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Shergar began his first season of racing in September 1980 and ran two races that year, where he won one and came second in the other. In 1981 he ran in six races, winning five of them. In June that year he won the 202nd Epsom Derby by ten lengths—the longest winning margin in the race's history

Before becoming part of folklore, or reduced to a shabby punchline, Shergar was one of the finest racehorses of the last half-century.

A tragic mystery due to his kidnapping by the IRA in 1983, it can get overlooked how revulsion surrounding such a grotesque act was bound up in the impact the colt made on the wider public consciousness doing what he was bred to do.

Saturday’s (June 5, 2021) 242nd Epsom Derby is the 40th anniversary of Shergar turning racing’s Blue Riband into an unparalleled rout.

On February 1, 1983, TV-am launched on British TV screens. It was a fortnight behind the BBC’s ground-breaking Breakfast Time and the public had already shown themselves to be unsure about watching a news programme whilst eating their Cornflakes.

During those early days it looked like there was not enough interest to justify one televised breakfast show, let alone two.

Shergar with the Aga Khan after winning the 1981 Irish Derby at the Curragh. Photo: Allsport

Dark reality is of a beautiful animal being gunned to death by incompetent criminals

So much is crammed into the Shergar legend that the all but certain reality of this beautiful, blameless creature dying a horrible death has become almost a footnote.

The precise nature of how Shergar was killed has never been definitively established, the same as how much of what happened to the record-breaking Derby winner in the days after his kidnap from the Aga Khan’s Ballymany Stud outside Newbridge on February 8th, 1983, remains unclear.

SHERGAR’S trainer Michael Stoute has told how the famous steed was “the kindest horse” he worked with.

The Irish-bred thoroughbred was stolen from Ballymany Stud in Co Kildare in 1983 for a ransom of £2million, which was never paid.

The winner of the Epsom and Irish Derbys in 1981 — who was owned by the Aga Khan — is believed to have been shot by his IRA kidnappers after injuring his leg, though the organisation has never officially accepted responsibility.