W. Averell Harriman

A player, banker, businessman and statesman, Harriman inherited a $100 million railroad fortune. He began his polo career with the Sands Point and Aknusti teams of the 1920s and ’30s. He won the U.S Open in 1925 with his own Orange County team and in 1927 with Sands Point, as well as the Monty Waterbury Cup in 1924 and ‘28, and the 1933 Junior Championship with Aknusti.

He was a breeder of polo ponies and often cited as having the finest strings in the sport. He was the head of the National Polo Pony Society, which kept a registry of USPA-approved studs, mares and foals. Playing at No. 1 in the first Cup of the Americas in 1928, he scored 12 goals in three games, surpassing Tommy Hitchcock’s 10.