This week’s Casefile podcast is on Shergar. The Australian podcast covers true crime, originally focusing on cold cases but now covers a wide range of both solved and unsolved murders.
Episode description-
”When The Troubles began, fighting between the IRA and British soldiers from Northern Ireland was at an all-time high. Over the years, the IRA bombed political and economic targets across Northern Ireland and England, using guerilla tactics in both urban and rural areas. Years of extreme protesting and violence had culminated in low morale and widespread despair throughout Ireland, and the economy was in trouble, resulting in high unemployment rates and mass emigration.
Yet one industry that continued to thrive was horse racing, which provided twenty thousand jobs and attracted large sums of money from overseas. In 1980, an Irish racehorse named Shergar took the industry by storm, becoming a racing champion and national treasure. The Irish public adored Shergar and watching him achieve great success provided a much-needed distraction from The Troubles. He became a symbol of hope and possibility in an otherwise bleak and trying time.”
