The Shergar kidnapping that sent shockwaves through the racing world and beyond
My dad and my grandfather were locked in splendid isolation with only their words for company, as they both 'called' Shergar home.
Early ripples of excitement from the stands during a race are easily drowned out by silence when you’ve noise-cancelling headphones clamped on and a mic in hand.
But as the excitement on the track reaches a crescendo entering the final furlong, so too can the commentator, even if the result is well beyond doubt.
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“He’s winning it so easily! It’s Shergar first, and the rest are nowhere,” was the line my grandfather Michael O’Hehir coined as he commentated on that 1981 Irish Derby.
RTE’s commentary box was at the top of the Curragh grandstand, the highest vantage point possible at the Kildare track from which to observe flat racing’s new star enhance a glowing CV.
Directly below him on the next level down, my dad Tony O’Hehir was providing the course commentary for those at the track, as Lester Piggot eased Shergar to victory.
“That was Shergar’s only race in Ireland as the rest were all in England,” says Tony. “Looking back on it now, yeah, it’s nice to say you commentated on that one! He was a high class, brilliant horse but he wasn't strictly speaking an Irish horse.
“He wasn't trained here and had made his name in England, even though his owner, the Aga Khan, had big stud involvement in Ireland.”
Shergar’s victory in the Irish Derby came just three weeks after his scintillating success in the Epson Derby, pulverising his rivals to win by 10 lengths.
That was in the hands of regular jockey Walter Swinburn - suspended for the Irish Derby - and it remains the biggest winning margin of the Derby since it was first run in 1780.
Tony O’Hehir (centre), racing commentator and journalist, at the Horse Racing Ireland awards with his family
(Image: ©INPHO/James Crombie)
But Shergar wouldn’t just make headlines in the racing pages. He became national and international news, but for altogether more sinister reasons.
The horse was famously kidnapped two years later from Ballymany Stud in Newbridge, just a four-minute drive from the scene of that Irish Derby success.
Shergar’s owner - others also had shares in the horse once it went to stud - never did pay the £2 million ransom demanded by the captors, widely believed to be the IRA.
My dad was appointed Irish correspondent of the Racing Post when the newspaper was first launched in 1986, so he wasn’t on the daily news beat in 1983 as such.
But as an established commentator at the time, and contributor to various print publications, he was well-placed to appreciate the impact of the unfolding events.
“It sent shockwaves through the racing industry and became one of those rare racing related stories that made front page news,” he says.
“It led the TV news bulletins here and in the UK for a long, long time, with all sorts of conspiracies and false dawns over where Shergard was and who took him.
Michael O'Hehir, in 1987
(Image: ©INPHO\Billy Stickland)
“My own father (Michael O'Hehir) regularly got phone calls to the house, claiming to know where the horse was. They would be along the lines of ‘go to such and such a pub and meet this fellah who will give you the lowdown on it’.
“It’s hard to remember all the ins and outs of it now, 42 years later, but I know he went out to meet a few of these callers in good faith. It even made the newspapers of the time that my father was getting these phone calls and supposed tip offs. People would often ask him about it at GAA matches too.
“But Derek Thompson, a racing colleague of ours in England, was centrally involved,” he adds of attempts to negotiate with the kidnappers for Shergar’s release.
“It soon became very obvious that it wasn't horsey people that took him because what would the purpose of that be? You couldn't stand him at stud elsewhere. It was clear pretty quickly that there was a dark element to it, and whoever took him thought they would get a fortune.”
Chief Superintendent James Murphy, nicknamed Spud, became the face of the public enquiry in the days after the dramatic seizure.
“I remember his hat!,” laughs my dad. “He wore this big trilby that really stood out and set him apart, but Murphy became a presence in living rooms all around the country.”
Speaking to RTE back in 2013, the well -known racing personality and trainer Ted Walsh touched on the almost black comedic nature of such a brutal story.
“Everybody used to get a great laugh every evening watching the news on television,” said Walsh in that interview. “The Gardaí were stopping cars and looking into the boot of the car. How did you expect to see Shergar in the boot of a car? And the Garda Síochána climbing up a ladder to look into a loft … how’s Shergar going to get up into a loft? There was a right skit.”
But such was the enormity of the unfolding story, it was taken on by news reporters, crime reporters and investigative journalists, rather than racing hacks.
Tony says: “A lot of racing journalism would focus on the here and now and when you think about it, Shergar wasn't actually a racehorse at the time. He was retired, and standing at stud.
“He only served one season as a stallion when he was stolen. He sired 35 foals and of them the only one to achieve anything really significant was a horse called Authaal. He was owned by Sheikh Mohammed and trained by David O’Brien, Vincent O’Brien’s son, who had a very successful if short training career.
“Authaal won the Irish St Leger in 1986, Christy Roche rode him. I remember he dashed off in front and was soon a long way clear and they never caught him. But Authaal didn't do a huge amount in Ireland or Europe after that but was sent to Australia and won two of their big races over there.
“Shergar sired other winners too, but Authaal was easily the best of them. But when Shergar was stolen, the story had gone beyond the racing journalists, it was that big.”
Shergar, after winning the Irish Derby at the Curragh in 1981
(Image: © Billy Stickland/INPHO)
That wasn’t just due to Shergar, though. The connections involved were all high profile too, with the Aga Khan one of the wealthiest people in the world.
Sir Michael Stoute became a legendary trainer and Swinburn, ‘the Choirboy’, only 19 at the time, went on to win three Epsom derbies before his tragic death aged 55 in 2016.
Tony says: “Walter’s father, Wally, was Dermot Weld's stable jockey for years and I knew him and his wife well. I knew Walter himself, not terribly well, but I knew him. My father would have known Stoute and I’d have only met the Aga Khan in the winner’s enclosure after races, so you couldn’t say we were on each other’s Christmas card list!
“The story followed all of them, and they couldn’t ever forget it but, at the same time, they had moved on professionally as the horse was at stud and no longer racing. The trainer, the jockey and the owner all had plenty of success after it, so I guess you do move on in a way.
“But the stories and conspiracies never stopped swirling, although it was all hot air as nobody ever found the horse. And even after all this time, nobody has been able to come up with a factual account of what actually happened.
“In the day or two after it happened, maybe we thought the horse would be found but then it dragged on for days, weeks, months and years. And even now, it’s never been satisfactorily solved.”
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