Cardigan Bay with Stanley Dancer.
Retired after earning $1 Million in a ceremony at Yonkers Raceway.
Cardigan Bay is another famous standardbred pacer and can legitimately claim to being one of the world's best race horses in any style of racing! He was the ninth horse to win $1 million U.S. dollars...the first 8 winners were all thoroughbreds.
Cardigan Bay was born in New Zealand on the first of September, 1956. He was beloved by his owners, trainers and riders and affectionately called Cardy. After winning 29 of 47 races in New Zealand and Australia, he was purchased for $100,000 by a syndicate in the U.S. with the agreement that he would be retired in New Zealand. He raced in the U.S.from 1964 through 1968.
The plain bay colt, crossed the $1 million mark at the Freehold Raceway in New Jersey and was retired right after that in a Sept. 1968 ceremony in Yonkers, New York. Before returning to New Zealand where he spent the rest of his life on a stud farm, Cardy actually appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show...I know, most of you weren't alive for that Sunday night show but I was. (And I watched the Beatles 1964 performance and screamed all the way through it!)
Below is an interesting Youtube video of one of his races. Watch closely as, right at the end on the back stretch, there is a crash and horses and sulkies and drivers go everywhere. One driver flies through the air and lands in the lap of another driver and the horse carries both of them across the finish line!
Cardigan Bay was so famous and such a national hero in New Zealand that they actually made a postage stamp with his image on it!
Cardigan Bay died peacefully in his sleep in March of 1988 at the age of 31. Well, at least that was the official word!
