Saying goodbye to Aqueduct: Long Island horse racing fans reflect on track's final run
Aqueduct Racetrack on its last racing day on Sunday. Credit: Morgan Campbell
Kevin and Kristen Hyland, both raised on Long Island, came to Aqueduct Racetrack on Sunday for the same reason as almost everyone else in the crowd. It was history, a chance to say goodbye to the aging facility on its last-ever day of live thoroughbred racing.
“We got to Saratoga over the summer, we do love Belmont Park with what it was, now it’s being renovated,” said the 34-year-old Kevin Hyland, who grew up in Garden City. “We’re really coming here, I don’t want to say to pay tribute, but we’ve always known about Aqueduct and we respect the history about it. It’s a great track. It’s a New York City track. Really trying to take it all in one last time before the move to Belmont.”
Belmont Park will reopen to live racing on Sept. 18 and be open year-round, save for the summer meet at Saratoga Race Course. Aqueduct will remain open for simulcasting through Sept. 7.
“Saratoga is much more a vacation destination,” said Kristen Hyland, also 34, who grew up in Floral Park. “Aqueduct is a little bit more gritty and casual. It’s for true racing fans that aren’t maybe coming for the pomp and circumstance and to be seen. It’s really just to spend the day with loved ones and really just get down to the meat of it, which is racing.”
Aqueduct hosted racing for 132 years — it opened on Sept. 27, 1894 — and the current grandstand opened on Sept. 14, 1959 with 42,473 fans in attendance after a three-year, $34.5 million renovation project. The state-of-the-art facility stood as one of the country’s finest through the 1960s. Pope John Paul II said mass before 75,000 at Aqueduct on Oct. 6, 1995.
“A lot of different emotions,” said Anthony Turco, 55, of Franklin Square, who was a guest in the paddock area and recalled first coming to Aqueduct as a 3-year-old with his father and his father’s friends. “Being down here and being a part of this part has been so much fun. A lot of nostalgia. My father is probably watching the races right now and laughing. He’d be happy about that. It’s a family thing and I think that’s something that’s been lost.”
Russell Bennett, 69, of Jericho, stood with his camera watching the races, wanting to chronicle the day, even though he admitted he followed harness racing much more closely. He said he hadn’t been to Aqueduct for perhaps 30 years.
“No one cares,” Bennett said. “Everyone comes here for the casino. It’s like Yonkers. The people who go to Yonkers don’t go for the horse track, they go to the casino.”
Attendance was announced as 6,866 on Sunday but a line of racegoers stretched long around the block prior to the doors opening at 11 a.m. and the never-filled general parking lot was overflowing by noon. Advance $5 tickets were sold when, normally, Aqueduct admission is free.
The Belmont Park funding legislation, which provided a $455 million loan to redevelop the Elmont facility, required the New York Racing Association to relinquish its lease at Aqueduct to New York State and consolidate all downstate racing operations to one track. It has yet to be determined how the property will be redeveloped.
“To put it simply, you’re closing one chapter and opening another,” NYRA chief executive officer and president David O’Rourke told Newsday in a recent interview. “But you’re closing with deference. Aqueduct, for me, has always been the player’s track. The hard-core horseplayer track. So many people have learned math there, it’s impressive.”
Kevin Hyland said he did feel nostalgia pangs initially.
“I felt sad for maybe the first 10 minutes,” he said. “Then you walk in and the air conditioning is not working and the concessions are long. It definitely has its faults. But we’re excited for Belmont and it will probably be good for the sport.”
The day was mostly devoid of closing day pomp-and-circumstance but videos highlighting Aqueduct’s history were played both prior to and after the ninth and final race, a 1 1/8-mile lap around the main dirt track aptly titled, “It Was A Good Run,” won by 8-1 Assume Nothing with Jaime Rodriguez up. The jockey said in a post-race interview he had never seen this many people at Aqueduct. The trumpeters had played “Auld Lang Syne” as the horses paraded out.
For Clara Lords, 39, of Queens, it definitely was a sad farewell. Her grandfather, who passed away when she was 8, instilled a love of horse racing in her and she still carries a picture of him to proudly show. She spent time working at Belmont Park as a mutual clerk and then learned to love Aqueduct.
“When I used to work at Belmont they were like, ‘Aqueduct is crazy, don’t go there,’” Lords said. “And when I came here, I was like, ‘Wow, this is what I’ve been missing.’”
At the end of the day, though, Aqueduct simply outlived its usefulness.
“This has been a foregone conclusion for more than a generation,” O’Rourke said. “It’s not a fun thing to do to close the book on something that’s created such memories for people. But they deserve better.”
Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.
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