Polo, ‘the Sport of Kings’, is all about skill, talent and a total commitment by both the rider and the horse, demanding speed, agility, immense strength, resilience and impeccable timing. It’s a game of physical, rough, often violent contact. It’s also very elegant, and may be called ‘the gentleman’s sport’, but the brutality is intense. Every piece of equipment needs to withstand the harshest treatment, and that includes players’ watches.

Their timepieces must be robust enough to endure the numerous high-impact blows that take place in every chukka during a polo game. So it wasn’t a surprise to the horological universe when watchmaker Richard Mille, a man on a mission to take haute horlogerie into ever-more extreme realms of performance and endurance, took up the challenge of creating a new polo-proof timepiece, with the help of a partner from the sport’s top tier.

Most watches that have been through what the RM 053 has would be destroyed by now

That player is Pablo Mac Donough, a fifth-generation Irish Argentine, who was born in 1982 in Buenos Aires with the sport in his blood. Winning the world’s most prestigious youth tournament at just 14 years old, Mac Donough’s accolades are many. Perhaps the most prized is winning – with his team La Dolfina – the Triple Crown (victory in the Tortugas Open, the Hurlingham Open and Argentinian Open, all in the same year – something no other team has achieved in the history of the sport) for the fifth consecutive time last year. He really is a man at the top of his game.

Seven years ago, Mac Donough worked with Richard Mille engineers, describing the forces, shocks and blows that players face in a game that sees solid balls launched through the air at 200km per hour. A year later, the watchmakers launched the RM 053, in a limited edition of 15 pieces, an armoured timepiece designed to sit on Mac Donough’s wrist during a match, that not only tells him how long he has to play in each chukka, but also protects his wrist.

But that wasn’t enough for Richard Mille. ‘Given that Pablo has sustained a large number of fractures in the course of his career,’ he explained, ‘I asked our teams to come up with a watch that could resist the many types of shocks arising in a polo match, while leaving the movement visible.’

In response, his teams created the RM 53-01 Tourbillon Pablo Mac Donough, which demonstrates the resistance of the calibre with a new aesthetic that sheds the titanium carbide armoured-effect and makes the movement visible by introducing laminated glass – a first in watchmaking history. And also a seemingly mad ambition made real: to create a tourbillon, a vulnerable complication, with the durability and strength to be worn in competitive polo.

Mac Donough explains why the watch needs to be as indestructible as possible: ‘It’s an extremely dangerous sport. Falling is part of the deal. As is getting hit with the ball or a mallet. The worst injuries I have sustained have always been with a mallet, rather than by falling.’ Those wounds include, he says, ‘My eyes, nose, mouth – they’ve all been hit many times. I’ve even had surgery and bone replacement near my right eye.’

His original Richard Mille polo watch has also now suffered from many impacts from the ball or mallets. It’s certainly scratched, but as Mac Donough says, ‘Most watches that have been through what the RM 053 has experienced would be destroyed by now. But I’m still using it.’ What impresses him the most about the new version, is that you see the entire movement, ‘It’s not concealed anymore. It’s hard to imagine the watch is almost indestructible, given the material of the case and the new patented sapphire glass’.

The laminated sapphire crystal of the watch’s Carbon TPT case invites a look at its suspended tourbillon calibre. A ‘classically designed’ tourbillon would have had no chance of surviving the convulsive shocks experienced by riders. The RM 53-01 is designed for the practice of competitive polo, and significant development has been poured into the intriguing suspended movement that features braided cables, inspired by the contemporary engineering of the suspension bridge. ‘The 10 pulleys at the heart of the movement guarantee an even distribution of tension and perfect balance of the whole,’ explains Salvador Arbona, technical director for movements at Richard Mille. ‘What’s more, they provide optimal shock absorption to more than 5,000 Gs.’

The Mille engineers turned to the automotive industry for inspiration to produce a new type of sapphire glass, incorporating an extremely slim vinyl membrane, which not only is a world first in watchmaking, but also provides protection – on impact, the glass may crack, but will never shatter. It also helps the glass achieve a slender 2.40mm thickness.

Available in a limited edition of 30 pieces, Pablo Mac Donough’s new watch combines elegance with the extreme to produce his ‘crystal shield’. But, above all, Mac Donough says it’s also special to him, not only for its technical innovation, its artistry and its hand finishing, but ‘because Richard chose my sport to develop a new horological solution’.

RM 53-01, poa; richardmille.com