Horsenaped

Stealing the Aga Khan's prize

It was after dark in the County Kildare countryside 30 miles southwest of Dublin, and Jim Fitzgerald's family had just finished dinner when there was a knock at the door. In burst five or more men, all masked and waving guns. Fitzgerald's wife and five of his children were herded together and locked in a back room. Fitzgerald, 55, head groom at nearby Ballymany Thoroughbred stud farm, was ordered to lead the gunmen to the stable of a certain five-year-old bay stallion.

Scared and a bit dazed, the horseman looped a bridle over the docile animal, then led him into the gang's horse trailer. Fitzgerald was ordered to lie face down in another van, from which he was freed an hour and at least 40 miles later. But by then the most acclaimed and valuable Thoroughbred in Europe, Shergar, was gone, horsenaped. "It was very neat," said a policeman of the caper.

Shergar is worth a fortune. In 1981, 35 investors put up $457,000 apiece for the horse, which was expected to earn $4 million or more a year in stud fees for 15 to 20 years. The thieves knew the breeding business. The four-month stud season begins this week; the first dozen of Shergar's 55 mates, each in season for a month, are already at Ballymany, ready and expensively waiting.

But just who has Shergar? There were several anonymous claimants. The first telephone caller the next morning demanded -L-2 million, presumably Irish pounds ($2.76 million), and a later one just -L-40,000 ($55,200). Other callers said Shergar was dead already, destroyed after an accidental eye injury. Inevitably, there was conjecture about Irish Republican Army involvement.

The criminals' intention was probably to offer the horse for ransom. Shergar would be practically impossible to sell. He would be hard enough to keep hidden. The Thoroughbred requires unusual amounts of exercise, since he has lately been on a special, high-energy diet in anticipation of four months of standing for a different brood mare every other day. Yet allowing him outdoors in the winter cold would be risky for the horse and horsenapers. His coat could be dyed: Shergar has white feet and a striking white blaze running the length of his face. But the stallion also has an unusual and unalterable amount of white in the left eye. Declared the daily Irish Independent: "At least one-third of Ireland would know him on sight."

Shergar was bred, raised and raced by the Aga Khan, 46, who retains 15% ownership and owns the $2.3 million Ballymany stud farm as well. In a two-season European career beginning in 1980, Shergar won six of his eight races, including the Irish and English Derbies, by impressive margins. He was voted Europe's Racehorse of the Year in 1981. The Aga Khan reportedly turned down a $30 million purchase offer from an American for Shergar. The eventual $18.3 million price is the fourth highest in breeding history.

Because combining proven bloodlines is the point in breeding, buying shares in a superstar like Shergar is as close to a sure thing as there is in horse racing. According to one British breeder, the price of Shergar's stud service was $46,200 in advance plus $46,200 more after conception. Last year all but two of Shergar's mares were successfully impregnated.

From St. Moritz, Switzerland, the Aga Khan was not saying much about the theft last week, but his uncle in London was publicly incredulous. Said Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan: "The whole thing seems like a fiction." To Novelist Dick Francis, the onetime champion jockey who writes scrupulously detailed race track mysteries, that allusion was alarming. "I hope the thieves didn't get their ideas from my books," he said. In fact, his 1967 novel Blood Sport concerns the theft of a stellar stallion, not for ransom but to service mares secretly. Francis and others in racing worry now about further high-stakes horse thievery. "If somebody with a gun wants to kidnap a stallion," an Irish breeding authority pointed out, "nobody is going to be able to stop him." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.