[2] Cardigan Bay became an overnight sensation in the United States, and appeared with Stanley Dancer on The Ed Sullivan Show as the "million dollar horse".

He began racing in the South Island of New Zealand and gained his first stake money in a saddle pace on a grass track, when narrowly beaten into second.

While racing in Australasia, Cardigan Bay also notably won an Inter Dominion Pacing Championship final in Adelaide, Australia.

Yet impressive as all this was, it was only a prelude to an illustrious North American career fashioned in his later years that eventually saw him become the first pacer worldwide to achieve lifetime earnings of $1 million (US).

[3] In the spring and early summer of 1961-62 Cardigan Bay continued a winning sequence begun late the previous season before his sale to the Deans.

[3] Cardigan Bay then made a second trip to Australia and won the Summer Cup at Harold Park, Sydney, from a handicap of 24 yards behind.

[5] Racing again Sydney, he started 5 times for four wins and a second place in the Lord Mayors Cup behind Waitaki Hanover from 48 yards.

Then came a win in the Auckland Pacing Cup from 78 yards and in January 1964 he won the Pezaro Memorial at Alexandra Park in his last New Zealand race.

[3] 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 the severe injury suffered in Perth, Western Australia years earlier.

At Hollywood Park he led a race over 1 1/16 miles helping to establish a world record for the distance of 2.03 2/5 by the winner Adios Vic.

Cardigan Bay, with Stanley Dancer driving, won that race in front of 45,000 spectators at Yonkers Raceway 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 at Roosevelt Raceway, the "Revenge Pace," Bret Hanover reversed that result with Cardigan Bay third before a crowd of 37,000.

[3] In 1967 Cardigan Bay won the second ever running of the Provincial Cup at Windsor Raceway which at the time was the richest harness race in Canada.

The next evening Cardigan Bay walked down a long red carpet, which led into the living rooms of 20 million viewers, on the Ed Sullivan television show.

Much of his racing was done in the United States, where he teamed up with legendary reinsman Stanley Dancer in his many appearances at Yonkers Raceway near New York City.

[14] Cardigan Bay was an inaugural inductee into the New Zealand Trotting Hall of Fame with the immortals Caduceus, Harold Logan, Highland Fling, Johnny Globe and Ordeal.

He broadcast races in ten different countries – Australia, New Zealand, United States of America, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany and Macau.