What happened to Shergar?
Having won the Derby by 10 lengths – still the widest winning margin in the history of the race – in 1981, Shergar was, for a time, the most celebrated racehorse in the world. Following his last race, in the St. Leger Stakes at Doncaster, later that year, he was retired to Ballymany Stud, in Co. Kildare, Ireland, where he was syndicated for £10 million.
However, less than two years later, on a murky night in February, 1983, Shergar was abducted by a gang of masked gunmen, believed to belong to the Irish Republic Army (IRA), and never seen again. Ransom negotiations – conducted, bizarrely, by British horse racing journalist Derek Thompson – followed, but ended abruptly with an anonymous, but coded, message that Shergar had died ‘in an accident’.
Exactly what happened to Shergar remains an abiding mystery. He may well have died, as suggested by more than one former IRA member, in a hail of machine gun bullets in a stable at a remote farm near the town of Ballinamore in Co. Leitrim – former ‘bandit country’ – near the border with Northern Ireland, after becoming distressed by his new surroundings. However, the IRA has never officially claimed responsibility for his disappearance, his kidnappers have never been officially identified and his remains have never been found.