The Polish polo professional and General Secretary of the International Chovken Federation on family, languages, cultural heritage and the future of horseback sports
By Jan Zavázal, aka The Polo Speaker
Maciek Olbrych is a Polish polo professional, a second-generation player in a country where the sport all but vanished for more than 40 years under communism. His father, Paweł Olbrych, was one of the handful of people who re-established polo in Warsaw, and Maciek has since built a career at home and abroad – in Poland, Central Europe, Argentina and beyond. Maciek serves as General Secretary of the International Chovken Federation. We sat down with him to talk about family, language, culture and the future of horseback sports.
Who is Maciek Olbrych, and what qualities or skills have helped you become an international polo player?
My family started our polo club in Poland in 2002, and I’ve been a horse rider all my life. It’s a passion my father passed on to me. I started riding at four, moved into show jumping, and then in 2002 we somehow decided to try polo – and we fell completely in love with it. We traveled to Argentina, went to England, and eventually sold our show jumping horses to buy polo horses. It was the first polo club founded in Poland since the Second World War. It’s been over 25 years now, and I believe that bringing polo to new people – sharing this equestrian passion and teaching people to play – is one of the most important parts of my life.
As for qualities: I think you need a certain vibe to get along in the polo world, because it’s all about energy, and I try to stay connected to people. I try to be open-minded. Someone once told me polo looks very elite from the outside, but it’s actually very egalitarian on the inside – and polo has taught me to stay humble. Because of the skills I’ve gained through the sport, I’ve had a wonderful life full of travel and polo friendships, and I try to pass that on to my students and to my son, and now to the club we’re helping to build in the Czech Republic, La Republica Polo Club in Prague.
Growing up in a polo family, what influence did your father and mother have on your career, and what was it like being part of the revival of polo in Poland?
We never thought of ourselves as reviving anything – we just wanted to play polo. It was a family thing. Now, as an adult, I really appreciate that I got to play tournaments with my father all around the world. We traveled a lot together, and I’ve also played alongside my sister – and now I play polo with my son, who’s nine.
It’s simply part of our life, and people come along and share it with us. At some point we’re all one big polo family. For me personally, it was important that I spent a lot of time in my early teens and as a young adult in Germany, playing polo in Berlin and taking part in youth camps there. That’s something I later brought back to Poland – we started organizing youth camps for young Polish players. It’s wonderful to see polo continue over time: new people come in, they have their own kids, and those kids play too. I don’t know if I had this vision from the beginning, but this is how it flows, and I simply go with it.
How many languages do you speak, and how has being multilingual helped you throughout your international career?
Speaking a lot of languages helps, obviously, but it’s a bit like a circus trick – it doesn’t matter if you speak two languages or fourteen if you have no one to really talk to. What matters is genuinely wanting to listen to people and find out who they are. That’s what communication is really about, and it’s the same skill that helps with riding and with polo, because polo is all about communication – with your team, with your horses. You can do it in English, Spanish, French or Czech, or you can do it with your heart, but communication is what matters. It’s about reading between the lines. Speaking several languages helps you understand that the cultural code is different from country to country – but the initial spark of passion is the same everywhere.
What can you tell us about La Republica Polo Club?
Bringing polo to a country where it isn’t exactly the most popular sport is difficult, and at La Republica Polo Club I’m trying to recreate that same family vibe – a place where everyone can come, everyone can try, and hopefully fall in love with the sport. This is my third season as the pro there, and I’m proud of the small but consistent steps we’re making toward developing polo in the Czech Republic. Our new ground, with a 220 × 110 m polo field, shows that polo has a place in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and that it’s here to stay.
How established is polo as an equestrian sport in Poland today? Has the sport grown significantly since it was reintroduced in 2002?
We’ve been lucky. Poland is a big country – almost 40 million people – with a huge equestrian market, mainly in show jumping and dressage. In polo, we only have five clubs, but they produce a good number of players and tournaments, and you can basically play a tournament somewhere in Poland almost every weekend. We’re also lucky to have Sowiniec Polo Club, one of the best facilities in Europe – last year’s European Polo Championship was held there, in Poznań, and tournaments of up to eight goals are played there every other weekend. That helps raise the overall level. We have strong clubs around Warsaw and in the Silesia region near the Czech border. There’s still room for new clubs, but we’ve reached a point where it’s no longer about competition and rivalry between clubs – it’s about cooperation.
What do you think about polo in Central Europe?
I don’t like to think of polo as a super exclusive sport in general. Yes, it’s expensive and requires a lot of organization, but if it’s your real passion, you find a way to sustain it. What I like about polo in Central Europe – Poland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic – is that it isn’t so “posh”. You have a lot of clubs simply playing daily chukkas and organizing a few tournaments a year, and it’s heartwarming to see all those trailers arriving from Slovakia, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Hungary. Polo in Germany, in particular, is big and extremely well organized – I really enjoy playing there, and I think other countries should look to Germany as a model: professional structures, a well-run federation that genuinely supports its players.
I believe polo in Central Europe, and in Europe generally, is booming. You can see it when you travel to Argentina in November for the Palermo Open – you see all the same faces from tournaments across Europe. It’s really one big market, and one big family.
You spend much of the winter season in Argentina, the world’s leading polo nation. From your perspective, how did Argentina become the dominant force in polo, and do you think the sport is still viewed as traditionally English?
This is a tricky question for me, because I’m also involved in promoting Chovken – a sport already played in ancient Persia – worldwide, and that changes my perspective on polo. For me, polo isn’t traditionally English – the English were the driving force behind modernizing and globalizing the game, but earlier forms, Chovken among them, were played for centuries before that.
I think Argentina became dominant because of its social context – vast farms, and a culture built around the estancias and the gaucho – combined with the breeding of the Polo Argentino. That lifestyle simply can’t be recreated anywhere else. The first thing I ever bought when I started playing polo was a book, History of Polo, because I wanted to understand how people played before horses were flown around the world – and it turns out polo was played everywhere, with local horses. If you want to play high goal today, the best horses, the best training, the best saddle and boot makers are all in Argentina. But if you want to play low goal on a modest budget, local, native-bred horses in Europe are a great alternative. You don’t need to buy twelve horses in Argentina and fly them over – you can think locally.
In addition to being a polo player, you serve as General Secretary of the International Chovken Federation. For those unfamiliar with the sport, what is Chovken, and why is it so important to Azerbaijan’s cultural heritage?
Chovken is an ancient version of polo. Behind political borders, it remained cut off from the Western world for many years – it was played in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. When I first learned about it, I was struck by how similar it was to polo, and yet the Western world knew nothing about it. I thought it was a shame – there was a whole market that could be connected: polo players trying Chovken, Chovken players trying polo, some kind of mutual exchange. I started talking to officials in Azerbaijan about promoting it worldwide, and that’s how I became General Secretary of the ICF. We now have over 60 member countries. It’s a sport very similar to polo, a little rougher, but with an enormous cultural heritage – it’s even on UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, and I think it’s well worth preserving.
The International Chovken Federation has been expanding the sport internationally. Which countries are now actively involved, and where are you currently organizing Chovken events?
With over 60 members now, we’ve organized the African Championship in Nigeria in 2025, the European Championship in Poland, the South American Championship in Pilar, Argentina, and the Asian Championship in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. This year we held a wonderful World Championship in Baku, Azerbaijan, with ten teams competing. We’re now preparing for our General Assembly in Port Ghalib, Egypt, where we’ll plan the next round of continental championships. It’s a project we’re building for the long term. It might still look young and small, but we’ve already achieved a great deal – and with the continued support of Azerbaijan, it’s really gaining momentum.
As someone deeply involved in both polo and Chovken, and in show jumping too, how do you see the future of traditional horseback sports? Are they becoming more popular with younger generations?
I have two answers. On the positive side, I see a lot of kids coming into polo and a lot of families playing together, so I know new generations are coming through. But I do worry about how equestrian sports are perceived outside the equestrian community itself. Society is changing – we’re rightly being asked to make adjustments to protect horse welfare – but some people see that as reason to question whether these sports should continue at all. Even in Germany, some mounted police units are being phased out. I worry a little about the future of equestrian sport in general, because some people consider it cruel to horses, which simply isn’t true. If you know anything about polo, you know what a wonderful life these horses have and how well they’re cared for.
I think it’s a real task for the global polo community to unite and get that message out – because keeping these sports alive is, in the end, the only way to keep these horses’ way of life alive too. If equestrian sport disappears, the only place we’ll still see horses is in a zoo. That worries me. I hope that for my son, and for the generations after him, we manage to keep this passion for polo alive.
You’re also the father of a nine-year-old son. Do you hope he will follow in your footsteps by riding horses and playing polo or Chovken, or would you rather let him choose his own path, whatever that may be?
Everyone has to choose their own path – I’m not forcing Antek to do anything. But I do want to give him the chance to fall in love with this passion, because having a passion in life is important. It changes your perspective, it teaches you discipline, it brings you closer to other people. So I want to give him that opportunity. But whether he ends up a great polo player, a businessman, a lawyer or a doctor – that will be his choice. Polo doesn’t have to be a career. Polo is a passion.
Images: Maciek Olbrych
