Despite the global economic slowdown, the glamorous sport of polo is still
big business in Argentina.

CAÑUELAS, BUENOS AIRES PROVINCE REUTERS -
The sport of the elite, everyone from ancient Persian princesses to
the Japanese cavalry and Winston Churchill have at one time played polo. But
though the game has had a worldwide diffusion, there is no dispute that
Argentina has dominated polo in modern times.

So what makes the Argentines so good? For Clive Owen, the managing
director of a London-based trading company who travels to Argentina once a
year to play, the answer is clear.

"If you asking anybody where the best horses, where the best
fields are, where the best players are from they would say Argentina straight
away," Owen said.

With the 2001/2002 economic crash in Argentina, the price of putting
together a polo team here has tumbled.

Sports fans now flock to the country to attend the world's top polo
tournament in Buenos Aires, and real estate developers are building the
world's first polo-themed hotel to cater for the influx.

The Jumeirah Culu Culu Polo Resort, which is slated to open in 2011,
will include 54 hotel suites and 171 private residences, all with views
straight on to one of the ground's eight polo fields.

"You can almost play here for nothing, it is just a thing of
beauty. If you want to play in the UK you are going to pay up to $50,000
pounds a horse, probably half that in the US. You are going to pay a million
dollars for your horses, and you are going to pay another million to two
million to play. Here you play at the fraction of that cost. So people are
beginning to come here instead of playing in places like, although Palm Beach
will always be great, the UK will always be great, people are going to spend
more and more time here in Argentina," said the resort's president,
Albert Alletshauzer.

Polo is a perfect business opportunity, complete with champagne
lunches, high fashion and celebrities that attract even the biggest luxury
brands.

And it is perfect timing for Argentina to transform their most famous
sport into a thriving business, as polo gains in countries such as India,
South Africa, Australia and, more recently, China.

Business executives are trying to market Argentina as an affordable
alternative during the global economic crisis, and they play up the country's
distance from any global conflicts or terrorist threats.

"First the exchange rates are very attractive right now. Second
polo is expanding minute by minute, and third everybody loves this city, it is
some sort of European thing with the local thing and the mixture of that, and
they find this country attractive, kind of an exotic, people are educated,
polite," Culu Culu Resort's financial director, Carlos Urriza, said.

Adolfo Cambiaso, the world's best player, is even getting in on the
action -- readying his own polo ranch project with houses that will have their
own private polo field.

But the polo pin-up star said for him it is not about the money.
"My principle idea is that people buy it for polo, I don't want to
be a seller. It is not a question of money. It is a question of the game and
this part of the south of [Buenos Aires] to make polo. So the idea is whoever
want to make a field, a house, a stable, can come and buy it, if not I prefer
it if they don't come," Cambiasso said.

But it is clear that those already in the game hardly have to worry
about making ends meet.

At a recent match at Cambiasso's La Dolfina ranch, movie director
Robert Duvall mingled with local celebrities to watch an afternoon match that
was commentated not in Spanish, but in English; giving some indication of the
international clientele expected to attend.