Shergar remembered as trainer Cliff Lines signs off with fairytale winner

As veteran trainer Cliff Lines bowed out with a winner at Lingfield on Wednesday – just short of his 84th birthday and after 70 years in the sport – the name of the mighty Shergar was again in the news.

Lines was the former work rider of the 1981 Derby-winning colt in his days with Sir Michael Stoute – but the Classic heroics of Shergar were only half the story, for his was one that ran much deeper than his performances on the racecourse.

Kidnapped from Ballymany Stud in Ireland, the horse was never found and it is a puzzle that will probably never be solved.

Shergar was lionised in the racing world for the manner of his triumph at Epsom, and to this day his winning margin of 10 lengths stands as a record for a race first run in 1780.

The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Ismaili sect of Shia Muslims, has since landed the much-sought-after prize another four times, with Shahrastani, Kahyasi, Sinndar and Harzand, but none of them could match the impact made by his first winner.

The big bay with the white blaze had secured his position among the 20th-century greats by the time the curtain came down on his career at the end of the 1981 season, but the drama was far from over.

On the night of February 8, 1983, a foggy evening, intruders broke into the Aga Khan’s Ballymany Stud in County Kildare and kidnapped the horse.

It is generally accepted the IRA were the culprits, that his abductors were ill-equipped to control a thoroughbred stallion, and that he was killed shortly afterwards. But his remains have never been found.

Shergar’s racing career was expertly guided by Stoute, who sent him out to win six of his eight races, taking the Sandown Classic Trial by 10 lengths and the Chester Vase by 12 on the way to Epsom, where he started a 10-11 chance and

won in a stroll.

With the teenage Walter Swinburn suspended he was ridden by Lester Piggott to win the Irish Derby by four lengths.

But the young rider – who was sadly lost to the sport in December, 2016 at the age of 55 – was back in the saddle for another four-length victory against the older generations in the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot.

Both Shergar’s defeats came at Doncaster, where he closed his racing career with an inexplicable loss at long odds-on in the St Leger.

The wonder horse was syndicated for stud duties and arrived at Ballymany with everything ahead of him.

But he was to become one of the more celebrated victims of ‘the Troubles’ when armed raiders stole him one winter’s night after forcing groom Jim Fitzgerald to follow instructions at gunpoint.

With the kidnappers apparently unaware the Aga Khan was no longer the sole owner of the horse, demands for payment of a massive ransom came to nothing – though there were bizarre twists.

At one stage even then-ITV racing presenter Derek Thompson was sucked into the maelstrom of negotiations, whether true or hoax.

It all ended in tragedy, of course, and it remains a mystery as to where the horse’s remains are buried, in some unmarked grave with no plaque or statue to celebrate his glory.

Periodic ‘finds’ have unearthed nothing more than skeleton impostors; as any racing fan could attest, there was only one Shergar.

Long after his disappearance, Shergar’s name is more pertinently linked with that of another infamous absentee, Lord Lucan, than with the Derby.

The racing world, however, has not forgotten.

The abiding memory will forever be of Epsom in 1981, and that wonderful moment rounding Tattenham Corner when Swinburn flicked the switch and the afterburners powered on.

All that disappeared that day was the opposition as Shergar cleared away, his rivals withering to dots in the distance.