James Ashton: An Obituary
By Chris Ashton
James Ashton's life was testimony to the ideal of manhood in two lines in If, Rudyard Kiplings' most celebrated poem, If you can fill the unforgiving minute/With sixty seconds worth of distance run.
Husband, father, grazier, philanthropist, polo player and administrator, he combined an energy and application whatever the task at hand with a gift for connecting with people--unusual in high achievers living at full throttle. In manner he was calm, courteous, quietly spoken, patient, an attentive listener with an impish sense of humour and unbowed by disappointment or grief.
These qualities ran tandem with an awesome will to win at sport, always playing by the rules, but indifferent to concerns for his own safety. His death at 69, falling from a horse at full gallop, playing polo in Bangkok, was as much in character as his commitment to giving gate-money from polo tournaments he hosted to deserving causes.
James William Ashton was born in 1941, the third child and eldest son of Irene and Jim Ashton. His father, a grazier and company director, won sporting fame in 1930s as the captain-manager of a polo team of himself and his three younger brothers. From 1929 until their retirement ten years after, they dominated Australian polo. Their crowning glory was the 1937 Hurlingham Gold Cup, at that time the British polo equivalent of winning Wimbledon in tennis.
Following his education at Anglican boarding schools, Tudor House and Kings School, at which his leadership qualities were already apparent, Ashton graduated from Sydney University with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in economics. From his father he took over the management of the family sheep station, Millamolong, in central-western NSW, and in 1966 he married Susan, nee Kirkby, who gave him twin sons, twin daughters followed by a third daughter.
At 21 he embraced polo and four years later took a sabbatical from farm management to hone his polo skills abroad. According Sinclair Hill, Australia's greatest polo player, he showed the promise of a potential high-goal player. That possibility was dashed in the early 1970s when he contracted brucellosis, a debilitating blood disease in cattle and at the time virtually unknown in humans.
For eighteen years, despite endless medical examinations, his condition remained undiagnosed. Specialists warned his illness was potentially fatal and that he must relinquish all strenuous physical activity for a sedentary urban life. With his boisterous young family he settled in Sydney, enrolling, and eventually graduating with an MBA from NSW University.
Following diagnosis of his illness, treatment and recovery, he returned to Millamolong--and to polo. With his brother Wallace, eight years his junior, he played for the Australian team in the first and second 14-goal World Cup tournaments in Buenos Aires (1984) and Berlin (1987), hosted by the newly-formed Federation of International Polo.
Another dimension was his commitment to public service, whether serving on the Blayney Shire Council, the Graziers Association, and fleetingly, as the Liberal candidate in the 1977 general election contesting the seat of Clare, traditionally alternating between Labor and the Nationals, and won that year by the Nationals.
In 1994 he and his family suffered second blow, far worse than his brucellosis, when one of his sons, Jamie, an agricultural science graduate, a promising young polo player and heir apparent to Millamolong, died in a road accident. Polo offered James the means to assuage a grief from which there was no recovery. He founded the Millamolong Polo Club, which to this day hosts an annual tournament commemorating Jamie and another in memory of his nephew Will, also killed in a road accident, son of Wal Ashton. The Millamolong homestead was meantime converted to a farm-stay guesthouse complemented by horse trekking, a polo-coaching clinic and an annual children's pony camp. In partnership with a local winemaker he established a vineyard. Millamolong wines have since won medals at home and abroad.
To repay the sport which had given him so much, Ashton embraced polo administration, serving first as president of the NSW Polo Association (1994-98) followed by the Australian Polo Council (1998-2002). From the Federation of International Polo (FIP) he won approval to host the 6th World Polo Cup at Melbourne's Werribee Equestrian Centre in 2001, a ten-day tournament of eight national teams playing 300 horses lent by the Australian polo community.
Senior FIP officials hailed it the best ever World Polo Cup. This led to his election (in his absence and without consultation) as FIP treasurer, serving under two presidents. When the second incumbent resigned in mid-term last November, Ashton was appointed interim president with the promise of election in his own right at the annual FIP general assembly in March.
Meantime he appointed a new FIP executive while pledging greater transparency, accountability and to rule changes to improve polo as a spectator sport. For the global polo community, as for his family, his death leaves a gaping void.

James Ashton (1941-2010) is survived by his wife Susan, his son Andrew, his daughters Sally, Emily and Georgina, five grandchildren, by his sisters Rosemary Foot and Joan Masterman and his brother Wallace.

Chris Ashton, a cousin of James, writes for [US] Polo Players Edition magazine, was the
author of Geebung: The Story of Australian Polo (Australian Polo Council, 1993) and
was a contributing author to Profiles in Polo: Players Who Changed the Game, edited
by Horacio Laffaye (MacFarland & Co., USA 2008).