Court orders return of cloned ponies in landmark ruling

Argentinian polo star Adolfo Cambiaso, 46, and his La Dolfina team have won a legal battle in the Southern District of Florida, securing a final judgment for the return of cloned ponies that were sold without his knowledge.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest polo players of all time, the 10-goal Argentinian has amassed nearly 1,000 career points and was recently featured in Netflix’s Polo.

The case focused on clones of Cambiaso’s most successful horse, Dolfina Cuartetera – ranked first in Argentina’s Polo Hall of Fame – who died in May 2023, at the age of 22. Several of her clones have gone on to compete at the highest level, featuring in the prestigious Argentine Triple Crown. Among Cambiaso and his son Adolfo “Poroto” Cambiaso’s top mounts are Cuartetera clones B06 and B09.

The lawsuit alleged that Cambiaso’s longtime business partner, Alan Meeker, secretly sold Cuartetera’s clones to a rival polo team without his knowledge, despite their decade-long partnership. The claims included breach of contract and misappropriation of trade secrets.

Polo remains the most accepting equestrian sport when it comes to cloning; Argentina imposes few regulations and no restrictions on the number of cloned ponies allowed in competition – leaving teams and breeders to set their own rules.

Cambiaso has been at the forefront of this revolution, helping shape cloning into a multi-million-dollar industry. In 2006, after his stallion Aiken Cura suffered a fatal injury, he preserved a skin sample in a Buenos Aires laboratory. In 2010, using that harvested sample, he successfully produced Aiken Cura E01 with the help of Alan Meeker and his company Crestview Genetics. The two parties then entered into a contract to clone more of Cambiaso’s polo ponies.

That year, Meeker and Cambiaso included a three-month-old Cuartetera clone in a high-profile auction, who sold for $800,000 – the highest price ever paid for a polo horse. The buyers were a partnership led by Argentinian businessman and amateur polo player Ernesto Gutiérrez, a close friend of Cambiaso.

Following the auction, Gutiérrez urged Cambiaso and Meeker to reconsider their strategy, arguing that selling clones risked diminishing Crestview’s exclusivity over Cambiaso’s prized bloodlines. Instead, he proposed bringing the clone he had bought back into Crestview, securing his position as a third partner, and shifting the focus to selling only foals of clones rather than the clones themselves – a policy that remains in place today.

But following a nine-day jury trial in May 2024, Cambiaso’s legal team – Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell LLP (WTO) – demonstrated that Meeker had secretly sold Cuartetera clones to an unnamed Russian businessman for $800,000 each, with additional sales planned.

As a result, Meeker and Crestview Genetics have been ordered to return all La Dolfina clones and tissue samples to Cambiaso. The opposing team argued that Meeker acted within his agreement with Cambiaso.

“For Adolfo Cambiaso and his family, this is an important decision coming after a four-year multi-jurisdictional court battle,” said lead counsel, Habib Nasrullah.

“These horses are priceless, and the family is committed to the process of recovering their cloned horses and preserving this part of the legacy Adolfo built for his children.”

Diego Bucking, personal counsel to Cambiaso, added: “This case represents an important development in horse cloning.”

• To stay up to date with all the breaking news from major shows throughout 2025, subscribe to the Horse & Hound website

You may also be interested in: