Aqueduct legends reflect on closing live racing chapter

Aqueduct’s final live-racing weekend will close more than a meet in Ozone Park, Queens. It will end a place that helped define winter racing in New York, where trainers, jockeys and horses built form, found opportunities and carried their momentum into bigger stages.

That is why the memories shared by Linda Rice, Todd Pletcher, Bruce Levine, Manny Franco and Nick Santagata carried more weight than a simple farewell. Rice’s standing was the clearest measure of that bond: as of June 20, she had 1,215 wins at Aqueduct, making her the track’s winningest trainer by victories dating back to 1976. Her record shows how closely a career can be tied to one racetrack, and how much the Big A mattered as a proving ground for horsemen who spent season after season trying to win there.

Aqueduct has always been more than an address. Opened on September 27, 1894, the 132-year-old track gave New York racing a deep winter anchor and a dependable stage for the kind of campaigns that keep the sport moving when conditions turn harsh. Its final live card is set for June 28, but simulcasting will continue through Monday, September 7, while Belmont Park is scheduled to reopen for live racing on September 18. That transition will consolidate downstate racing and training activity at Belmont, but it also marks the end of a competitive rhythm Aqueduct sustained for generations.

The track’s history explains why the goodbye resonates so widely. NYRA points to Secretariat’s retirement parade there in 1973 before 30,000 fans, and to Pope John Paul II celebrating Mass at the track on October 6, 1995 before 75,000 people. It also places Aqueduct in the company of racing giants tied to its past, including Man o’ War, Kelso, Secretariat, Cigar, James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons, Allen Jerkens, Eddie Arcaro and Angel Cordero Jr. Richard Migliore’s 2,238 visits to the winner’s circle at Aqueduct, the most by any rider there, adds another layer to that legacy.

Closing weekend will be marked with special farewell programming and honorary race names tied to horses, horsemen and major moments from the track’s past. For New York racing, the significance is not just sentimental. Aqueduct helped shape the horses that wintered there, the riders who learned how to win there and the trainers who built careers around its demands. When the last live race is run, the sport will lose a venue that served as both a classroom and a battleground.