Gay Boy

Gay Boy, Texas rancher Will C. Gay’s gift to the game of polo, was a bay, half-thoroughbred gelding with “a white blaze down his wise and sensible head.” Considered the greatest polo mount of his day, Gay Boy was an incredible athlete with remarkable speed. He was best remembered for his sensational play in the 1927 International matches (U.S.A. vs. Great Britain): two chukkers in the first match and three in the second, ridden by polo Hall of Famer Malcolm Stevenson who considered this horse “supreme among ponies.”

Gay Boy worked as a cow pony for four years before being sold by Gay for $350. Gay Boy had the reputation of being one of the quickest horses on the get-away, a pony that could turn on a dime and scoot away like a quarter-horse.

Newell Bent, author of American Polo (1929), noted, “For a half-bred pony, his willingness, strength and stamina were astonishing, for he was giving all he had the last minute as well as the first minutes of each and every period and was apparently impossible to tire. In addition, his speed was remarkable, for he was noticed time and time again to more than hold his own in long races for the ball against the pick of the English ponies.”

In addition to Malcolm Stevenson, Gay Boy was also played by Hall of Famers Robert Strawbridge Jr. and Tommy Hitchcock Jr. As part of Averell Harriman’s formidable string, Gay Boy was an outstanding pony in a string of outstanding ponies.

Gay Boy’s curious and tragic death in 1928 – crushed by a falling airplane while standing in his stall at Meadow Brook – took a great figure from the game. When Harriman was asked the cost of the pony, he said, “You can’t place a value on something that was priceless.”

Gay Boy with J.A. Crawford, 1920s

Watercolor portrait of Gay Boy (Top Photo) by artist, Melinda Brewer; www.poloart.ca