Profile

Maintaining Argentina’s position in the international polo fraternity is a family tradition for the head of the AAP, says Herbert Spencer

ILLUSTRATION PHIL DISLEY

Luis Lalor is the third member of his family to serve as president of the Associación Argentina de Polo (AAP), the body that governs the sport in the world’s leading polo-playing country. At 48, and only recently retired from a professional playing career that took him to a 9-goal handicap, he is the youngest of the men at the top of the major national polo associations.

‘My late uncle Alfie (Alfredo), a 5-goaler, was AAP president from 1969 to 1972,’ says Luis. ‘It was he who created the association’s national centre at Pilar, purchasing the land and “castle” and building our eight grounds there. My father (Luis “Gallego” Alberto), who was once handicap 8, served between 1975 and 1978 and in his first year organised the centenary of polo in Argentina and the sport’s first ever 40–40 match. I’m honoured to follow in their footsteps.’

Luis Eduardo Lalor (Luisito) was born 2 December 1960 in Buenos Aires. ‘With my father, uncles and cousins all playing, I had a great advantage,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure when I first sat in a saddle or held a polo stick, but I do remember when I was first learning to play, my pony just wouldn’t budge if there was a ball under her. It took me ages to get her to get up and go on the polo ground.’

When he was ten, Luis played in his first tournament, Los Potrillos. ‘Today our annual tournaments for kids from ten to 14-yearsold, including Los Potrillos, are huge,’ he says. ‘There are 60 to 70 teams playing, all in one day, at Pilar and Los Indios.

‘I played in my first high-goal competition when I was 14,’ Luis recalls. ‘I was 1 goal, my father was 7, and we played with two 10-goalers, Frankie and Gaston Dorignac, a 28-goal Tortugas-La Alicia team, and we won the 1975 Copa de Provincia.’ That same year Luis’ handicap was raised from 1 to 3; he went to 9 in 1987. Over the years he has won a number of important Argentine tournaments, including the high-goal Hurlingham, Tortugas, Jockey Club, and Indios Opens. He was twice a finalist in the abierto, the Argentine Open Championship, first with Coronel Suarez in 1982 and then with Pilarchico in 1989.

His own professional career took off in 1984 when he went to the US to play for George Haas’s 26-goal team and he competed in America until 2003. Amongst other victories he won the USPA Gold Cup in 1990, playing with 15-year-old Adolfo Cambiaso on Adam Lindemann’s Cellular One team, and in 1995 took Boca Raton’s $100,000 International Gold Cup with Peter Orthwein’s Airstream.

Luis has also played professionally in a dozen other countries in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. In Spain he won the Sotogrande Gold Cup three years running. In France he took the Deauville Silver Cup in 1995 and competed there again in 2000, 2002 and 2006.

It was in 2006, in Deauville, that Luis last played professionally. ‘I still hold a 6-goal handicap,’ he says, ‘and I play in 20-goal tournaments in Argentina. My son Lucas, 19, is handicap 3 and together we won the 2008 Metropolitano. Lucas also played in England with Charles Beresford last season. In Argentina my daughter Ina, 17, was the only girl playing in the intercollegiate and she won the tournament in 2007.’

Luis’s ‘day job’ is as a farmer and rancher, growing soya beans and raising cattle on his 1,200-acre estancia San Lucas in Nueve de Julio west of Buenos Aires. ‘We also breed and train ponies for medium-goal and low-goal polo, with three stallions and 15 brood mares,’ he says.

In May 2008, Luis became assistant secretary of the AAP and a member of its Consejo Directivo, the equivalent of the Stewards of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) and the Board of Governors of the US Polo Association (USPA). ‘After the 2008 season,’ he said, ‘they asked if I would be willing to succeed Frankie Dorignac as president. It’s not something I had looked for or expected. I discussed it with my wife Ines and we decided they would not have asked me if they didn’t think I could make a contribution. And I thought about how my uncle and father had headed the organisation all those years ago. So I said okay.’ He was elected to the top job at the AAP’s AGM in May of this year.

‘The size of the polo “industry” in Argentina is quite unbelievable,’ Luis says. ‘It’s difficult to estimate how many thousands of people are involved or how much money polo feeds into the national economy, but it’s huge. There are polo grounds everywhere and more and more foreigners are coming to Argentina to train with our players, hoping to improve their handicaps. Quite a number have bought land to establish bases here. The government recognises this, so the sport gets strong support from the tourism ministry, helping to promote polo to bring foreign visitors to our country.

‘Like the HPA, the AAP is an association of clubs,’ explains Luis. ‘We have some 200 clubs now – a growth of around 15 per cent over the past ten years.’ The AAP has a staff of 13, divided between its headquarters at the national stadium at Palermo in Buenos Aires and its centre at Pilar.

‘My sister Luz has worked for the association for 20 years and is in charge of all our tournaments,’ Luis says. A retired general, Mauricio Fernández Funes, is executive director.

Luis estimates there are some 5–6,000 Argentine players, but only around 2,000 are currently registered with, and handicapped by, the association, with others just ‘practising’ at clubs or working overseas. ‘This is far from satisfactory,’ the president says, ‘so now we want to see that every Argentine who plays at home or abroad is registered with the AAP. It’s not a question of collecting more fees, but to ensure that all Argentine players are properly handicapped by the AAP and insured by the association.’

According to Luis, the Argentine association is in ‘excellent’ financial shape. ‘We have money,’ he says, ‘and we are

spending it on our ten grounds at Palermo and Pilar and making grants to clubs for such things as scoreboards, irrigation equipment and tractors.’ The AAP’s main source of revenue, he says, is the Open, with about 70 per cent of the gross coming from corporate sponsorship sold through the association’s marketing agent ESPN.

Luis has already set several goals for his presidency of the AAP. ‘I would like to buy more land at Pilar for two or three additional association grounds,’ he says, ‘and at Palermo I would like to find funding to build a new grandstand opposite the existing big one to increase seating capacity from 16,000 to 20,000 or more. We also need to recruit and train more professional umpires, as some of those we have now are getting on in years.’

The AAP maintains good relations with the Argentine players’ association, says Luis. The Associación Argentina de Jugadores de Polo (AAJP) is restricted to the country’s 7–10 handicap players. ‘It’s very useful for them to make suggestions on such things as the rules and umpiring,’ he says, ‘and we always negotiate with them well in advance on expenses paid by the AAP to teams playing in the abierto.’

On the international front, says Luis, he wants to develop the AAP’s new 26/ 28-goal Copa de las Naciones tournament, inaugurated earlier this year, by including more national teams in 2010. ‘We are also talking with the USPA about playing a USA v Argentina international in Florida at around 30 goals, the highest the Americans can manage,’ he says. He was pleased when the HPA invited Argentina to play England for the Coronation Cup at 26 goals this year and delighted when Argentina took the trophy.

However, for such internationals as the long-dormant Copa de las Americans, ‘we will always insist on fielding our best players, to the maximum of 40-goal handicap, the level at which our own “Triple Crown” is played.’ With the world’s only 10-goal players (there are currently ten Argentines so rated), no other country can match Argentina in this.

Meanwhile, Luis Lalor’s other sport is la pelota a paleta, a version of the Basque court game played with a wooden racquet. ‘In Argentina there are thousands of players of all ages, from teenagers to men in their 80s, and hundreds of courts,’ he says. ‘Eight of the 14 members of the AAP’s consejo are aficionados and we often go straight from meetings to an old court to play before dinner. Maybe one day when I’m too old to swing a stick from a polo pony, you’ll still find me out on a pelota court somewhere.’