A horse, a horse - my kingdom for a horse

Did anyone see that Channel 4 documentary last week about the kidnapping, murder and subsequent disposal of Shergar? Great stuff, so it was.

And why wouldn’t it have been, I hear you ask? It was a can’t-miss job for the programme-makers. The Shergar story, the tale of the abduction that brought new meaning to the term “nap selection”, has it all — money, violence, bloodstock, republicanism, aristocratic intrigue, subterfuge, terrorists, more money, and a cast of thousands, including such strange bedfellows as the Aga Khan, Alan Dukes, Walter Swinburn, IRA squealer Sean O’Callaghan, John Magnier and Johnny Logan (turntable needle screeches to halt on vinyl). Yes, Johnny Logan.
The kidnap took place during the Eurovision crooner’s commercial heyday (though let’s face it, he never enjoyed a critical heyday); it was under Logan’s name that the gang ordered Stan Cosgrove, a vet who owned a £250,000 stake in Shergar, to check into a hotel while acting as a go-between in the negotiations.
(Incidentally, at this point, anyone relating the story of Shergar’s demise is beholden to mention the hapless cigarette smuggler — now a well-known official at a prominent Eircom League club — who chose this particular period, a time when the authorities were turning every single piece of horse-related paraphernalia upside down, to hide his illegal contraband in a fucking horsebox. If a series of Ireland’s Dumbest Criminals ever manages to get commissioned, this eejit surely merits an entire episode of his own. But I digress…)
The initial stages of the kidnapping were characterised by barely believable ineptitude on both sides. First, despite the fact that this was a piece of horseflesh worth three and a half million sterling (a serious amount of money in February 1983), nobody thought to ring the Gardai until something like eight hours after the nag had been ’napped.
At a later stage, another of the negotiators, Derek Thompson (then a racing journalist, now a commentator for Channel 4), found himself talking to one of the kidnappers on the phone. Attempting to play for time, he kept stalling the conversation in order to keep the criminal on the line for as long as possible.
Hanging up, Thompson expressed his relief that the phone call had been a sufficiently lengthy one to be traced. Not so. “The man who does the tracing goes off duty at midnight,” said one of the cops.
The incompetence of the Gardai was matched, blunder for blunder, by that of the kidnap gang. When handing in their initial demand for a £2m ransom, they were under the impression that Shergar was owned by just one man, the Aga Khan.
This was not the case — the rights to the stallion were divided among a small army of syndicate members, most of whom were perfectly content to collect the insurance (of which, more anon). The Aga Khan himself, a veteran of numerous extortion plots down the years, in any event had long since made an executive decision to tell the kidnappers to take a flying fuck at the moon. No ransom would be paid.
Yet even this masterpiece of poor planning wasn’t the most glaring of the many schoolboy errors committed by the kidnappers. In a move of incredible dimness, they had seized the horse while he was in stud, and therefore at his most erratic. So you have this monstrously muscular, large, priapic beast thrashing around in a tiny little trailer, snorting and stamping his hooves, crazed with a combination of blind terror and insatiable randiness, until one of the Provos panics, draws a gun, and recklessly blasts poor Shergar’s brains all over the walls.
So that, basically, was that, with the greatest racehorse of his generation consigned to a pitiable end in an unmarked grave somewhere in the wilds of Leinster; the IRA missing out on the proceeds from their impromptu spot of fund-raising; and Stan Cosgrove, the poor sod, not even having the consolation of receiving any cash from the insurance company — unlike the other syndicate members, he was covered only in the event of Shergar’s death, rather than theft.
“I never want to hear about this horse ever again,” Cosgrove spat in an interview of quite staggering bitterness with the documentary-makers. “This is the last time I want to talk about him. If anybody asks me — no. Never again.”
Thanks for the memories, Stan…