In 2002, eight-year-old Emma was fighting for her life, having suffered from a virus. In her hospital room, there was a small television, on which she happened to see Prince Harry and Prince William playing in a charity polo match. “Mum, I want to play hockey on horses,” she said to her mother, who promised that she would take Emma for a lesson as soon as she got better.
She did, and Emma went on to play competitive polo all over the world, representing the England women’s team for the first time at 21, and winning Guards Polo Club’s first women’s tournament in 2017. But ongoing spinal injuries from a fall meant she had to retire from the sport in 2020.
“I walked away from polo and went and got a job in London,” she says. “For my own mental health, I thought it had to be a case of out of sight, out of mind. But I absolutely hated it. Then my friend phoned me and said: there’s this company, they sell polo equipment and they’re looking for someone to join them.”
Emma made the move, but was then approached to take over the company’s competitor, Polo Splice. She relaunched the company as Emita Polo (inspired by the nickname she’d picked up in Argentina, meaning ‘little Emma’). She kept its master mallet makers, Scott and Biff, in place, who have 40 years of combined experience in the complex art of mallet making, but wanted to modernise the company.
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