A winner at two but not in any of the important stakes for his age group, as a three-year-old Cairngorm was among the top horses of his age group, ranked near the great 1905 Three-Year-Old Champion and American Horse of the Year, Sysonby.
Cairngorm's wins included the May 19, 1905 Pocantico Stakes at Belmont Park,
[4] the May 27 Preakness Stakes, run that year at a mile and seventy yards at Gravesend Race Track in Brooklyn, New York,[5] the May 31 Carleton Stakes at Gravesend,
[6] the June 27 Bay Ridge Handicap at Sheepshead Bay,[7] and the August 17 Saratoga Derby.[8]
Having inherited from his sire the ability to run at long distances, on September 26 Cairngorm won the mile and a half Brighton Cup Trial [9] and then the Brighton Cup at two and a quarter miles.[10]
Later career
Four-year-old Cairngorm made his first start of the year on June 1, 1906, scoring an impressive win in a mile and a sixteenth handicap event at Belmont Park.
[11] However, on June 21, he ran ninth in the Suburban Handicap, the premier event in the United States for older horses [12] and for the remainder of the year showed little of his three-year-old form. At age five, Cairngorm ran sixth in the 1907 Suburban Handicap then on June 25 won a six and a half furlong race at Sheepshead Bay [13] but did not figure in any other significant races before retiring in the latter part of the year.