Racing Career
He began racing in New Zealand and his first stake money was won in a saddle pace on a grass track. He won all the major open class races including the New Zealand Trotting Cup and Auckland Cup (from 78 yard handicap). His driver in New Zealand was the leading reinsman Peter Wolfenden, who was the country's number one driver during the 1970s.
Cardigan Bay even won a major event at Addington raceway in Christchurch while the grandstand was on fire. A photo of this race is considered one of the great iconic images in the history of horse racing. He also won the Inter Dominion Pacing Championship final in Adelaide, Australia.
In 1961, Cardigan Bay had taken his winning sequence to nine, having won the Final Handicap and New Zealand Free For All.
Cardigan Bay was taken to the USA at the advanced age of eight, on a "racing lease" to New Jersey reinsman Stanley Dancer and his owners for a payment of $US125,000, even though he had only $US137,000 in earnings up to that point and was "down on the hip" from a severe injury suffered racing in New Zealand years earlier. He won many races in the US and Canada and defeated U.S. Champion Overtrick in one of three races. He was the only horse to defeat the three U.S. Hall of Fame horses of that era: Overtrick, Bret Hanover, and Meadow Skipper.
In 1964, Overtrick and Cardigan Bay engaged in two races: The Dan Patch Pace and the Dan Patch Encore. Cardigan Bay prevailed by the shortest of noses in the Dan Patch, and Overtrick won the Encore. Overtrick also defeated Cardigan Bay in an earlier race in 1964, prevailing by a neck in a mile and a half race.
Perhaps his most famous encounter was with the great Standardbred horse, Bret Hanover, in the Pace of the Century, in 1966. Cardigan Bay, with Stanley Dancer driving, won that race in front of 45,000 spectators at Yonkers Raceway, New York and became only one of two horses (the other being Adios Vic) up to that time to have beaten Bret Hanover. However, in their next encounter, the "Revenge Pace," Bret Hanover reversed that one-two finish. The latter race drew a record crowd for a race in Western New York.
Read more about this topic: Cardigan Bay (horse)
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