There is a moment each January when the ponies step onto the frozen lake in St. Moritz and the entire audience seems to take a collective inhale. Champagne flutes pause mid-air. Calls from the family office in Zurich go unanswered. Birkins brush against the sleeves of Mackage puffers. For most spectators, snow polo is an exquisite novelty—horses galloping on the ice, mallets swinging against the dramatic backdrop of the Engadin Valley’s snow-capped mountains, fresh powder swirling behind stampeding hooves. 

But for me, a passionate yet altogether amateur polo player from the States who learned this game the unglamorous way, it’s something else entirely. It’s like watching the Monaco Grand Prix knowing exactly what it feels like when a car breaks loose from the pack at speed, or knowing how it feels—not just how it looks—to capture a winning touchdown. I’ve been to the event several times, and to St. Moritz more times than my bank account would prefer, but this year’s 41st annual Snow Polo World Cup felt unmistakably sharper and slicker.

That polish is no accident. It’s the result of decades of fine-tuning. The event’s founder, Reto Gaudenzi, is a Swiss hospitality legend whose posh résumé includes managing hotels from Mombasa to Majorca, serving on the board of St. Mortiz’s iconic Badrutt’s Palace hotel, and a stint converting the Versace Mansion into a private club in the 2000’s. His son Tito Gaudenzi now plays in the Snow Polo World Cup most years, and has expanded the family business with events of his own—the Snow Polo World Cup Kitzbühel and the Miami Beach Polo World Cup in November. 

In 2014—three decades into the original event’s existence, its economic and cultural value established—the elder Gaudenzi signed a long-term contract with the town of St. Moritz, effectively solidifying Snow Polo into its social calendar. Now, it is a truth universally acknowledged that, in this town, Snow Polo owns the last weekend of January.

The spectacle extends well beyond the frozen lake. The private airport in neighboring Samedan fills up with private jets (40 came this year). London lads come over for extravagant stag parties, well-dressed ladies of a certain Eastern European persuasion don their best furs and vertiginous heels, and “The Gstaad Guy” comes to town and gets mobbed like a ’90’s-era Brad Pitt.

Hotels are also an integral part to the weekend’s choreography. From its lakeside perch, Badrutt’s Palace is this town’s alpha and omega, largely because it hosts the Saturday night black tie gala, the hottest ticket of the weekend. But this is Switzerland—and it’s luxury of the quiet, discreet variety that Switzerland does best. If you’re going to Badrutt’s to be seen, you go elsewhere to be unseen: the Carlton, with its retro glamor and Michelin-starred restaurant; the Kulm for pine-paneled suites and an infinity pool overlooking the mountains; or Suvretta House, slopeside and discreet, for giving off the impression you’ve been wintering here for generations. 

As for the game itself, this year’s polo was exceptional. Snow polo is not simply polo with a better backdrop and worse footing. It is its own demanding discipline—riskier, more technical, and more expensive. Polo is already a rarified sport, with top-tier horses, elite professionals, and patrons underwriting teams to the tune of hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars annually. Transplant that ecosystem to this frozen setting, and every variable becomes that much sharper. 

The costs, the drama, the precision, all of it needs to be at an even higher expression than usual, and that’s precisely why the most discerning luxury brands are so keen to align themselves with Snow Polo—Robb Report was a media partner. 

Flexjet, which just wrapped a five-year sponsorship contract and is likely to renew, shared with me that the event has been a fruitful place to scout new business. In the VIP tent, Accor’s new luxury brand Orient Express arrived with bellhops in period uniforms, drumming up anticipation for its new sailing yachts and Italian hotels launching later this year. U.S. Polo Assn., the event’s official apparel supplier, sold $315 fleece jerseys faster than they could restock them.

But the weekend’s busiest pop-up shop belonged to Mackage, which has sponsored the event for three years, and is making serious inroads against entrenched European competitors like Moncler and Fusalp. “It’s been absolute gangbusters, this is exactly where our customer is,” a brand insider told me. People come to polo for the glitz, and brands come to make considered investments.

There’s an old saying in polo that nobody comes to the matches to actually watch the polo, but as a polo player myself, I can confirm: This match pulsed with authenticity and genuine adrenaline. The plays were fast, the swings decisive, and with players from Brazil to Malaysia to Switzerland, it felt like a real gathering of the sport’s most affluent, international set. There were moments of real sportsmanship, too: In the finals, a player from Team St. Moritz dropped his mallet, and an opponent from team Investec stopped to help him retrieve it—a fleeting gesture that most spectators missed, but that reminded me of this sport’s gentlemanly core. It was the kind of moment I myself have experienced many times back home on the summer fields of Newport, Rhode Island. 

Snow Polo also remains, at its heart, a masterclass in winter style. The weekend showcased Chanel snow boots, one-of-a-kind furs, diamonds the size of ice cubes. Yet at a private Flexjet dinner on Friday night—held in the rustic storeroom of a caviar shop, far from Badrutt’s gilded halls—it was the polo players who looked best. In a town known for excess, on its most exclusive weekend of the year, it was the well-cut khakis, worn-in cashmere turtlenecks, and the effortless swoop of helmet hair that felt the coolest. 

To attend the Snow Polo World Cup is to be dazzled. To really witness its finer details is to leave with respect: for the horses brave enough to trust the environment, for the players disciplined enough to master it, and for a town daring enough to stage this glittering spectacle. All of the above make this altogether unlikely event feel as smooth as first tracks down an Engadin ski slope.