‘Ever since my parents deemed me to be safe on a horse with one of them, I was’: how England’s standout female polo player blazed a path to the top

There was a moment when, aged 15, Milly Hine got a call from a patron asking her to play on their team. Their next question was to ask how much she charged.

“I remember saying, ‘Um, let me get back to you on that one...’,” she laughs now, re-enacting the thrill her teenage self felt at the prospect of playing polo for money as she came off the call.

Things have moved fast since then. Now 24 years old, Milly has five Argentine Women’s Open titles to her name and a hat-trick of US Women’s Open Polo Championship wins.

In May, she was crowned the women’s world number one player and last month she lined up alongside Adolfo Cambiaso’s daughter Mia to win the British Ladies’ Open, where for the first time the ladies’ final was played on the same day as the men’s on those carpet-like green lawns at Cowdray.

If players are judged on their lineage, then Milly’s is enviable: her father is the former England captain (and later team manager) Andrew Hine, former winner of the Gold Cup (1983) and two-time winner of the Queen’s Cup (1989 and 1990).

“Mum tells me stories of coming out of the hospital after having me and heading straight to games to watch Dad playing. I was always there,” she says.

“I think ever since my parents deemed it was safe for me to be on a horse with one of them, I probably was.”

But any lucky hand she’s been dealt is only half the story. Standing at an Amazonian 5ft 11in with the reach to match, she’s fiercely driven, still on the practice field long after others have left drilling penalties.

“I’ve always been quite reliable with my penalties, but it’s something that I’ve struggled with a bit recently and I know it’s 100% mental,” she explains.

And then there’s the relentless travel schedule: Uruguay in January, on to Florida, Argentina, St Tropez, England for the summer, Sotogrande in August and back to Argentina. On paper it’s Rutshire-worthy glamour, but the reality’s far more like hard work.

“The day-to-day life of a professional is about being in the stables and with your horses. That’s the priority,” she says.

Milly’s childhood was split between her parents’ Berkshire farm and Australia, where her mother Robyn comes from a family steeped in racing.

There was Pony Club with the South Berkshire – “my patience for dressage wasn’t the best, I just wanted to get out cross-country” – hunting with the Berks and Bucks Draghounds and at one point her younger brothers Ned and Louis and younger sister Indi made up the Pony Club branch’s entire polo team.

“We were always lucky that Mum and Dad did everything they could to have us as well mounted as possible,” she says, her father still the first person she goes to for advice.

“I can ask him just about anything because he would have lived a lot of those situations himself as a professional.”

“When I started playing, it wasn’t so common for girls to play – it wasn’t that they weren’t allowed, just that it didn’t happen so much. But Mum and Dad were always supportive of me playing. And I feel really grateful for people like Claire Tomlinson and Sunny Hale, who made huge paths for women in the sport.

“Nina Clarkin [who retired as the England women’s captain in 2025] is someone I look up to especially, having played with her and against her: she’s incredible as a player and a captain, always looking to get the best out of her entire team. It’s something I’ve realised you have to do to be able to win.”

A “pinch-me moment” came for Milly when, aged 16, she was asked to play for Her Highness Sheikha Maitha’s UAE ladies’ team; a fast track onto the world stage playing alongside the UAE’s 10-goaler and fellow Brit Hazel Jackson.

“I was only four-goals at the time and so it wasn’t something I’d ever considered. But playing for them in Argentina really kicked off my whole career,” she reflects now.

Those first few seasons in the world’s polo capital had hurdles – “I haven’t always been able to speak Spanish, which was a challenge...” – but the awe of first playing in Palermo in the middle of Buenos Aires has stuck with her.

“Sophisticated isn’t exactly the right word, but it has these huge stadiums on either side of the field, there are bands, people shouting and screaming, horns, smoke, flare guns. It’s a lot more of a football stadium vibe, with fans coming from all walks of life.”

Last year, Milly left the UAE team to take up the offer of playing for Cambiaso’s glittering – and demanding – La Dolfina operation, alongside his daughter Mia.

“I don’t mind adapting myself or trying to fit into a team depending on what the other styles of players are to make it gel. Mia is quite an attacking, super-fast player, and I like to play more at the back. This is a team sport and it’s really important to find the right chemistry and the right styles of play to make that team work.”

There’s something admirably composed about Milly; the air of a tennis player on a considered post-match debrief. Even for the build-up to the highest-pressure games – take those Argentine Open finals – she talks about going through the motions of team practices, making sure that the horses are going well, checking that everything has been set up properly.

“Because then you know you have done everything you can to be as prepared as possible on the day,” she reasons. But she can still be prone to the odd superstition.

“I try not to, but if we get the same pony line side we had the year before when we’ve done well, then you can’t help feeling like things are slotting into place...” she smiles.

At the family’s Berkshire farm, Milly has a 15-strong string of ponies, and another in Argentina. “I’m buying from all over the place, and always trying new horses – you never know where the next really good one is going to come from,” she says, playing down the breeding she began five or six years ago.

“I get a little embarrassed saying that I breed, because it’s very small-scale compared to everybody else. So, I don’t know if I would call myself a breeder, but I do dabble.”

If cloning in the sport remains contentious (it’s banned in the UK, but cloned ponies can play here), Cambiaso is its poster boy on the world stage. A decade ago, he made headlines when he played six different horses in a high-profile match in Buenos Aires, each a clone of his favourite mare Cuartetera – now dubbed the most influential mare in modern polo. So far Milly has only played on two cloned ponies, one of Cuartetera’s clones, and another of Cambiaso’s stallion Dolfina Popular. Was that a surreal feeling?

“I wasn’t really thinking about the scientific side of it, more that it was just another horse that obviously looks exactly the same [as the donor]. But it was cool to have that opportunity,” she says, the topic, you imagine, likely to feature in the Hines’s “24/7 conversation about polo around the dinner table, in the car, in the house. There are always new combinations of teams, new horses, results of games and different tournaments to discuss.”

A few days before we speak, Milly has made her debut in the English open high goal in the Warwickshire Cup at Cirencester Park with Thai Polo.

“That’s something I’ve always dreamt of doing and so it was really cool,” she says. “It’s hugely different to the women’s game. On Monday, I was playing number one at the front attacking, marking a lot more, not having so many opportunities necessarily on the ball, but working hard, pushing and putting pressure on.

“Whereas usually with the ladies’ game, I’m more at the back controlling the game and feeding the balls. But I think if you want to be able to compete at the top level in the ladies’ game, playing with the men and becoming faster is the only way to improve.”

By the end of the week, Milly was lining up alongside her brother Louis for the Warwickshire Cup finals, beating Lovelocks Polo Stud by a goal: a polo dynasty that shows no signs of waning.

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