Politics and sport have often collided with explosive results.
Politics and sport have often collided with explosive results.
The kidnapping of Shergar is one of the most notorious examples.
Nicknamed “the wonderhorse”, Shergar was the finest flat racer of his day.
In 1981 he won the Epsom Derby by a massive ten lengths and then claimed the Irish Derby, King George VI stakes and the Queen Elizabeth stakes before being put out to stud.
His kidnapping came after only one breeding season.
On the night of February 8th, 1983, his abductors, almost certainly the IRA, raided the house of Shergar’s groom Jim Fitzgerald at the Aga Khan’s Ballymany Stud Farm in County Kildare, Ireland.
Shergar was taken from his stable and driven away in a horsebox.
A £2million ransom demand was received hours later.
The Aga Khan hired an ex-SAS soldier to negotiate with the kidnappers, but after four days contact was lost. It is thought this was when Shergar was killed.
Tales of the horse’s fate abounded for years, with theories implicating the Mafia or even Colonel Gadaffi ’s Libya.
Former IRA member turned informer Sean O’Callaghan later claimed Shergar was killed by his IRA abductors soon after he was taken because they could not handle him.
The controversy over cricketer Basil D’Oliveira had profound international consequences. He first came to England from South Africa in 1960, where under apartheid he was barred from first-class cricket.
By 1964 he had joined Worcestershire and in 1966, after becoming a British citizen, he played his first game for England.
A talented all-rounder, D’Oliveira scored 158 in the final Test of the summer against the Australians in 1968 and was a shoo-in for selection for the forthcoming tour to South Africa.
But the MCC didn’t pick him, citing the limp excuse that his bowling was ill-suited to South African pitches.
In reality, the MCC had been pressurised by the South African government to omit D’Oliveira because non-whites were banned from professional sport there.
Three weeks later D’Oliveira was drafted into the squad when another bowler was injured.
South Africa protested and the tour was eventually scrapped.
But the affair had positive consequences.
It highlighted the barbaric nature of white rule in South Africa and led to a worldwide sporting boycott of the country which was only lifted in 1991 at the end of apartheid.
One of the most powerful political gestures in sporting history came atthe 1968 Mexico Olympics when black American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave their famous “black power” salute.
Discrimination and segregation were still widespread in America.
In April that year riots had erupted when civil rights leader Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis.
Having won gold and bronze in the 200 metres, Smith and Carlos took to the victory podium dressed in black.
Each man wore a black scarf, black socks and a single black glove.
As the national anthem started, they raised their fists in a silent salute to the black citizens of America.
The International Olympic Committee made the bewildering decision to expel them from the games.
The most famous demonstration by the suffragette movement came at a race meeting.
Emily Davison was a militant member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, founded by Emmeline Pankhurst, which campaigned to give women the vote.
In 1913 Davison was killed throwing herself in front of King George V’s horse Amner at the Epsom Derby.
Women were granted full voting rights in 1928.
