clothing line.
“Nacho really leaps from the pages of a magazine,” said David Lauren, Ralph Lauren’s son. “He’s the real deal; you see him in the magazine and he captures your imagination.
“And the idea that you can see him in real life playing the sport, it really brings the ads to life.”
Now he’s
“Are you here for polo or Nacho?” Altschul asked one woman.
“A little bit of both!” she laughed.
“We’re a fan of Nacho more than polo,” another female fan said.
“He’s just very engaging he’s got great personality, he’s got great charm,” said Jason Binn, publisher of Hamptons Magazine.
“He brings polo to life. You look across the field, the cars, the amount of attraction that this game gets right now, it’s ten-fold what it used to be.”
“He is the face of polo on the field now,” Altschul. said.
“And off the field, yeah,” Binn said.
(CBS)
If you’ve never seen a polo match, here are the basics: The game is nearly 3,000 years old, beginning in Asia as a sport of kings. Today’s version is played on an area nine times the size of a football field, with four players on each team. Typically there are six periods (or “chukkers”) during which each team tries to whack a ball through the other team’s goal.
Nacho travels with about a dozen horses, and is willing to give even a novice a lesson.
“Your first shot ever, eh?” he said after Altschul whacks one.
“It was exciting!”
“If you can do it, anyone can do it, eh?”
“This is probably true!” she laughed.
Polo has long been considered a sport only for the privileged, but Nacho is trying to change that. He knows it won’t be easy.
“Everyone seems to have this perception that polo is just for the elite or for, you know, kings. And I think it’s totally the opposite. Polo has given me the opportunity to play polo with Prince Harry, coming from nowhere in Argentina. So, I look at it totally from a different way.”
Nacho played against Britain’s Prince Harry this spring in a match Figueras organized on New York’s Governor’s Island.
“And that’s when I said to myself, ‘You know, this can be done. All these guys knew nothing about polo. And here they are having a great day, having fun, enjoying the match.’ It was just an amazing day for me.”
He hopes to promote polo as an everyman’s sport through his involvement with non-profit programs like Work to Ride in Philadelphia. It teaches
“You’re responsible for yourself, you’re responsible for your horse, and then with polo, you’re also responsible for the safety of everybody else on the field with you. So it’s not just you out there by yourself,” explained founder Lezlie Hiner.
And it’s worked for 14-year-old Nasir Bennett.
“Without this program, I probably wouldn’t be here, I don’t know where I’d be,” Bennett said. “I’d probably be in trouble, probably.”
“This is the perfect example of how can, you know, polo being such a sport that is seen in such elitist way can
For Nacho Figueras, all the attention and glamour hasn’t changed what’s really important:
“I’m first a husband and a father,” he said. “That’s my most
The kid who grew up cleaning
“I like to think that I’m in this world for a reason, and that is to make polo bigger and better,” he said.
“This is just the beginning. I really think that there’s a lot more to achieve.”
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