Great Horse Racing Mysteries by John McEvoy

Author:John McEvoy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eclipse Press
Published: 2022-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Shergar-Into Thin Air

“…the great Gaels of Ireland

Are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry,

And all their songs are sad.”

So wrote poet G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) in his “Ballad of the White Horse.” In characterizing the Irish, Chesterton might well have added a stanza or two about their tremendous affection for horses. Indeed, he might have produced “The Ballad of Shergar” had he lived long enough to learn of the saga associated with that fleet runner.

Perhaps only in Ireland, a small nation the majority of whose citizens are imbued with a love of equines, would such an animal become a target of kidnapping and be held for ransom. In Italy and Germany in the 1970s and ’80s, various brigands concentrated on snatching up and holding for money wealthy industrialists, not famous horses. But in Ireland, the target was a five-year-old Thoroughbred, one who ranked as a legend even before he was abducted. That legend then metamorphosized into myth when he was stolen from his stall at one of the country’s most famous breeding farms, never to be seen again.

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Shergar was a foal of 1978, a well-bred son of Great Nephew out of the mare Sharmeen; he traced to Hyperion on his top side, Tulyar on his dam’s. His birthplace was the Aga Khan’s Sheshoon Stud in County Kildare, the heartland of Ireland’s breeding industry. Sheshoon Stud, located thirty miles southwest of Dublin, borders on the nation’s most famous racetrack, The Curragh.

When he turned two, Shergar was sent to the Beech Hurst Stable in Newmarket, England, headquarters of the successful trainer Michael Stoute who conditioned many of the Aga Khan’s runners. Shergar adapted well to the change of scenery, but as a very young horse there wasn’t much remarkable about him outside of his coloring: the bay colt had four white socks and a very broad and distinctive white blaze on his face. Shergar was far from a standout in Stoute’s talent-laden string. English racing writer Julian Wilson in The Great Racehorses described Shergar as being “inconspicuous amongst Michael Stoute’s magnificent and imposing string.” Indeed, Wilson added, “It is meant as no disrespect to either Shergar or my wife — a fair judge of a riding horse — when I recall her initial comment on seeing Shergar: ‘Ah, that would make me a nice hunter!’” Because he had not been very impressive in his early training, it was hoped that Shergar might develop into a “useful miler” once he hit the racetrack.

But this all changed as Shergar matured and approached his career debut, a maiden race at Newbury on September 19, 1980. Shergar had impressed Stoute once the horse had been asked for fast work, and by then Shergar had developed enough physically to impress his rider that day — England’s great Lester Piggott, who later described him as “a beautifully built Great Nephew colt with a great big white blaze… whom I rode to victory in his highly promising debut…” That was a one-mile event called the Kris Plate, and Shergar earned all of 2,560 pounds for the Aga Khan.

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