TROTTING AN AMERICAN LOOKS AT CARDIGAN BAY

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30406, 3 April 1964, Page 5

TROTTING AN AMERICAN LOOKS AT CARDIGAN BAY

When you look at Cardigan Bay, you figure maybe somebody’s trying to put something over you, says Phil Pepe in the New York “World Telegram and Sun.” The great New Zealand pacer cost 100,000 dollars, but you look at him and he looks like any other horse in the cowboy pictures.

You look at Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle and you could tell right away they’re 100,000dollar ballplayers, but a horse is a horse. Four legs—all in the right place. A head, a tail. What makes him so special? asks Pepe.

One thing is he's a very big horse—l6s hands, which is how they measure horses, a hand being four inches. But tall doesn’t mean good. For that you need an expert such as Stanley Dancer. Outside of maybe Roy Rogers, who in this world knows more about horses than Stanley Dancer? Stanley went to Australia, took one look at Cardigan Bay and plunked down 100,000 dollars one fine Thursday. The eight-year-old horse had raced the previous Saturday and was to race the coming Saturday, but on Thursday he convinced Dancer. After jogging 17 miles that day (he averages 87 miles a week), he paced the mile in 2min 2 3-ssec, going the last half in Imin 0 3-ssec. It was like Mays or Mantle hitting three homers after having played a double-header. That's when Dancer spent

the 100,000 dollars of a syndicate of owners, headed by Irving Berkemeyer and including Stanley's wife, Rachel. “He cost 35,800 sterlings,” by Dancer's actual count, “which came to 100,025 dollars and 70 cents, including cable costs.” Legend In N.Z. Cardigan Bay is a legend in Australia and New Zealand. He won the Auckland Cup, although conceding handicaps up to 78 yards. He did Imin 56 l-ssec for the mile on a slow nine-sixteenths track carrying the heavier New Zealand sulky, a time that’s one and three-fifths off Adios Butler’s world record. The horse has started behind a gate once, and on that occasion followed the car several yards before straightening out and passing the field. Cardigan Bay will make his