Four teams play polo on the frozen surface of the Lake of St. Moritz, on snow compacted over the ice, with a white ball and horses in studded shoes. It has run since 1985 and is the centrepiece of a St. Moritz winter season that also puts horse racing and skijoring on the same lake in February.
Entry to the lakeside is free; the tented hospitality is not.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The whole format rests on an ice thickness the organisers measure and publish, and warm Januaries have cancelled events on this lake before. That is the planning risk and it is not hypothetical: an event that depends on a frozen lake at 1,800 metres is a climate story as much as a sporting one.
PlanningAnchored to the last weekend of January, and entirely dependent on the lake freezing hard enough.