Aga Khan IV, who has died on the age of 88, bred and owned the magnificent, ill-starred Derby winner, Shergar, amongst dozens of champions to hold his well-known inexperienced and crimson colors over the course of six a long time within the sport.
Shergar was essentially the most emphatic Derby winner within the Basic’s 202-year historical past when he romped to a 10-length success below Walter Swinburn at Epsom in June 1981, however it was his subsequent kidnapping from the Aga’s Ballymany Stud in County Kildare by an armed gang in February 1983, barely a 12 months after his retirement from the observe, that projected Shergar onto the entrance pages of newspapers across the globe.
The gang, believed to have been members of the Provisional IRA, held the household of James Fitzgerald, Shergar’s stud groom, at gunpoint whereas Fitzgerald was ordered to steer the stallion right into a horsebox. Fitzgerald was then pressured into one other automotive and pushed across the native space earlier than being left on the roadside having been equipped with a code-word that the abductors supposed to make use of in negotiations.
The times that adopted had been the opening chapters of a thriller that is still unresolved greater than 40 years later. A police investigation of the kidnapping swiftly descended into the realms of farce, together with an try to make use of a clairvoyant to divine Shergar’s whereabouts.
Negotiations additionally started between the abductors and the stallion’s group of householders – the Aga Khan, by this level, had solely a minority stake as Shergar had been syndicated into 40 shares – however broke off after 4 days when the house owners didn’t settle for an try by the abductors to show that Shergar was nonetheless alive.
Shergar was by no means seen once more and his last resting place too stays unknown, though within the aftermath of the Troubles, numerous second-hand accounts by former IRA members emerged which appear to stipulate a plot that was ill-conceived from the beginning.
Specifically, the gang members despatched to steal the five-year-old had no expertise with dealing with a extremely strung, full-grown thoroughbred stallion, and one account means that Shergar was shot only some hours after his abduction after he turned panicked and uncontrolled, earlier than being buried in distant mountains close to the border with Northern Eire.
The lack of one of many best of all Derby winners from the Aga Khan’s breeding operation after siring simply 35 foals was a major setback for an owner-breeder who inherited an in depth bloodstock operation from his father, in 1960. However his lifelong ardour for breeding and racing thoroughbreds ensured that many extra excellent champions raced in his colors.
The Aga Khan owned 5 Derby winners in all – Shahrastani (1986), Kahyasi (1988), Sinndar (2000) and Harzand (2016) had been the others – and 4 winners of the Prix de l’Arc De Triomphe, together with the good, unbeaten filly Zarkava in 2008.
There have been different moments of controversy too, not least after the victory of Aliysa within the Oaks in 1989, the Aga Khan’s first within the Epsom fillies’ Basic. The three-year-old was a straightforward and spectacular three-length winner, however a month later the Jockey Membership, the game’s regulator on the time, introduced that Aliysa’s post-race urine take a look at had been constructive for camphor, a banned substance.
The principles of racing had been clear that Aliysa needed to be disqualified, and whereas her proprietor mounted a sustained authorized problem to the Jockey Membership’s testing procedures, the choice to award the race to Snow Bride, the runner-up, was lastly confirmed in December 1990, 18 months after the Oaks.
The Aga Khan instantly eliminated all 90 of his horses in coaching in Britain, most of which had been stabled with Michael Stoute and Luca Cumani in Newmarket, and his colors had been absent from British racecourses for a number of years.
As a substitute, he turned his focus to increasing his racing and breeding operations in France, the place his excellent Arc winners, Dalakhani and Zarkava, had been each educated, and in addition in Eire, the place Dermot Weld – the coach of Harzand – and John Oxx had vital strings of horses in his colors.
The late Aga Khan constructed on the legacy of each his father – who owned the good racemare, Petite Etoile – and his grandfather, who additionally owned 5 Derby winners between 1930 and 1952, together with Mahmoud (1936), for a few years the holder of the report time for a Derby winner, and Tulyar (1952).
Aga Khan IV’s daughter, Princess Zahra Aga Khan, can also be an enthusiastic proprietor and breeder whose winners thus far embrace Mandesha, the 2006 Prix Vermeille winner. Her colors – inexperienced with brown epaulettes – mix her father’s silks with these of his predecessors as Aga Khan – inexperienced and chocolate hoops – and appear more likely to lengthen the household’s bloodstock operation right into a fourth technology.
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