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    Shergar. Kidnapping Ireland's Favourite Son.: Unsolved Horse Mysteries, #1
    Shergar. Kidnapping Ireland's Favourite Son.: Unsolved Horse Mysteries, #1
    Shergar. Kidnapping Ireland's Favourite Son.: Unsolved Horse Mysteries, #1
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    Shergar. Kidnapping Ireland's Favourite Son.: Unsolved Horse Mysteries, #1

    By Cindy Crank

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    About this ebook

    Shergar, the champion racehorse disappeared into an ominous Irish fog one February night in 1983 and was never seen again.
    .
    The scenario was something out of a Hollywood blockbuster: The gloomy dusk of the Irish countryside, balaclava clad men, machine guns and the Ballymany Stud, the Aga Khan's world class farm with a champion inside "protected" by just a five barred gate and a simple latch.

    But this was no fictional movie. This was real life and as Shergar, the Epsom Derby winning Wonder Horse, the beloved Pegasus of Ireland moved about in his stall that night, little did he know the drama that was about to erupt outside in the stable yard.

    Shergar's kidnapping has baffled the police and the public for over 30 years creating countless theories: Was it the American mafia, was it a man with a grudge against Shergar's high profile owner, was it Libya's Colonel Ghadafi, or was the IRA behind the crime to secure more money for guns? And, where is Shergar resting now?: in a bog in County Leitrim, Ireland; on a remote farm near Ballinamore, Ireland, or is he buried in the far east after breeding and creating super horses for a wealthy sheik.

    Besides revisiting the kidnapping and the frenzy it created, this book introduces the key players, places, races, and explains the "Troubles" that plagued Ireland at the time and were a key element of this story.

    And while accounts vary depending on which one you read the results sadly all come out the same: Shergar walked into the fog and disappeared forever. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCindy Crank
    Release dateFeb 25, 2014
    ISBN9781497752009
    Shergar. Kidnapping Ireland's Favourite Son.: Unsolved Horse Mysteries, #1
    Author

    Cindy Crank

    Cindy Crank is a former competitive rider who grew up with horses and learned to ride at an early age crediting her Grandfather with a love of all things equine. She has spent the last thirty years as author and journalist for countless magazines - mostly horse sport - and as horse sport media specialist. She presently writes a blog about horses and history for a major Canadian horse sport publications group.  

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      Book preview

      Shergar. Kidnapping Ireland's Favourite Son. - Cindy Crank

      Writing the story of Shergar’s kidnapping has involved reading newspaper articles and clippings, books, interviews and personal recollections from those involved with the story whether directly or indirectly. The greatest challenge was unraveling the threads of so many versions; the newspaper, magazine and book accounts all vary depending on the writer or the teller. I have done my best to pull together the most salient facts in this story and have tried to put them in cohesive order from my research. 

      I have included a glossary at the end of the book so that any racing, horse or unfamiliar terminology or expressions are explained.

      Racing colours.jpg

      The Aga Khan's racing colors.

      Shergar: The Crime and Conspiracy behind the Kidnapping of a Champion.

      Shergar, Ireland’s Pegasus had the misfortune to have been born during the Troubles in Ireland. In 1978 in County Kildare, Ireland, Shergar’s dam Sharmeen presented the world with a colt with four white socks and a distinctive blaze on his face. Later Shergar would make history for all the right reasons and then all the wrong ones, and while his story is about a great racehorse who would make Ireland proud, his story also encompasses the troubled history of Ireland’s past.

      Ballinamore Ireland.jpg

      Let’s Set the Stage....

      Before we launch into our story of Shergar, we should first look at and understand exactly what the Troubles were in Ireland starting with a civil rights march in Londonderry on October 5, 1968 to the Belfast Good Friday Agreement on April 10, 1998, and the important part they played in this sensational story.

      The main issue of the conflict lay with the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, and at its heart lay two separate visions of national identity and belonging. It was not a religious conflict. The loyalist, primarily Protestant majority wished to remain part of the United Kingdom while the nationalists and republicans, almost exclusively Catholic, wished to become part of the Republic of Ireland.

      Journalist Peter Taylor explains on the BBC website that, The ultimate goal of republicans is to achieve a united Ireland by ending centuries of British rule. Northern Ireland remained within the United Kingdom after the south won its independence in 1921. The goal of loyalists is to maintain that constitutional link with the rest of the UK. Both republican and loyalist paramilitaries are prepared to use violence to achieve these incompatible ends.

      While there were various groups involved on both sides of the conflict, for our story, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is front and center. They split into different factions in 1969: the Dublin-based officials, (later known as the Official IRA or OIRA) who advocated a united socialist Ireland by peaceful means, and the Belfast-based provisionals (Provisional IRA) who vowed to use violence as a catalyst for unification. Both groups continued to refer to themselves as the IRA and rejected the legitimacy of the other.

      Today the IRA’s political wing called Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone) holds various positions within the provincial Northern Irish government. Most British troops have long since left, the Royal Ulster Constabulary has been disbanded and loyalist groups have laid down their guns and aggression. While this is an extremely simplified look at the Troubles in Ireland, it is easy to see why the dissent, disagreement, discord, anger and opposition turned into mayhem involving bombings, beatings, murders and riots. Over 3,500 people died and over 47,000 were injured, many innocent bystanders, between July 14, 1969 and December 31, 2001.

      The Shergar kidnapping is a mystery that has theories aplenty but may never have a definitive resolution. Dead men can’t talk and those who can speak won’t say a word. It has always been that way and probably always will be.

      The Places, People and Parts of the Puzzle.

      The story of Shergar involves all the highs and lows of a top

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