Toys

Shooting wild game in Africa, dodging guerrilla groups on the byways of South America and flying combat aircraft are nothing out of the ordinary for Texas-based polo patron Al Micallef

WORDS SARAH EAKIN

‘I started flying fixed-wing aircraft probably 35 years ago,’ says Al Micallef. ‘And I stopped flying after I was married, because we couldn’t afford gas for our car, let alone an airplane.’

Times have certainly changed since then for Al, who can now commute between his Texas ranch and the Reata high-goal polo team at International Polo Club Palm Beach in the cockpit of his own Falcon 10 jet. Flying is a family affair for the Micallefs, and when Al’s son Mike was about to start his university education, Al recalls the family sitting at the dinner table to discuss which plane he should take with him to his college campus.

‘One of our businesses is managing jet aircraft, and we also have our own jet, which I fly just for fun. It makes us more effective managers when we don’t just simply manage the business but have the knowledge to fly the airplanes and know about the maintenance and service side of the planes too.’

Al, 63, is a businessman with an easy-going manner that belies his lifetime feats. These include a highly competitive campaign in transatlantic yacht racing, trans-Amazon 24hour car rally racing (where the guerrilla dodging came into play) and the Gumball Rally car chase across America.

As his exploits illustrate, Al is not one to do things by halves, and it comes as little surprise that he flies his helicopter to our breakfast meeting. Living in the expanse of west Texas, where room to roam means space to land, he frequently drops in to the grocery store or the local diner for ‘takeout’, putting ‘the bird’ down in a nearby field.

Al flies his helicopter for functional purposes in and around the picturesque ranch where he and his family live in west Texas’s Davis Mountains, a small volcanic range at the tail end of the Rockies. His house sits in the heart of an extinct volcanic caldera, providing a breathtaking panorama of rock formations formed by lava and broken up by a band of green from the polo field in the valley – the family’s highly-prized Reata Polo Club.

Al uses his piloting skills to work cattle, driving them out of the passes and canyons and sending them down to the flats of his expansive ranch. Though he was born in Detroit, Al considers himself a Texan at heart and has taken the role seriously. As he puts it: ‘If you don’t ranch, have an oil well and own a bank, you’re not even a Texan.’

Mixing business with pleasure, Al and his son recently grabbed an opportunity to fly World War II Messerschmitts and take to the skies in modern fighter jets with candidates from the US Top Gun class of military aviation. In his stable of flying machines, Al also keeps two ‘Kassa’ jets, which are used by the Israelis to train their military fighter pilots.

Flying fixed-wing planes is a run-of-themill exercise for Al, while helicopter flying is still a challenge. ‘I use the fixed wings to fly back and forth to our ranches and to support our various businesses around the world,’ he says. ‘Today’s aircraft are so automatic, and the systems are so sophisticated, that once you learn the systems and punch all the flight data in there you don’t have to do anything but sit back and watch the clouds go by. With a helicopter it’s totally different. You’ve got to fly every second. ‘Wind, powerlines, tail, rudder… there are a lot of things that you need to be aware of. And flying across country, you don’t have a lot of area to work with.’

There are similarities with polo, he says. ‘Hand-eye coordination is important in both disciplines. I weigh 225 pounds, and Agustin Merlos [who doesn’t], our 10-goaler, can hit the ball three times as hard as me. So it’s really the ability to swing naturally and have that rhythm that makes the difference. Helicopters are the same way. You’re using your feet, your hands and your “eye” at the same time.’

Action man (clockwise from top) Al Micallef, with one of his many magnificent flying machines; mid-chukka with the Reata team; and on safari in Africa SHELLEY HEATLEY