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The Racehorse and the IRA Season 1 Episode 1
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00:03Shurgar, one of the most highly valued horses in the world, was taken by gunmen from Balimany
00:08Stud near Newbridge in County Kildare during the night. Forensic experts visited the scene this
00:13afternoon, but so far details of where the 10 million pounds horse was taken remain a mystery.
00:21Shurgar moving sweetly on the outside takes up the running. Shurgar's going for the gun.
00:26There's only one horse in it. You need a tiller step to see the rest. Shurgar wins for the army.
00:31Good horses normally win by three lengths. Great horses normally win by four lengths. Shurgar won by
00:36ten lengths. What? Come on. At that time he was the most valuable racehorse in the world.
00:44A star was coming back home. The star happened to be a horse, but that's what he was. He was
00:50a star.
00:51For such a valuable horse to be outside and to be so vulnerable, you couldn't make it up.
00:57If you kidnap an individual, it is essentially a political act. Nobody had conceived of the idea
01:03that a horse could be taken and held ransom. February 1983, it was about eight o'clock,
01:10half eight in the evening. Suddenly a gang of subversives burst on the scene and immediately
01:16started shouting, we're here for Shurgar. We're going to take him. We want two million.
01:21The world and its mother, in terms of the press pack, descended on this small village.
01:26I got a phone call from this voice, which I'll never ever forget, said, we're watching you
01:31from across the street. A man using the fitting codename of Arkel instructed the journalist to
01:37drive to an address in County Down, 30 miles outside the city.
01:42Three guys jumped out with balacabas, machine guns, and one comes round to my side. And I thought
01:49they were just going to spray the car and kill us. For the government of the day, this was an
01:55international security embarrassment. What were the police doing?
01:59When this guy who said he was from the IRA and the other ones who stole used the codeword,
02:04and I immediately, that was the codeword. And I'd never told anybody about it. And I realized
02:10then that that was the guy who I'd been talking to. There's only one way of describing it, a shitshow.
02:41On the 8th of February, 1983, Shurgar was just retiring for the night. He'd covered a mirror that day,
02:48very happy with himself, very well fed automatically on the spot. And everything had quietened down
02:54from about 6 p.m. Don't forget, it's February, so nightfall had come early. We're talking about a
03:02very inaccessible and remote part of County Kildare. One road in and one road out.
03:13Silence had fallen. There were barely any rocks crowing in the bleak trees. And then suddenly,
03:18a gang of subversives burst on the scene and were suddenly barking orders descending and individuals
03:25knowing exactly where to go. They knock on the door of Jim Fitzgerald, who is the head groom.
03:34He's inside the house. His son, Bernard, opens the door. And these couple of characters wearing
03:40balaclavas, one of them reportedly dressed as a guard, pushed past the child, knocking him down
03:46into the living room and immediately start roaring and shouting,
03:49we're here for Shurgar, we're going to take him, we want two million.
03:53They usher all the family, several children, a wife and Fitzpatrick into the kitchen.
04:00Don't anybody call the guards? They're all armed, of course. And they take Fitzgerald away
04:06over to the stables where Shurgar is. They have brought a horse box towed by one of the vehicles
04:13up to the stable. And it suddenly became clear that they were taking this wonder horse. And we
04:21had the letting down of a backboard and the clattering of hooves going up and people could
04:25not believe it. I'd imagine it equates to something like somebody walking into the Tower
04:31of London and taking the Crown Jewels with no security around and walking straight out. Here's
04:38a piece of jewellery worth 10 million pounds in 1983 with no security.
04:47Fitzgerald himself is bundled into another car. He's told to lie on the floor, a blanket or a coat or
04:53something is put over him. He's told to shut up. And that vehicle leaves as well, leaving the family,
04:58locked in this room and told say nothing to nobody. And within virtually no time, the horse was
05:06motoring down this long avenue, past those dark trees and out into nothingness, into the void,
05:15never to be seen again.
05:29He's going to win by a big margin. Shurgar going a long way clear now.
05:36What an amazingly comfortable trial for Shurgar.
05:44Shurgar going to the post with an awful lot of money resting between his ears.
05:51Shurgar was one of the most athletic middle distance derby winning superstars that had enormous
05:59stride that simply pulverized the opposition. He was poetry in motion at his best in the summer of 1981.
06:08He was the superstar horse of the year. There was nothing to touch him.
06:13The thrill of the crowd, the roars of the people in the grandstand as this unimaginable beast flashed past
06:21the winning post. And everybody's celebrating a thoroughbred.
06:27There are 9,000 foals born every year in Ireland alone. He was one in 50,000.
06:34Shurgar's going for the gun. There's only one horse in it. You need it till he's kept to see the
06:38last
06:39fear of his field. He's climbed this mountain. He has eased up. Shurgar wins the army.
06:50Irish people have always been synonymous with horses down through the years and those horsemanship
06:55skills have been passed down through generations for eons. It all really begins with Vincent O'Brien.
07:03Vincent O'Brien was a brilliant trainer of horses. He excelled in national hunt racing before he moved
07:09onto the flat. The Cheltenham rivalry between the Irish and the British, that began with Vincent O'Brien
07:15bringing horses over on the cattle boats over to Cheltenham and racing them over there and winning the
07:19gold cup and winning the champion hurdle. It was a time when Irish racing just began to start to make
07:26inroads into being able to be competitive at the highest level internationally. If you go into most pubs
07:33in Ireland, there will be on the wall a picture of Dawn Run or Istabrak or Arkell.
07:40No country does it better. Despite our size, despite our population, we can win. I think that's why
07:50people regard the Irish horse as probably the best in the world and they have been consistently so
07:58for decades. I suppose a quantum leap for horses in Ireland was the stallion tax exemption that was
08:07introduced in 1969. The former prime minister, Charles J Hawkey, he was a Trumpian figure. He was
08:19transactional, he was get things done, but he had a great passion for horses. He was the one when he
08:27was
08:27minister for finance before he was prime minister. He introduced a remarkable tax concession, which
08:33was all the stallion income was tax-free. In hindsight, it was a brilliant move for the
08:41bloodstock industry in Ireland. It meant that stallion owners could have stallions here and when
08:46the stallions are here, then the mares follow them and then the foals from the mares are born here and
08:52stay in Ireland. And that'd be God's title as well as in Galileo and Honsha and Carlyon and all those
08:56top-class
08:56horses who went on. And you know, even now, the ripples of that time and of those horses they're
09:01seeing in Irish racing today. Shargar was born and reared and bred in Ireland because of that strategy.
09:11At the same time, there was political instability in the Republic of Ireland. There were three general
09:16elections between 1981 and 1982. There are serious political rows about managing the national finances.
09:23The unemployment rate went over 15% in 1983. There was a sense of crisis around the essence of the
09:33state and whether it was working. And then overlaying all of that was this existential threat to the state
09:41itself coming from the IRA, from the violence in Northern Ireland spilling over into the Republic.
09:51In order to carry out a conflict and to wage war against the British state, the IRA needed
09:57millions of pounds annually. And they were sucking it up from everywhere and they needed to
10:06undertake fundraising action. Some of it's perfectly legitimate. Most of it is not. And it involves
10:12extortion and protection rackets in Northern Ireland. Some of it came from pubs all over Ireland
10:18and Friday nights and Saturday nights, fellows going around with tin cans collecting money for the
10:23prisoners, quote unquote, for the IRA. There was also massive donations coming in from the United States.
10:30There was an organisation called NorAid, which was involved in fundraising, went around the Irish pubs
10:36and clubs to show loyalty to the old country. And a lot of it came from bank robberies. There were
10:43a lot
10:43of bank robberies in Northern Ireland and there were a lot of bank robberies and post office robberies in
10:48the Republic. It was a common sight in the 1980s to see post office vans and Brinksmart vans and Securicore
10:56vans being escorted from the central bank to banks distributing money, escorted by armed troops and
11:04armed guardee because they were constantly being attacked by the IRA. As the security tightens on
11:10cash transits and tightens around banks and post offices, they have to get new ways so they start
11:15kidnapping. Executives like Don Tidy of supermarket chain and indeed a Ferenca factory boss in Limit called
11:24Teada Haramau, which led to a long siege at a house in Monaster Evan. There was a very prominent
11:31Irish supermarket businessman, Ben Dunn. He was traveling to Northern Ireland to open a new
11:36supermarket there and he was kidnapped in South Armagh by the IRA and he was held for a number of
11:42days.
11:42He was released unharmed and it's a very murky business. Some people say 1.5 million was paid over,
11:48some people say 300,000. It's just not known but certainly some money was paid. They were moving
11:55from robbery and extortion into kidnappings. Figures who were seen as popular and are also regarded as
12:04individuals who should not be any part of this struggle and should not be victims of this struggle.
12:10Those kind of operations could not only go wrong but they could also of course generate
12:14all the wrong headlines for the IRA. If you kidnap an individual it is essentially a political act
12:20and it's understood by your fellow men and women that that's what it is. However, horses don't hold
12:27political opinions. Nobody had conceived of the idea that a horse could be taken and held ransom.
12:42Shilgar carried the famous green-red epaulets of one of the richest men in the world and the biggest
12:47racehorse owners in the world, His Highness the Aga Khan. His stud farms were strategically placed,
12:54one in Normandy and two here in Kildare. The Aga Khan's involvement goes back
13:02to the early decades of the 20th century when his grandfather became involved in bloodstock and
13:08breeding in Ireland. Mumtaz Mahal was one of the first horses that he owned. She was a great racehorse
13:17but she also retired to stud and founded a great dynasty. Shilgar came from that dynasty.
13:24This Colt emerges, he's a homebred of the Aga Khan's, he's sent to Sir Michael Stout in Newmarket to be
13:31trained and the story goes that they were always working back from Epsom. He arrived at Michael's
13:39Beechhurst stables in Newmarket as a very young two-year-old in the spring. Michael Stout, he was only
13:47getting going then but he's been one of the most successful trainers ever in Britain. Up there with
13:52Sir Henry Cecil, he was a brilliant trainer of racehorses and it wasn't surprising that the Aga Khan
13:57would choose to have horses with him at the time. Shilgar was seen as an Irish horse despite obviously
14:04the flavour of its name owed more to the Aga Khan but he was delighted to invest in Ireland and
14:10this
14:10was the one bright spot in the 1980s that we had the confidence of international investors in relation
14:16to our blood stock when factories were closing down all over the place and we were just hoping
14:20for an economic break but it seemed things were getting worse and worse.
14:30Ireland was part of Britain politically up to 1921 when what is now the Republic of Ireland gained
14:38independence. The reality of the situation is that for the 50 years after that break Northern Ireland
14:45was essentially a sectarian state. The truth is the Catholics in Northern Ireland had a very very bad deal
14:53for 50 years. State jobs, state services, roads, universities, houses were not accessible to the
15:03Catholic minority. They were treated as second-class citizens. That boiled over in the late 1960s.
15:10Inspired by the civil rights movement in America, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, NICRA,
15:16started marching demanding equality in education, demanding equality in houses, demanding equality full
15:22stop and they were met unfortunately by state violence. They were battened off the streets by the police.
15:30When the British army was sent to Northern Ireland, they were welcomed by the nationalist people,
15:36by the Catholic people because the British army came in initially to try and keep the peace. That
15:41quickly turned when the IRA grew out of extinction, if you like, revived itself in a new form in Northern
15:49Ireland in the early 1970s and started what became in effect a war. There were 83 people killed as a
15:57result of the troubles in 1983 alone and more than 100 the year before that. There was obviously huge concern
16:04about the impact and capability of the IRA as a terrorist organisation. The relationship with Britain
16:11was difficult to put it mildly. There were a couple of areas in life where those tensions didn't
16:17exist. They were put to one side. One was rugby. The Irish rugby team is an all-Island rugby team.
16:23And the other area, of course, was horse racing.
16:33I first saw Shergon as a two-year-old at Newbury. He ran in September in the Criss Plate,
16:43which was over a mile, which is quite an extreme distance for a young two-year-old.
16:49He won that day by about two and a half lengths. He was quite impressed if he went into everybody's
16:54notebooks.
16:56Shergar made the progress that you would expect him to make and then ran in the stand-down classic trial.
17:05And he won it by 10 lengths. For an Irish horse to be competitive in an English classic
17:12was kind of the dream. That's when people started to talk about him as a potential classic horse, maybe
17:18a potential derby horse. The Epsom Derby is one of the oldest classics and it is deemed and regarded
17:26as the breed-shaping race. The race that if a colt can win that, they have firmly established themselves
17:33as a stallion prospect to stand at stud. If you can win that and win it impressively, you're probably
17:38the best in your class. Wolf Swimmer and get him the perfect ride, just behind the pace towards the
17:45outside with options everywhere. He wasn't going to get boxed in. It wasn't until really about two
17:50and a half furlongs out that Wolf Swimmer and just got down and started to ride him. And when he
17:53did,
17:53like the pace that he showed to pick up and come away from his rivals.
17:59It's like he turns into a Ferrari. He just races off and it looks effortless.
18:08I almost felt like saying, has there been a false start? Because this horse was so far in front.
18:15There's only one horse in it. You need a churroscope to see the race. They have a problem to go.
18:21Wow, it was... It was one of those.
18:24He's climbed this mountain. He has eased up. Shergar wins the derby.
18:29This is the derby. Best horses in the world. And the one horse is miles clear. The horses normally
18:34win by two lengths. Good horses normally win by three lengths. Great horses normally win by four lengths.
18:39Sure got one by ten lengths. What? Come on.
18:43It was a season. What was it like out there?
18:44He sat. Well, I was just a passenger on a very good horse.
18:47You were always country. Yes.
18:49It was my first derby for ITV. I was the first man to get to it, apart from the stable.
18:55Then I went up with
18:56the microphone and said, hey, what was that like winning the derby by ten lengths? And it was the first
19:01derby interview that had ever been put out on TV. Because in the old days, you wait till the jockey
19:07weighed in.
19:07But we decided we had to do it. And we got him live on the back of Shergar.
19:12Even now, that's still the record for a derby win. No horse has won the race by ten lengths since
19:17then.
19:17And we've had lots of top-class derby winners in the meantime. It's just phenomenal.
19:28Margaret Thatcher, as British Prime Minister, has declared war on the IRA. She's not going to treat
19:33them as having legitimate political aims. And she's not going to treat their prisoners as
19:38legitimate political prisoners. And of course, that had led to the hunger strikes as well,
19:41which captured attention, not just in Ireland, but internationally.
19:45I will never forget the palpable tension, a kind of darkness about politics, because this was the time
19:53when Shergar was winning his races, that the hunger, H-Block hunger strike was on.
19:59What you had was a conflict over prison status. People who were convicted of terrorist-related crimes
20:05demanded to be treated, as they would see it, as political prisoners, and did not want to wear
20:11prison uniform. Those demands manifested themselves inside the prisons in terms of refusing to wear
20:19prison uniform. There was a thing called the blanket protest, where prisoners simply wrapped
20:24themselves in blankets. There was then the appalling dirty protest, which was prisoners refusing to
20:31use lavatory facilities and smearing the walls of their cells with their own excrement. And then they went
20:38on hunger strike in 1981, at the time of the elections, to heighten the pressure on the government.
20:45And then they started dying. Bobby Sands has died after 66 days of hunger strike.
20:53The hunger strike period was the moment that Ireland teetered on the brink.
20:59There was a visceral atmosphere of hatred towards the British government and the single
21:05persona of Margaret Thatcher, whom Irish people in general perceived was allowing political prisoners to
21:12die. People came out onto the streets willy-nilly and wearing black armbands. They appeared from
21:20from nowhere, and there were demonstrations outside the GPO. And of course, the funeral was gigantic.
21:27But the succession of these deaths and coffins being exploited had turned the political situation
21:34into a powder keg. And of course, it acted as a recruiting sergeant for the IRA.
21:41The IRA needed three to four million pounds a year to conduct its campaign. And they were very concerned,
21:48obviously, the authorities, about where they were going to get that money from.
21:51Now, Shergar was valued at 10 million pounds, which is an extraordinary sum in the early 1980s.
21:57And if you consider the constant money worries and challenges that the IRA had, perhaps that idea of
22:04a monetary price, that that could solve a lot of short-term problems for the IRA.
22:10Someone comes up with the idea that they're going to kidnap a racehorse.
22:21People would always be looking out for a double derby winner, to do the Epsom and the Curragh double,
22:26because not many horses do that. The fact of the matter is that the Aga Can would very much like
22:32to
22:32have success on Irish tracks. I said, I'm going to get my sorry ass to the Curragh on the 30th
22:39of June in 1981.
22:42I was there that day, and the whole sense of awe that this was one of the best horses ever.
22:50Lester said he's never ridden a horse that was travelling so easy in a derby, so comfortable.
22:57It took his breath away that the horse was just cruising with him. He only won by four lengths,
23:03but he was stopping at that point. You know, he was literally just counting home.
23:08He was then the best of his age group. The big question mark was whether he could beat the older
23:16horses, the older generation. That would be the real test of Shergarh.
23:22He walked into the parade ring, and everybody recognised him straight away, and there was just
23:27a spontaneous round of applause, and he hadn't won at that point. People were just so overcome.
23:34What he did that day to older horses in the King George was what set him apart.
23:40Shergarh probably had to step up again on what he did on the derby to go and take on the
23:44older
23:44horses in the King George, and he won by four lengths in the end.
23:48There was no second in the races he won. No one remembers who was second, because there was only
23:53one winner. He was on track for the Arc de Triomphe, the Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp in France,
23:59but they wanted to give him another run before that, so he went to the St. Leger.
24:04It's a tough race to St. Leger, over a mile and six and a half furlongs.
24:09Doncaster's home straight, it's a long home straight. They usually get racing early,
24:12so you really need to see out a mile and six and a half furlongs in order to win a
24:16St. Leger.
24:16And, I mean, there were various reports beforehand that he wasn't just training as well as he had
24:21been before Epsom or before the Curl or before Ascot, and he was actually weak in the market early
24:26in the week. But then he strengthened up again on the day, I guess, because of his popularity and
24:31because of the trainer and the jockey.
24:34Because he won his races so easily, they were very confident that he'd stay the extra quarter mile.
24:39And Walter rode him carefully, looked after him. He was conscious he wanted to get him home over the
24:47extra distance. And I think maybe that was the downfall. He only finished fourth, which was a
24:53disappointment, but it didn't really reflect on his career to date. You know, he'd done everything.
24:59We could forgive him that one failing.
25:02And after that, they decided not to go to the Arc to retire in there and then,
25:07so that was the end of his racing career.
25:19The big question was, where would he go to stud? Would it be France or would it be Ireland?
25:26So it was a huge celebration when it was announced that he would be coming to Ballymany's stud at the
25:32Curra.
25:32And he literally came out of training, stepped onto the plane straight to Ireland in October 1981.
25:42And there was a big homecoming party for him.
25:46They lined the streets to cheer his horse box as it was passing through the principal towns.
25:51That's extraordinary.
25:53A star was coming back home. The star happened to be a horse, but that's where he was.
25:59He was a star and he was much loved.
26:01He was the FA Cup winner and he was the local FA Cup winner.
26:06It was just a great celebration. It was more of a celebration of welcoming him home to Ireland than
26:13it had been for the stable, welcoming him back as a derby winner, you know, their own private party.
26:20This outshone it. It was an honour and a privilege to have him here.
26:26It was a brilliant fill-up for the Irish plus stock industry to have a stallion of his quality,
26:31to have a champion racehorse, to have the best three-year-old colt of his generation standing as a stallion
26:36in Ireland.
26:38You have to remember at that time, he was the most valuable racehorse in the world.
26:45He was such a sought-after commodity, the shareguard as a stallion.
26:49Gega Can syndicated him. He kept six shares himself, sold the other 34, and those 34 shares,
26:54they were bought by some of the top breeders in the world.
26:58They were sold for £250,000 each, which valued the horse at £10 million.
27:04The maths of this were, if he stands for five seasons at around about £70,000 or £80,000 a
27:10cover,
27:10then by the end of the fourth year, the people who, the owners basically, the people who own the shares,
27:17they would be in profit. So that's 40 mares every year at £60,000 or £70,000 or £80,000.
27:23And by the end of the fourth year, you'd be in profit. So that was the plan. And that's, you
27:26know,
27:26it's a sad, it's a sad plan.
27:29By the time the 8th of February rolled around, 1983, he's had one season that stood, he's covered 43 mares.
27:35He was only just a five-year-old. So very, very young stallion with, you know, lots more potential ahead.
27:40They're starting to walk him more up his feed, preparing him for the breeding season.
27:47The horse world is matriarchal. It's led by the matriarchs. The mares are the ones who keep control.
27:56The stallion's job is only to protect them and to fight off other stallions. So there's one stallion,
28:02one group of brood mares. So they become very masculine, very territorial. They won't mix with
28:10other stallions. You know, these are their mares and they look after them. That's their sole job in life.
28:16So that's it. He's full on big man stallion mode. I was told that he became not aggressive, but,
28:26you know, he became a big boy. He was grown up now. He wasn't the nice, quiet school boy that
28:31we'd known.
28:32So I would imagine he would have been quite difficult to handle at that point. He needed his groom. He
28:39needed somebody he trusted. What was incredible in those days is that there was no security.
28:45at the stud. He had the best people in the world to look after him, obviously,
28:50and the top people at the stud, but there was no security. You and I could have just walked in.
29:05February 1983 was a cold month. It was about eight o'clock, half eight in the evening,
29:11when the kidnappers arrived in Ballymanie.
29:19Jim Fitzgerald, who was the head groom there, was living with his family. His big family had six
29:24children and his wife, Madge. They were looking for him, knocked on the door and wanted to be taken
29:29to Shergar. They knew what they were looking for. They reputedly said that they wanted two million
29:35for him, so they were very clear about what was going on. It seems to have only taken a half
29:39an
29:40hour. Fitzgerald would have shown them to Shergar. Shergar was then loaded and taken away.
29:46For the head groom of the stud, for something like that to happen, it was unprecedented. Again,
29:51in hindsight, there probably weren't the measures in place to prevent something like that happening.
29:56For such a valuable horse to be outside and to be so vulnerable, the levels of security obviously
30:03weren't as high as they should have been. For family, it must have been absolutely horrendous.
30:08The kidnappers had taken with them Jim Fitzgerald, and they'd done so not only to quiet the horse,
30:13this highly wired thoroughbred, but also as a bargaining chip, if you like, to let the others
30:19know that this man too was a hostage, and that if they tried to do anything peremptory, like to bring
30:26in the police, that he would be in danger of forfeiting his life. Fitzgerald is driven around in this car
30:35on the floor for some time, and he's eventually let out at the side of the road, 20, 30 kilometres
30:41away from Ballymany's stud. And warned in the strongest terms not to make any contact with the
30:50police. James Fitzgerald, and we have to appreciate the terror that he would have been in at that point,
30:56and not just in relation to the horse, but also in relation to his own family, and being told,
31:00if you contact anyone, your family are going to be harmed, as well as yourself. I mean,
31:04the IRA, given its reputation, given its ruthlessness, given the way in which it dealt
31:09with inconveniences, and those it regarded as a threat to its operations, James Fitzgerald had
31:14every reason to be very fearful. Fitzgerald manages to get to a phone, rings up the stud,
31:20manager Ghislaine Dréon, who's a Frenchman, tells him what's happened. Ghislaine sends a car,
31:27picks Fitzgerald up, and brings him back to Ballymany. And at that point, they have to decide,
31:32what are we going to do? If you were threatened by the IRA, you had good reason to believe they
31:37would make good on their word. And everybody in Ireland knew that, because the IRA did pay people
31:43back, if they informed. And in fact, the bodies of informers, I'm afraid to say, littered the
31:49laneways of Northern Ireland. If anything was done to thwart what the abductors wanted to do,
31:54there could be sure and swift retribution. I mean, the very idea of guns being produced and held to
32:00people's heads immediately interfered with your ability to think logically. So the safest thing to
32:06do is to do exactly as you're told.
32:17Some hours went by, and eventually, poor Jim Fitzgerald was abandoned and thrown out of the
32:22horseback and following the vehicle. Obviously, it's an extremely fraught situation. Fitzgerald has
32:28to release his wife and children who've been locked in a room in the house, and Drian and he have
32:34to
32:34decide what are they going to do. Jim Fitzgerald was told not to contact the GardaÃ. So, you know,
32:41it made sense that he should contact Ilan Drian, who's the Aga Khan's manager in Ireland, and tell
32:46him what happened. And then the wheels started going into motion with various other people being contacted.
32:51Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian Drian� residues at
32:58theman H市. He was great, the team of police changed our efforts为 him to visit and grant
33:30And he then makes a call to the Minister for Finance, Alan Dukes.
33:34The young Alan Dukes at that stage is the Minister for Finance
33:38who's preparing, at the time, a budget speech
33:40and is now taking a call, a panicked call, about Shargar.
33:46At 3 o'clock on that morning, I got a phone call from two very agitated gentlemen
33:52to tell me that Shargar had been stolen, was missing from the stud.
33:58They were extremely upset.
34:01This was a superstar horse and they were clearly very concerned for its welfare.
34:07I asked them first if they had informed the guards and they said no,
34:10they were afraid to inform the guards, so I said you have no alternative.
34:13The guards have to be informed of this.
34:15I didn't see immediately what I could do as Minister for Finance
34:19between then and a budget speech the following afternoon.
34:24I just thought, what the hell am I going to do?
34:27You didn't often get calls at 3 o'clock in the morning
34:29and the phone was on the bedside locker
34:32and happily my little directory of Cabinet members' phone numbers was just beside it.
34:37And I gave them a phone number for the Minister for Justice, Michael Noonan,
34:42and said, that's the man you need to talk to and he'll talk to the guards
34:46and, you know, get things in operation.
34:48And I went back to sleep.
34:50The Minister for Justice, Michael Noonan, who was then contacted,
34:54it's then that the Irish police force, the GardaÃ, are contacted.
34:58Now, at that stage, seven or eight hours had elapsed since the kidnapping of Shurgar.
35:04And it's reasonable to ask the question as to why the guards were not the first call that was made.
35:12But that was the sequence of calls.
35:14And in a way, of course, it gave the kidnappers a very significant head start.
35:24There was a news blackout for a time.
35:27Eventually the news was let out in time for the evening bulletins
35:31and people realised that this superstar equine had been taken from under their noses
35:37and furthermore there'd been this terrible delay in the police becoming aware.
35:43Shurgar, one of the most highly valued horses in the world,
35:46was taken by gunmen from Balimany Stud near Newbridge in County Kildare during the night.
35:52Gunmen entered the stud around nine o'clock last night.
35:55They held Mr. John Fitzgerald and his family in a back room at gunpoint.
36:00Forensic experts visited the scene this afternoon.
36:03But so far, details of where the ten million pounds horse was taken remain a mystery.
36:11The world and its mother, in terms of the press pack,
36:14descended on this small village in County Kildare.
36:17It was phantasmagorical and unworldly in its nature.
36:22I was in Sussex working on a stud farm and we didn't have internet.
36:29You know, you had a couple of TV channels.
36:31You didn't have live streaming or anything.
36:33But the first we knew was we saw it in the sporting life.
36:36There was that horror that we might not see him again.
36:43And I'm just thinking it's tragic.
36:46You know, I remembered him two years ago as a nice sweet horse.
36:50And now he's been taken away and he's also a stallion.
36:54You know, he's going to be difficult to handle.
36:56You can't put him into a little horse box and a little stable somewhere.
37:00It was very vivid in the mind at that point that what a dangerous situation he was in.
37:08Stallions are high-octane thoroughbreds.
37:12They are not simple beings, even if people will say their temperaments are brilliant or this or that or the
37:18other.
37:18They're bred for a really competitive sport and they are very muscular.
37:23They're half a ton.
37:25So they're around 500 kilos on average and they are strong.
37:28So if they want to do something, no man will stop them.
37:34Stallions are more highly strung than normal horses because they can get a bit excited, quote unquote.
37:41And I know Shogar was a nice, nice sort of guy.
37:45He was a stallion.
37:47And, you know, when he's taken out of his routine, it would be like us.
37:51Oh, I'm in the back of a horse box I've never been in before.
37:54Where are you taking me?
37:55You know, he doesn't know that.
37:57So it was all a bit different for him.
38:02And at one level, while this was an extraordinary run of color for every newspaper in every country under the
38:09sun,
38:09at another level, it was just, it was sad.
38:13It was bonkers.
38:15It was ludicrous.
38:16It was embarrassing.
38:18I think at the time I asked my parents and my grandparents, what was the feeling?
38:23What was the understanding of the whole coverage?
38:25Because everybody went bananas about this.
38:27It was fearful of what it would mean for the industry that this was a possibility.
38:32And I think it changed, regardless of the particular story itself,
38:38it changed the landscape of how stud farms were run and how these horses were regarded.
38:44The level of planning and sophistication and simply casing the joint
38:48that would be involved in preparing for an operation like this
38:52would require expertise and skill and manpower.
38:57heavy degrees of manpower.
38:59And I think Irish people immediately assumed that the level of professionalism involved here
39:03had to mean that it was carried out by Republican subversives.
39:08And Irish people really believed that a Rubicon had been crossed.
39:12Whatever about kidnapping people and intimidating your fellow humans.
39:17And it was, in fact, an assault on every person who went to the bookies on a Saturday
39:22to have a little flutter in these islands.
39:27This was hugely embarrassing.
39:29Bally Mani was not remotely well protected.
39:32It wasn't remotely secure.
39:34The ease of access was actually astounding when you consider Shurgar and the value of Shurgar.
39:40But then there was no precedent for a horse being kidnapped in this way in Ireland.
39:46Nonetheless, you have to wonder about the security, and I'm sure many did afterwards.
39:50And then the question for the guards, how are we going to handle what is going inevitably
39:55to become a big international story?
39:58The ordinary Irish people I remember, this was not only a humiliation,
40:02but it was also a breach of trust, if you like,
40:05because the one area of British-Irish relations that had not been poisoned by the troubles was sport.
40:10People felt personally offended by this action,
40:13including many people who were Republican sympathisers, thought this was wrong.
40:17And so the question arose, did the IRA really do this?
40:20Could they have been that bone-stupid to have attempted to pull this off?
40:27When news of this broke at MI5 level, they were in no doubt.
40:31The only people who could have carried this out were the provisional IRA.
40:38It was such a profoundly stupid thing to undertake that you have to wonder
40:44if this was something that was sanctioned at the senior levels of the IRA.
40:49Surely they would have been aware, A, that this could go very badly wrong very easily,
40:55B, that the public would obviously turn against anyone
40:59who was seen to be putting Shergar, this celebrity horse, this wonder horse, in harm's way,
41:05and see what kind of a national and international focus would it bring on the IRA,
41:11a very negative focus on the IRA.
41:13When you begin to add up those different things,
41:16you have to question whether those who were running the IRA
41:20really thought this was a good idea,
41:21or whether they were actually made aware of this plan.
41:25Very quickly, the story goes into all sorts of, as we would say today,
41:30rabbit holes involving clairvoyance and mystics
41:33and anonymous tip-offs and what have you.
41:36The tabloid media goes crazy.
41:39It's an unbelievable story.
41:41And when I use the word unbelievable, I mean it.
41:45Fancy stealing a horse?
41:47Fancy stealing a Derby winner?
41:49You have Ballymany Studd being telephoned, Jim Fitzgerald being telephoned,
41:55and when the kidnapping happened, he was told,
41:58there's a code word, you will hear from us, the code word is King Neptune.
42:03So somebody rang him, used the code word King Neptune.
42:07There was a demand for two million ransom.
42:10And gradually, negotiations that were taking place at a higher level
42:15and ransom calls began to take this story in another direction.
42:21The word farce is inevitably and justifiably used
42:25regarding the public spectacle.
42:28Chief Superintendent Jim Murphy led the investigation.
42:31He became something of a figure of fun.
42:34It could be anywhere in the country.
42:36Could be anywhere.
42:38I got a phone call about two o'clock in the morning.
42:41It's the Fleet Street.
42:42We've had the kidnappers with Shergar on.
42:44They want you to fly over to Belfast.
42:47Who am I talking to, by the way?
42:49A man had come forward who was a local detective.
42:51He had heard about an IRA dry run involving a horse box.
42:57There was a proposal to produce £80,000.
43:01It would have been a down payment, but it was a serious amount of money.
43:04You can have a very sophisticated plan on paper in relation to a heist.
43:09A small twist or turn can throw the entire plan into disarray.
43:14The craziest, most lurid allegations were coming forward
43:17and the entire circus transfers to Paris.
43:21Unless the person with the sole power to negotiate hands over the money
43:24is on the phone in five minutes, the whole deal is off.
43:27I'm fed up being messed around.
43:29There's only one way of describing it.
43:31A shitshow.
43:35A shitshow.
43:37A shitshow.
43:38A shitshow.
43:43A shitshow.
43:50A shitshow.
43:52A shitshow.
43:53A shitshow.
43:54A shitshow.
43:56A shitshow.
43:56A shitshow.
43:57A shitshow.
43:57A shitshow.
43:58A shitshow.
43:59A shitshow.
43:59A shitshow.
44:00A shitshow.
44:01A shitshow.
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