Rice, Franco top Aqueduct again as live racing era ends

Linda Rice and Manny Franco ended Aqueduct’s live-racing run the same way they spent much of 2026 in New York: on top. Rice led the Belmont at the Big A spring-summer meet with 31 wins, Franco claimed the riding crown, and both completed a sweep of all three Aqueduct meet titles this year as the historic Queens track closed after a run that began in 1894.

Rice’s final-day touch came with El Grande O, who won a six-furlong open-company optional claimer on June 28 and gave the barn one more trip to the winner’s circle before the lights went down for good. The victory fit the broader shape of her Aqueduct record. Rice finished the era as the track’s all-time leading trainer with 1,222 career victories there, a total built across stakes horses, graded stakes horses and the kind of durable allowance and claiming runners that keep a stable moving through an entire meet.

The Belmont at the Big A spring-summer meet was never just a Queens-only affair. NYRA set it to run from April 30 through June 28 and folded the five-day Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at Saratoga Race Course, held June 3-7, into the standings. That unusual setup meant Rice and Franco’s titles covered a broader map than the old Aqueduct regular season, with the meet’s statistics reflecting races at both Aqueduct and Saratoga.

That breadth makes the pair’s sweep more revealing than a routine local championship. Rice handled the full range of conditions and race types New York put in front of her, while Franco stayed in front of the rider standings through a meet that stretched from spring into summer and across two tracks. Their dominance carried through the winter, spring and summer meets at Aqueduct, leaving little doubt about who controlled the colony as the circuit shifted around construction work at Belmont Park.

The closing card also carried a more permanent consequence. NYRA had announced that the rebuilt Belmont Park was scheduled to reopen for live racing on Sept. 18, forcing the temporary move away from the historic oval. Aqueduct’s final day drew an announced crowd of 6,866, a turnout that matched the emotion of the farewell and underlined how much of New York racing’s recent history now belongs to a closed chapter.