Manuel Andrada

Manuel Ángel Andrada Ballesteros (9 January 1890 to 21 September 1962) was an Argentine nine-goal polo player who won the gold medal at the 1936 Summer Olympics. Born on an estancia in Curumalal near Coronel Suárez, Buenos Aires Province, he worked as a horse trainer before he took up polo. His team won the Pacific Coast Polo Championship in 1930 and the U.S. Open Polo Championship in 1931, and his teams won the Campeonato Argentino Abierto de Polo in 1930, 1931, 1933, 1935, 1938 and 1939. At the Olympics he played both matches, the first against Mexico and the final against Great Britain, and according to Guinness World Records he was the oldest sportsman to receive an Olympic gold medal. Nicknamed Paisano, he was called the first Argentine-born star player by the polo historian Horace Laffaye. He died in 1962 in Laguna del Sauce, Córdoba Province.