They say truth is stranger than fiction. In the world of horse racing, there may not be a story stranger than that of the Irish-bred, British-trained champion thoroughbred, Shergar. In February of 1983, Shergar was kidnapped from his stable in County Kildare by a group of men holding machine guns and wearing balaclavas.
The kidnappers were thought to be members of the IRA at the time. The horse was held for ransom and several attempts were made to demand money from the stallion’s owner, a billionaire spiritual leader to millions called the Aga Khan. However, unfortunately, the poor horse was brutally killed. His body, though, was never recovered.
At the time, Shergar was considered the most famous racehorse in the world. He was coming off a big win at the 1981 Epsom Derby and winning four more major derby races before being named European Horse of the Year. Shergar was retired after his first season and his stud fee was set at an extraordinary $120,000. Eventually, the horse earned a whopping $15 million.
Described as gentle and calm, the bay stallion had a unique racing style. He ran with his tongue hanging out. He had a distinctive white blaze on his nose and four white socks. His bloodline was considered top-notch, thus the high stud fee and owners and breeders lined up for the chance to breed their mares to him. He was five years old when the kidnapping occurred while stabled at the Ballymany Stud farm. He was about to start his second breeding season.
According to a BBC story, it was just after 8:00 PM when the horse’s head groom, Jim Fitzgerald, heard a knock on the door and opened it to find the gun-wielding kidnappers, who said “We have come for Shergar. We want $3 million for him.” Fitzgerald, a father to six children, was forced to the horse’s stable where another six masked gunmen waited. He loaded the horse into the carrier box the men had brought and was forced into their car at gunpoint.
“I can still remember that night in that car with them lads. All sorts of thoughts were racing through my head about what they might do to me. One of them, with the revolver, was very aggressive,”
Mr. Fitzgerald told The Telegraph about his ride in the kidnappers’ car.
After driving for three hours, the kidnappers finally dumped Fitzgerald out of the car. He found a telephone and called his brother, which led to many more phone calls to everyone from the horse’s vet to shareholders. Sadly, the police were not notified until eight hours after the kidnapping. By then, the men and the legendary horse were long gone.
The kidnappers negotiated with one of Aga Khan’s reps using coded phrases over the telephone, making sure to hang up before 90 seconds so authorities couldn’t track their location. The shareholders decided not to pay the ransom because they were concerned it would put many of the world’s racehorses in equal danger if they gave in to the kidnappers. But the Irish and English public demanded the horse back, and the Dublin police even offered a $150,000 reward for Shergar’s return.
It became a media-feeding frenzy, especially when a man named Derek Thompson, who worked for ITV’s racing team, flew to Belfast to negotiate with the kidnappers at the Europa Hotel. He was greeted by over a hundred cameras and journalists from all over the world. The men never came to an agreement and the next day, Thompson got a phone call saying, “The horse has had an accident. He’s dead.”
Later it was speculated that Shergar may have indeed had an accident and been killed while reacting violently to being abducted and pent up. Others speculated that senior IRA member Kevin Mallon was the man behind the entire plot. He was a convicted killer, after all. According to one source, two men clutching machine guns went to the stable in a remote area where Shergar was being held captive and opened fire on the horse.
A former IRA member told the Sunday Telegraph,
“Shergar was machine-gunned to death. There was blood everywhere and the horse even slipped on his own blood. There was lots of cussing and swearing because the horse wouldn’t die. It was a very bloody death.”
There are those who believe the horse was disposed of in a bog in County Leitrim or dumped into the sea off Ireland’s south coast.
Shergar’s body was never found, and the case remains a mystery, as no person or group has ever formally claimed responsibility. Shergar’s memory and legend live on in movies, documentaries, and books, and of course, his powerful racing bloodline that continues to run and win to this day.
