Original subtitles

Shergar, one of the most highly valued horses in the world, was taken by gunmen

from Ballymany Stud near Newbridge in Canticle Dare during the night.

Forensic experts visited the scene this afternoon, but so far details of where

the £10 million horse was taken remain a mystery.

Shergar moving sweetly on the outside, takes up the running.

Shergar's going for the gun! There's only one horse in it! You need a two

to see the rest!

Shergar wins the derby!

Good horses normally run by three lengths. Great horses normally run by

lengths. Sure go on by ten lengths.

What? Come on.

At that time, he was the most valuable racehorse in the world.

A star was coming back home. The star happened to be a horse.

But that's what he was. He was a star.

For such a valuable horse to be outside and be so vulnerable, you couldn't make

it up.

If you kidnap an individual, it is essentially a political act.

Nobody had conceived of the idea that a horse could be taken and held ransom.

February 1983, it was about eight o 'clock, half eight in the evening.

Suddenly, a gang of subversives burst on the scene.

And immediately started shouting, we're here for Shergar, we're going to take

him, we want two million.

The world and its mother, in terms of the press pack, descended on this small

village. I got a phone call and this voice, which I'll never ever forget,

we're watching you from across the street.

A man using the fitting codename of Arkell instructed the journalist to

an address in County Down 30 miles outside the city.

Three guys jump out with balaclavas, machine guns, and one comes round to my

side. And I thought they were just going to spray the car and kill us.

For the government of the day.

This was an international security embarrassment.

What were the police doing?

When this guy who said he was from the IRA and they're the ones who sell used

the code word, and I immediately... That was the code word, and I'd never told

anybody about it.

And I realized then that that was the guy who I'd been talking to.

There's only one way to describe it.

A shitshow.

On the 8th of February 1983, Shergar was just retiring for the night. He'd

covered a mirror that day, very happy with himself, very well fed

on the spot, and everything had quietened down from about 6pm.

Don't forget it's February, so nightfall had come early. We're talking about a

very inaccessible and remote part of County Kildare. One road in and one road

out.

Silence had fallen. There were barely any rocks crowing in the bleak trees.

And then suddenly a gang of subversives burst on the scene and were suddenly

barking orders, descending, and individuals knowing exactly where to go.

They knock on the door of Jim Fitzgerald, who is the head groom.

He's inside the house. His son, Bernard, opens the door.

And these couple of characters wearing balaclavas, one of them reportedly

dressed as a guard, pushed past the child, knocking him down into the living

room and immediately started roaring and shouting, we're here for Shergar, we're

going to take him, we want two million.

They usher all the family, several children, a wife and Fitzpatrick, into

kitchen.

Don't anybody call the guards? They're all armed, of course. And they take

Fitzgerald away over to the stables where Shergar is.

They have brought a horse box towed by one of the vehicles up to the stable.

And it suddenly became clear that they were taking this wonder horse. And we

the letting down of a backboard and the clattering of hooves going up and people

could not believe it.

I'd imagine it...

equates to something like somebody walking into the Tower of London and

the crown jewels with no security around and walking straight out. Here's a

piece of jewellery worth £10 million in 1983 with no security.

Mr. Gerrard himself is bundled into another car. He's told to lie on the

A blanket or a coat or something is put over him. He's told to shut up. And that

vehicle leaves as well, leaving the family locked in this room and told to

nothing to nobody.

And within virtually no time, the horse was motoring down this long avenue,

past those dark trees and out into nothingness, into the void, never to be

again.

He's going to win by a big margin.

Shergar going a long way clear now.

What an amazingly comfortable triumph for Shergar.

Shergar going to the post with an awful lot of money resting between his ears.

Shergar was one of the most athletic.

middle -distance, Derby -winning superstars that had enormous stride that

pulverised the opposition.

He was poetry in motion at his best in the summer of 1981.

He was the superstar horse of the year. There was nothing to touch him.

The thrill of the crowd, the roars of the people in the grandstand as this

unimaginable beast flashed past the winning post.

And everybody's celebrating a thoroughbred.

There are 9 ,000 foals born every year in Ireland alone.

He was one in 50 ,000.

Irish people have always been synonymous with horses down through the years, and

those horsemanship skills have been passed down through generations for

It all really begins with Vincent O 'Brien.

Vincent O 'Brien was a brilliant trainer of horse. He excelled in national hunt

racing before he moved on to the flat.

The Cheltenham rivalry between the Irish and the British, that began with

Vincent O 'Brien bringing horses over on the cattle boats over to Cheltenham and

racing them over there and winning the gold cup and winning the champion

It was a time when Irish racing just began to start to make inroads into

able to be competitive at the highest level internationally.

If you go into most pubs in Ireland, there will be on the wall a picture of

Dawnrun or Istebrac or Arkell.

No country does it better. Despite our size, despite our population, we can

I think that's why...

People regard the Irish horse as probably the best in the world, and they

been consistently so for decades.

A quantum leap for horses in Ireland was the stallion tax exemption that was

introduced in 1969.

The former Prime Minister, Charles J. Hawley, he was a Trumpian figure.

He was transactional, he would get things done, but he had a great passion

horses.

He was the one, when he was Minister for Finance, before he was Prime Minister,

he introduced a remarkable tax concession, which was all the stallion

tax -free.

In hindsight, it was a brilliant move for the bloodstock industry in Ireland.

meant that stallion owners could have stallions here, and when the stallions

here... then the mares follow them, and then the foals from the mares are born

here and stay in Ireland. And that'd be Godside Roswells and Galileo and

Honshire and Carlyle and all those top -class horses who went on. And, you

even now, the ripples of that time and of those horses, they're seen in Irish

racing today.

Shergar was born and reared and bred in Ireland because of that strategy.

At the same time, there was political instability in the Republic of Ireland.

There were three general elections between 1981 and 1982.

There are serious political rows about managing the national finances. The

unemployment rate went over 15 % in 1983. There was a sense of crisis

around the essence of the state and whether it was working.

And then overlaying all of that.

was the existential threat to the state itself coming from the IRA, from the

violence in Northern Ireland spilling over into the Republic.

In order to carry out a conflict and to wage war against the British state, the

IRA needed millions of pounds annually and they were sucking it up from

everywhere and they needed to undertake... fundraising action.

Some of it's perfectly legitimate, most of it is not, and it involves dorking

and protection rackets in Northern Ireland. Some of it came from pubs all

Ireland, and Friday nights and Saturday nights, fellows going around with tin

cans collecting money for the prisoners, quote -unquote, for the IRA.

There was also massive donations coming in from the United States. There was an

organisation called NORAID, which was involved in fundraising.

went around the Irish pubs and clubs to show loyalty to the old country.

And a lot of it came from bank robberies. There were a lot of bank

Northern Ireland and there were a lot of bank robberies and post office

robberies in the Republic.

It was a common sight in the 1980s to see post office vans and Brinksmouth

and Securicorps vans being escorted from the central bank to banks distributing

money. escorted by armed troops and armed guardi because they were

being attacked by the IRA.

As the security tightens on cash transits and tightens around banks and

offices, they have to get new ways, so they start kidnapping.

Executives like Don Tidy of Supermarket Chain and indeed a Ferenka factory boss

in Limit called Tiada Haramow, which led to a long siege at a house in Monastery

Evan.

There was a very prominent Irish supermarket businessman, Ben Dunn. He

travelling to Northern Ireland to open a new supermarket there, and he was

kidnapped in South Armagh by the IRA, and he was held for a number of days. He

was released and harmed, and it's a very murky business.

Some people say £1 .5 million was paid over. Some people say £300 ,000. It's

just not known, but certainly some money was paid.

They were moving from robbery and extortion into kidnappings.

Figures who are seen as popular and are also regarded as individuals who should

not be any part of this struggle and should not be victims of this struggle.

Those kind of operations could not only go wrong, but they could also, of

course, generate all the wrong headlines for the IRA.

If you kidnap an individual, it is essentially a political act. And it's

understood by your fellow men and women that that's what it is. However, horses

don't hold political opinions.

Nobody had conceived of the idea that a horse could be taken and held ransom.

Shergar carried the famous green -red epaulets of one of the richest men in

world and the biggest racehorse owners in the world, his highness the Argot

Khan.

His stud farms were strategically placed, one in Normandy and...

two hearing killed out.

The Aga Khan's involvement goes back to the early decades of the 20th century

when his grandfather became involved in bloodstock and breeding in Ireland.

Mumfaz Mahal was one of the first horses that he owned.

She was a great racehorse but she also retired to stud and founded a great

dynasty. Shergar came from that dynasty.

Colt emerges, he's a home -bred of the Agakans, he's sent to Michael Stout's in

Newmarket to be trained, and the story goes that they were always working back

from Epsom.

He arrived at Michael's Beechhurst stables in Newmarket as a very young two

-year -old in the spring.

Michael Stout, he was only getting going then, but he's...

He's been one of the most successful trainers ever in Britain. Up there with

Henry Chester, he was a brilliant trainer of racehorses and it wasn't

that Diego Khan would choose to have horses with him at the time.

Sir Gert was seen as an Irish horse, despite obviously the flavour of its

owed more to the Aga can, but he was delighted to invest in Ireland. And this

was the one bright spot in the 1980s that we had the confidence of

investors in relation to our bloodstock when factories were closing down all

over the place. And we were just hoping for an economic break, but it seemed

things were getting worse and worse.

Ireland was part of Britain politically up to 1921 when what is now the Republic

of Ireland gained independence.

The reality of the situation is that for the 50 years after that break, Northern

Ireland was essentially a sectarian state.

The truth is the Catholics in Northern Ireland had a very, very bad deal for 50

years.

State jobs, state services, roads, universities, houses were not accessible

to the Catholic minority.

They were treated as second -class citizens.

That boiled over in the late 1960s, inspired by the civil rights movement in

America. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, NCRA, started

demanding equality in education, demanding equality in houses, demanding

equality full stop.

And they were met, unfortunately, by state violence.

They were battened off the streets by the police.

When the British Army was sent to Northern Ireland, they were welcomed by

nationalist people, by the Catholic people, because the British Army came in

initially to try and keep the peace. That quickly turned when the IRA...

grew out of extinction, if you like, revived itself in a new form in Northern

Ireland in the early 1970s and started what became, in effect, a war.

There were 83 people killed as a result of the Troubles in 1983 alone and more

than 100 the year before that. There was obviously huge concern about the impact

and capability of the IRA as a terrorist organisation.

The relationship with Britain was difficult, to put it mildly. There were

couple of areas in life where those tensions didn't exist, that they were

one side. One was rugby.

The Irish rugby team is an all -Ireland rugby team. And the other area, of

course, was horse racing.

I first saw Shergon as a two -year -old at Newbury. He ran in September.

in the Criss Plate, which was over a mile, which is quite an extreme

distance for a young two -year -old.

He won that day by about two and a half lengths, and he was quite impressed if

he went into everybody's notebooks.

Shergar made the progress that you would expect him to make and then ran in the

Sundown Classic trial.

And he won it by ten lengths.

for an Irish horse to be competitive in an English classic was kind of the

dream.

That's when people started to talk about him as a potential classic horse, maybe

a potential Derby horse.

The Epsom Derby is one of the oldest classics and it is deemed and regarded

the breed shaping race.

The race that if a colt can win that...

They have firmly established themselves as a stallion prospect to stand at stud.

If you can win that and win it impressively, you're probably the best

class.

Walter Swinburne gave him the perfect ride, just behind the pace, towards the

outside with options everywhere. He wasn't going to get boxed in. It wasn't

until really about two and a half furlongs out that Walter Swinburne just

down and started to ride him. And when he did, like the pace that he showed to

pick up and come away from his rivals.

It's like he turns into a Ferrari.

He just races off and it looks effortless.

I almost felt like saying, has there been a false start?

Because this horse was so far in front.

There's only one horse in it. You need a telescope to see the rest.

They have a column to go.

Wow, it was one of those.

He's climbed this mountain.

He has eased up.

Serdar wins the derby. This is the derby. Best horses in the world. And the

horse is miles clear.

The horses normally win by two lengths.

Good horses normally win by three lengths.

Great horses normally win by four lengths.

Sugar won by ten lengths.

What? Come on.

What was it like out there?

Well, I was just a passenger on a very good horse.

You were always country? Yes.

It was my first derby for ITV. I was the first man to get to it, apart from the

stable lad. Then I went up with the microphone and said, Hey, what was that

winning the derby by ten lengths? And it was the first derby interview that had

ever been put out on TV.

Because in the old days, we'd wait until the jockey weighed in. But we decided

we had to do him. And we got him live on the back of Shergar.

Even now, that's still the record for a Derby win. No horse has won the race by

10 lengths since then. And we've had lots of top -class Derby winners in the

meantime.

It's just phenomenal.

Margaret Thatcher, as British Prime Minister, has declared war on the IRA.

She's not going to treat... them as having legitimate political aims, that

not going to treat their prisoners as legitimate political prisoners, and of

course that had led to the hunger strikes as well, which captured

just in Ireland, but internationally.

I will never forget the palpable tension, a kind of darkness about

because this was the time when Shergar was winning his races, that the hunger,

-Block hunger strike was on.

What you had was a conflict over prison status.

People who are convicted of terrorist -related crimes demanded to be treated

they would see it, as political prisoners, and did not want to wear a

uniform.

Those demands manifested themselves inside the prisons in terms of refusing

wear a prison uniform.

There was a thing called the blanket protest, where prisoners simply wrapped

themselves in blankets.

There was then the appalling dirty protest, which was prisoners refusing to

laboratory facilities and smearing the walls of their cells with their own

excrement.

And then they went on hunger strike in 1981, at the time of the elections, to

heighten the pressure on the government.

And then they started dying.

Bobby Sands has died after 66 days of hunger strike.

The hunger strike period was... The moment that Ireland teetered on the

there was a visceral atmosphere of hatred towards the British government

single persona of Margaret Thatcher, whom Irish people in general perceived

allowing political prisoners to die.

People came out onto the streets willy -nilly and wearing black armbands. They

appeared from...

from nowhere and there were demonstrations outside the GPO and of

funeral was gigantic.

But the succession of these deaths and coffins being exploited had turned the

political situation into a powder keg and of course it acted as a recruiting

sergeant for the IRA.

The IRA needed three to four million pounds a year to conduct its campaign.

And they were very concerned, obviously, the authorities, about where they were

going to get that money from.

Now, Shergar was valued at £10 million, which is an extraordinary sum in the

early 1980s. And if you consider the constant money worries and challenges

the IRA had, perhaps that idea of a monetary prize, that that could solve a

of short -term problems for the IRA.

Someone comes up with the idea that they're going to kidnap a racehorse.

People would always be looking out for a double derby winner, to do the Epsom

and the Curragh double, because not many horses do that. The fact of the matter

is that the Aga Khan would very much like to have success on Irish tracks.

I said I'm going to get my sorry ass to the Curragh on the 30th of June in 1981.

I was there that day and the whole sense of awe that this was one of the best

horses ever.

Lester said he'd never ridden a horse that was travelling so easy in a derby,

comfortable. It took his breath away that the horse was just cruising with

He only won by four lengths, but he was stopping at that point. You know, he was

literally just cantering home.

He was then the best of his age group.

The big question mark was whether he could beat the older horses, the older

generation. That would be the real test of Shergar.

He walked into the parade ring and everybody recognised him straight away.

there was just a spontaneous round of applause.

And he hadn't won at that point. People were just so overcome.

What he did that day to older horses in the King George was what set him apart.

Shergar. Probably had to step up again on what he did on the diary to go and

take on the older horse in the King George and he won by four lengths in the

end.

There was no second in the race that he won. No one remembers who was second

because there was only one winner.

He was on track for the pre -large stream at Longshaw in France but they

to give him another run before that so he went to the St. Ledger.

It's a tough race to St. Ledger over a mile and six and a half furlongs.

Doncaster is home straight. It's a long home straight. They usually get racing

early. So you really need to see out a mile and six and a half furlongs in

to win a ledger. And I mean, there were various reports beforehand that he

wasn't just training as well as he had been before Epsom or before the Currer

before Ascot.

And he was actually weak in the market early in the week. But then he was

strengthened up again on the day, I guess, because of his popularity and

of the trainer and the jockey.

Because he won his races so easily, they were very confident that he'd stay the

extra quarter mile.

And Walter rode him carefully, looked after him. He was conscious he wanted to

get him home over the extra distance.

And I think maybe that was the downfall, the only finished fourth.

Which was a disappointment, but it didn't really reflect on his career to

You know, he'd done everything. We could forgive him that one failing.

And after that, they decided not to go to the Ark, to retire in there and then.

So that was the end of his racing career.

The big question was, where would he go to stud?

Would it be France or would it be Ireland?

So it was a huge celebration when it was announced that he would be coming to

Ballymany Stud.

at the Curragh. And he literally came out of training, stepped onto the plane

straight to Ireland in October 1981.

And there was a big homecoming party for him.

They lined the streets to cheer his horse box as it was passing through the

principal town.

That's extraordinary.

A star was coming back home. The star happened to be a horse. But that's what

was. He was a star and he was much loved.

He was the FA Cup winner, and he was the local FA Cup winner.

It was just a great celebration.

It was more of a celebration of welcoming him home to Ireland than it

for the stable welcoming him back as a derby winner, you know, their own

party. This outshone it.

It was an honour and a privilege to have him here.

It was a brilliant fill -up for the Irish bloodstock industry.

to have a stallion of his quality, to have a champion racehorse, to have the

best three -year -old colt of his generation standing as a stallion in

You have to remember at that time he was the most valuable racehorse in the

world.

He was such a sought -after commodity, the shareguard of the stallion. J .K.

Kahn syndicated him. He kept six shares himself, sold the other 34, and those 34

shares, they were bought by some of the top breeders.

in the world. They were sold for $250 ,000 each, which valued the horse at $10

million.

The maps of this were, if he stands for five seasons, at around about $70 ,000

or $80 ,000 a cover, then by the end of the fourth year, the people who, the

owners, basically, the people who own the shares, they would be in profit. So

that's 40 mares every year.

60 or 70 or 80 ,000. By the end of the fourth year, you'd be in profit. So that

was the plan. And that's, you know, it's a sound plan.

By the time the 8th of February rolled around, 1983, he's had one season that's

covered 43 mares.

He was only just a five -year -old. So very, very young stallion with, you

lots more potential ahead.

They're starting to walk him more up his feed, preparing him for the breeding

season.

The horse world is matriarchal.

It's led by the matriarchs. The mares are the ones who keep control.

The stallion's job is only to protect them and to fight off other stallions.

there's one stallion, one group of broodmares.

So they become very masculine, very territorial. They won't mix with other

stallions. You know, these are their mares, and they look after them. That's

their sole job in life.

So that's it. He's full -on big man stallion mode.

I was told that he became, not aggressive, but, you know, he became a

He was grown up now. He wasn't the nice, quiet schoolboy that we'd known.

So I would imagine he would have been quite difficult to handle at that point.

He needed his groom. He needed somebody he trusted.

What was incredible in those days is that there was no security at the start.

He had the best people in the world to look after him, obviously, and the top

people at the start, but there was no security.

You and I could have just walked in.

February 1983 was a cold month.

It was about 8 o 'clock, half eight in the evening when the kidnappers arrived

in Ballymany.

Jim Fitzgerald, who was the head groom there, was living with his family. His

big family had six children and his wife, Madge. They were looking for him,

knocked on the door, and wanted to be taken to Shergar.

They knew what they were looking for. They reputedly said that they wanted two

million for him, so they were very clear about what was going on. It seems to

have only taken a half an hour. Fitzgerald would have shown them to

Shergar was then loaded and taken away.

For the head groom of the Studs.

for something like that to happen. It was unprecedented.

Again, in hindsight, there probably weren't the measures in place to prevent

something like that happening. For such a valuable horse to be outside and to be

so vulnerable, the levels of security obviously weren't as high as they should

have been.

For family, it must have been absolutely horrendous.

The kidnappers had taken with them Jim Fitzgerald.

And they'd done so not only to quiet the whore, this highly wired thoroughbred,

but also as a bargaining chip, if you like, to let the others know that this

too was a hostage.

And that if they tried to do anything peremptory, like to bring in the police,

that he would be in danger of forfeiting his life.

Fitzgerald is driven around in this car on the floor for some time and he's

eventually let out at the side of the road 20, 30 kilometres away from

Dock.

And warned in the strongest terms not to make any contact with the police.

James Fitzgerald, and we have to appreciate the terror that he would have

in at that point, not just in relation to the horse, but also in relation to

own family, and being told, if you contact anyone, your family are going to

harmed, as well as yourself.

I mean, the IRA, given its reputation, given its ruthlessness, given the way in

which it dealt with inconveniences and those it regarded as a threat to its

operations, James Fitzgerald had every reason to be very fearful.

Fitzgerald manages to get to a phone, rings up the studs. Manager Ghislaine

Dreon, who's a Frenchman, tells him what's happened.

Ghislaine sends a car, picks Fitzgerald up, and brings him back to Ballymalley.

And at that point, they have to decide, what are we going to do?

If you were threatened by the IRA, you had good reason to believe they would

make good on their word. And everybody in Ireland knew that, because the IRA

pay people back.

if they inform.

And in fact, the bodies of informers, I'm afraid to say, littered the laneways

of Northern Ireland.

If anything was done to thwart what the abductors wanted to do, there could be

sure and swift retribution.

I mean, the very idea of guns being produced and held to people's heads

immediately interferes with your ability to think logically.

So the safest thing to do is to do exactly as you're told.

Some hours went by, and eventually poor Jim Fitzgerald was abandoned and thrown

out of the horseback and following the vehicle.

Obviously, it's an extremely fraught situation. Fitzgerald had to release his

wife and children, who'd been locked in a room in the house, and Drian, and he

had to decide what were they going to do.

Jim Fitzgerald was told not to contact the Gardaí, so it made sense that he

could contact Eilean Drian, who's the Aga Cairns manager in Ireland, and tell

him what happened.

And then the wheel started going into motion with various other people being

contacted. They don't call the Gardaí. Drion calls Stan Cosgrove, who is a

vet who looked after Shergar and is also one of the syndicate holders in the

animal. Cosgrove in turn rings a friend of his called Sean Berry.

Sean Berry is an ex -army captain and he runs the Thoroughbred Horse Breeders

Association at that time. So he was part of the circle around Shergar and the

whole industry.

And

he

then makes a call to the Minister for Finance, Alan Jukes.

The young Alan Dukes at that stage is the Minister for Finance who's preparing

at the time a budget speech and is now taking a call, a panicked call about

Shergar.

At three o 'clock on that morning, I got a phone call from two very agitated

gentlemen to tell me that Shergar had been stolen, was missing from the studs.

They were extremely... upset. This was a superstar horse and they were clearly

very concerned for its welfare.

I asked them first if they had informed the guards and they said no, they were

afraid to inform the guards so I said you have no alternative.

The guards have to be informed of this. I didn't see immediately what I could do

as Minister for Finance between then and a budget speech the following

afternoon.

I just thought what the hell am I going to do?

You didn't often get calls at 3 o 'clock in the morning. And the phone was on

the bedside locker. And happily, my little directory of Cabinet members'

numbers was just beside it. And I gave them a phone number for the Minister for

Justice, Michael Noonan. I said, that's the man you need to talk to, and he'll

talk to the guards and, you know, get things in operation.

And I went back to sleep.

The Minister for Justice, Michael Noonan, who was then contacted.

It's then.

that the Irish police force, the Gardaí, are contacted.

Now, at that stage, seven or eight hours had elapsed since the kidnapping of

Sergar. And it's reasonable to ask the question as to why the guards were not

the first call that was made. But that was the sequence of call.

And in a way, of course, it gave the kidnappers a very significant head

There was a news blackout for a time.

Eventually the news was let out in time for the evening bulletins, and people

realized that this superstar equine had been taken from under their noses. And

furthermore, there'd been this terrible delay in the police becoming aware.

Shergar, one of the most highly valued horses in the world, was taken by gunmen

from Balamani Stud near Newbridge in County Kildare during the night.

Gunmen entered the stud around 9 o 'clock last night. They held Mr. John

Fitzgerald and his family in a back room at gunpoint.

Forensic experts visited the scene this afternoon, but so far details of where

the £10 million horse was taken remain a mystery.

The world and its mother, in terms of the press pack, descended on this small

village in County Kildare.

It was phantasmagorical and...

unworldly in its nature.

I was in Sussex working on a stud farm and we didn't have internet, you know,

you had a couple of TV channels, you didn't have live streaming or anything.

But the first we knew was we saw it in the sporting life.

There was that horror that we might not see him again.

And I'm just thinking it's tragic. You know, I remembered him two years ago as

nice sweet horse and now he's been taken away and he's also a stallion. You

know, he's going to be difficult to handle. You can't put him into a little

horse box and a little stable somewhere. It was very vivid in the mind at that

point that what a dangerous situation he was in.

Stallions are high octane.

thoroughbreds they are not simple beings even if people will say their

temperaments are brilliant or this or that or the other they're bred for a

really competitive sport and they are very muscular they're half ton so

around 500 kilos on average and they are strong so if they want to do something

no man will stop them stallions are most highly strung than normal

horses, because they can get a bit excited, quote -unquote. And I know

a nice, nice sort of guy.

He was a stallion.

And, you know, when he was taken out of his routine, it would be like us.

Oh, I'm in the back of a horse box I've never been in before. Where are you

taking me? You know, he doesn't know that.

So it was all a bit different for him.

And at one level, while this was an extraordinary run of colour for every

newspaper in every country under the sun, at another level, it was just, it

sad, it was bonkers, it was ludicrous, it was embarrassing.

I think at the time I asked my parents and my grandparents, what was the

feeling, what was the understanding of the whole coverage? Because everybody

went bananas about this. It was fearful.

what it would mean for the industry that this was a possibility. And I think it

changed, regardless of the particular story itself, it changed the landscape

how stud farms were run and how these horses were regarded.

The level of planning and sophistication and simply casing the joint that would

be involved in preparing for an operation like this would require

skill. and manpower, heavy degrees of manpower.

And I think Irish people immediately assumed that the level of

involved here had to mean that it was carried out by Republican subversives.

Irish people really believed that a Rubicon had been crossed.

Whatever about kidnapping people and intimidating your fellow humans?

And it was, in fact, an assault on every person who went to the bookies on a

Saturday to have a little flutter in these islands.

This was hugely embarrassing.

Ballymany was not remotely well protected. It wasn't remotely secure.

The ease of access was actually astounding when you consider Shergar and

value of Shergar. But then there was no precedent for a horse being kidnapped in

this way in Ireland.

Nonetheless, you have to wonder about the security, and I'm sure many did

afterwards. And then the question for the guards, how are we going to handle

what is going inevitably to become a big international story?

For ordinary Irish people, I remember this was not only a humiliation, but it

was also a breach of trust, if you like, because the one area of British -Irish

relations that had not been poisoned by the troubles was bought.

People felt personally offended by this action, including many people who were

Republican sympathisers, thought this was wrong. And so the question arose,

the IRA really do this? Could they have been that bone stupid to have attempted

to pull this off?

When the news of this broke at MI5 level, they were in no doubt, the only

who could have carried this out were the provisional IRA.

It was such a profoundly stupid thing to undertake that you have to wonder if

this was something that was sanctioned at the senior levels of the IRA.

Surely they would have been aware, A, that this could go very badly wrong very

easily. B...

that the public would obviously turn against anyone who was seen to be

Shergar, this celebrity horse, this wonder horse, in harm's way and see what

kind of a national and international focus would it bring on the IRA, a very

negative focus on the IRA.

When you begin to add up those different things, you have to question whether

those who were running the IRA really thought this was a good idea or whether

they were actually made aware of this plan.

Very quickly, the story goes into all sorts of, as we would say today, rabbit

holes involving clairvoyance and mystics and anonymous tip -offs and what have

you. The tabloid media goes crazy.

It's an unbelievable story.

And when I use the word unbelievable, I mean it.

Fancy stealing a horse.

Fancy stealing a Derby winner.

You have Ballymany Stud.

being telephoned, Jim Fitzgerald being telephoned. And when the kidnapping

happened, he was told, there's a code word you will hear from us. The code

is King Neptune.

So somebody rang him, used the code word King Neptune. There was a demand for

two million ransom.

And gradually negotiations that were taking place at a higher level and

calls began to take this story in another direction.

The word hearth is inevitably and justifiably used regarding the public's

perspective. Chief Superintendent Jim Murphy led the investigation.

He became something of a figure of fun.

It could be anywhere in the country. Could be anywhere.

I got a phone call about two o 'clock in the morning. It's the Fleet Street.

We've had the kidnappers with Shogar on. They want you to fly over the belt.

Who am I talking to, by the way?

A man had come forward who was a local detective.

He had heard about an IRA dry run involving a horse box. There was a

produce £80 ,000.

It would have been a down payment, but it was a serious amount of money.

You can have a very sophisticated plan on paper in relation to a height, a

twist or turn, and throw the entire plan into disarray.

The craziest, most lurid allegations were coming forward, and the entire

circuit. transfers to Paris.

Unless the person with the sole power to negotiate hands over the money is on

the phone in five minutes, the whole deal is off. And fed up be messed

There's only one way of describing it. A shitshow.