Polo Is an Addiction: Dimeji Aluko

There is nothing more leisurely in Lagos than polo, so we spent an afternoon at the club with the people who know it best. First up: Dimeji Aluko who speaks on the horses and what keeps him coming back. There are people you interview who, by the one-hour mark, begin to come apart. They yawn. They tap a foot. Their eyes drift to the door, to the ceiling, to anywhere that isn't you. They are over it, and too polite to say so. Dimeji is the opposite. An hour in, he has more energy than when we started. He arrives, and the first thing he tells me is that he wore his new white trousers for the occasion. Before I can even set up, he's already making things happen: suggesting where we should shoot, what the best angles are, which horse will look right on camera. "Bring Red Lady," he calls to his groom. I ask why that one. Because, he says, she was the first horse that ever put him in the limelight. When they bring her out, I see a compact, good-looking South African mare. He turns to me and the cinematographer with a question that's really a challenge: this horse, or the white one? We land on Red Lady. She's brown; he's in white. It'll pop. Dimeji with Red Lady He says something early that he keeps circling back to: that polo is an addiction, that it will take all your money and all your time, that you cannot simply walk away. "Once it hooks you, it's done," he says. "You'll use all your money, all your time on the sport." Which raises the question I spend the rest of the afternoon chasing: why? What is it that makes grown men pour fortunes into animals and grass? If you want to understand the pull, start with a loss. He tells me about a match earlier this year that was a tough one to lose. His team was up by two and a half goals, 5½-3, but the other side fought their way back to 5½-5. With the game hanging in the balance, the last hit came from a spot penalty. Up stepped Alhaji Mohammed Dangote, a former captain of the Lagos Polo Club, who struck the ball from about 80 yards. "As I look up, I just see the ball flying," Dimeji says. The ball went in, and that was how they lost. He came down from his horse, took off his gear, and told his groom to hold on to it for him.…