Memories of gritty Aqueduct by the urban track's inner circle
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The following is a potpourri of memories from many of those who experienced Aqueduct over the years.
Jerry Bailey, Hall of Fame jockey: With Mike Smith committed to ride Devil His Due in the 1994 NYRA Mile, Bailey picked up the mount on Cigar for the race and guided him to a seven-length victory. It was the second of what would become 16 straight victories for Cigar, the last 15 with Bailey aboard.
“I remember after Mike rode him the previous race, he told me this horse is a freak,” Bailey said. “My agent called me and said the horse was open and I remembered what Mike told me and I told him, ‘Ride him.’ It wasn’t a complete surprise.
“My dad was there and I remember the presenter of the trophy was [singer/actor] David Cassidy who I became great friends with in the years since.”
Eddie Barker, trainer: Was based at Aqueduct for many years and recalls the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when two planes hit the two towers at the World Trade Center, the fires visible from the backstretch.
“We thought some little plane got off course or something,” Barker said. “We were watching it and then another plane hit. All of a sudden that first building came down. There were 25 or 30 of us standing on the rail watching it clear as day.”
Andy Belfiore, ex-assistant trainer; current NYTHA executive director): Belfiore was 18 years old when she began working on the backside for trainer Walter Kelley. She recalled the first time she rode the horse van from Belmont to run a horse at Aqueduct and then rode it back to Belmont.
“Our horse ran third and we’re on the van to come back and there are these two guys with their horses and one of them lights up a joint,” Belfiore said. “He offered it to me and I politely declined. But I was like, ‘Here we are, three people who worked pretty hard, our horses did very well.’ From then on, I don’t think I ever felt uncomfortable on the backstretch.”
Bill Boland, Hall of Fame rider: “We never used to like Aqueduct really because you’d come from Belmont Park, where you’d be running 20 2-year-olds down the straightway and at Aqueduct you had sharp turns and the 2-year-olds couldn’t make the turn,” Boland, 92, said.
“I did good at Aqueduct. I didn’t dislike it. I won the [1966] Belmont on Amberoid when they had it at Aqueduct. You had that horse [Kauai King] who won the Derby and Preakness and looked like he’d win the Belmont too but he got tired. Lucien [Laurin] did a great job with Amberoid, keeping him fresh.”
Dr. Stephen Carr, practicing vet; racing/bloodstock manager for Centennial Farms): “I had a client who was stabled at Aqueduct. The Concorde would fly over Aqueduct and I remember one morning a couple of horses getting loose from the noise. They changed the flight pattern where it would come over the Ocean. I don’t know if it was because of the racetrack or other people from Queens complaining.”
For Centennial, Carr said, “I remember Rubiano winning the NYRA Mile in 1991. He was last at the quarter pole and outran them all down the lane.”
Gary Contessa, trainer: “Some of my favorite days were the ones when the snow was blinding. We would hear [Tom] Durkin or [John] Imbriale say their funny stuff and we all waited at the sixteenth pole to see who came out first.
“One of my more interesting races was when we stretched out Eightyfiveinafifty in the [2010] Whirlaway and he failed to negotiate the turn.”
Eightyfiveinafifty got loose, jumped over a couple of rails and was finally caught in the barn area with just a few scratches. He would come back a few weeks later and win the Grade 3 Bay Shore in his next start.
Angel Cordero Jr., Hall of Fame rider: “I won my first race in America here. I rode Seattle Slew in his last race when he won the Stuyvesant [Nov. 17, 1978]. He could have broken the track record if I wanted to. He did it so easy.”
Tom Durkin, track announcer: “The 1985 Breeders’ Cup. They couldn’t have it at Belmont. Belmont was going to be closed in November when the Breeders’ Cup was going to be run. It landed on Aqueduct. . . . At the time, it was not the Aqueduct we think of today. Aqueduct was a major player in horse racing in the mid-1980s.
“I remember just being up there watching from my booth the helicopter pad. They were bringing in these people. Sheikh Mohammed, he comes in with his entourage. I saw one guy get off the helicopter in a top hat and a cape. That was a great day. Pebbles was one of the stars. [Classic winner] Proud Truth had just run the weekend before in the Discovery at Aqueduct. Just great stuff.”
Rick Dutrow, trainer: He won 857 races at Aqueduct as a trainer and missed 10 years due to a suspension handed him in 2013 by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. Before training on his own, Dutrow worked as an assistant to his father, Richard Dutrow Sr., trainer of King’s Swan, who recorded 22 of his 31 career victories at Aqueduct, including the then-Grade 1 Vosburgh.
“Dad claimed him [at age 5] and he didn’t get to run him until he was 6 years old,” Dutrow said. “We never did any good with him until he bled out of both nostrils and then Dad knew what to do and then he went on a tear. We didn’t know he was a bleeder until we seen it.
“There were certain things you could do back then so you could control it,” Dutrow said. “He won a graded stakes for Dad going three-quarters. He gave Ogygian his first defeat going 6 1/2, he won a Grade 1 going seven-eighths, he won the Westchester at a mile, he won the Assault at a 1 1/8 miles carrying 133 pounds, and he got a track record for the Aqueduct Handicap going a mile and a sixteenth. And that was all from [age] 6 on. That’s what gets me about him.”
Dutrow was stabled at Aqueduct for most of his career and called the main track “the safest track I’ve ever seen in my life, the safest track I’ve ever been to in my life for horses. We went 11 years without a catastrophic breakdown and I’ll give Aqueduct all the credit.”
John Imbriale, track announcer: Imbriale called countless races at Aqueduct but it’s a call that nobody heard that he remembers most, and one that led to a memorable meeting. It involved the movie “A Bronx Tale,” shot at Aqueduct in late 1992.
“I’m in the booth with a production assistant and they’re doing the filming of their racing scenes. They gave me a script, I’m all pumped up. ‘I might be in this movie.’ ” Imbriale said. “They do the first take on the race and the wrong horse wins for what they wanted to have happen. I think they wound up doing it four or five times. . . . I’m hoping to hear back from them and as the saying I goes I guess I wound up on the cutting-room floor because Larry Lederman wound up getting the gig. He was so good with impersonations and they wanted somebody to sound more 1960-ish.
“The kicker to me doing that was that at the end of the day, the production assistant brought me downstairs and I was able to shake Robert De Niro’s hand because he was directing the movie as well as starring in it so I can say I met Robert De Niro.”
Jimmy Jerkens, trainer, assistant to his father, Allen Jerkens: “The one I remember the most I think I was 14 years old the day Prove Out beat Riva Ridge in the Jockey Club Gold when it was two miles. I remember watching from the backside; why I was by myself I don’t know.
“It started out Prove Out lost a shoe on the van going over there and I remember my dad coming over to see him in the receiving barn and saw he lost his shoe and he was beside himself. He had to call the blacksmith, a guy named Tom Goettisheim, to come from the paddock to come back and put a shoe on him. It must have taken a half-hour to put one shoe on him.
“In the meantime, the pony boy who always helped us, he had a little too much to drink and him and my father got into an argument in the receiving barn. It was so nerve-wracking but once he got over there he ran the race of his life.
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“You talk about horses running good races, that race he ran that day . . . him and Riva Ridge went head and head for a mile in 1:37 and as soon as Riva Ridge dropped out of it, [Jorge] Velasquez took a big, big hold of Prove Out to save him. A horse called Loud took a run at him and it looked like he had to go by him because the pace that Prove Out had set but he took off again. He went two miles in 3:20 flat. Kelso was the only one who ran it faster.”
Dave Johnson, track announcer 1971-77: “First of all the people. Charlsie Cantey. Frank Wright. Marshall Cassidy. [Fred] “Cappy” Caposella. Shirley Day Smith.
“The horses. Seattle Slew. Ruffian. Riva Ridge. Secretariat. Shuvee. My Juliet. Bold Forbes.
“On a Monday afternoon there’d be a $50,000 feature and there’d be 50,000 people in the stands watching Belmonte, Velasquez, Vazquez, and Cordero. The competition between those great riders, that was really something to watch.”
Johnson called 16 of Secretariat’s 21 races, including his debut, when he got beat at Aqueduct.
“The backstretch is like an echo chamber, everybody knew about Lucien’s big red horse,” Johnson said, referring to trainer Lucien Laurin. “Lucien tried to win a bet by putting that kid [Ben] Feliciano on him first time.”
Shug McGaughey, Hall of Fame trainer: “Easy Goer winning the 1989 Gotham in a track-record time. I knew we hadn’t gotten to the bottom of him. He didn’t run as good in the Wood but the track was a little funky that day.”
Easy Goer’s time of 1:32.40 still stands as the one-mile track record at Aqueduct.
McGaughey also noted how memorable it was that Coronado’s Quest won the Cowdin, Nashua, and Remsen Stakes in a five-week span in 1997, the only horse to win all three juvenile stakes.
Richard Migliore, jockey: His 2,238 wins since 1976 make him the winningest rider at Aqueduct over the last 50 years.
“This is where I fell in love with it. I saw Seattle Slew’s Wood Memorial. Believe It’s Remsen. Eddie Maple rode him and gave me his goggles. I saw Jorge Velasquez win the Toboggan Handicap on Due Diligence in 1976. It was the first race I remember watching live.”
Migliore would win the Toboggan a record six times.
Gasper Moschera, trainer: Moschera won 925 races at Aqueduct from 1976 through 2002.
“I loved Aqueduct. I did a lot of betting there too. I remember, before anyone really knew who I was, being in a race with 10 or 12 horses. It was pouring rain, I looked at the board and saw the race scratched down to four horses. I drove all the way home, I got $5,000 and came back. There were only four horses but three notable trainers, Frank Martin, Jose Martin, and Johnny Campo and they were betting their horses.
“My horse loved the slop. I told the rider I want to see how fast they can go the first quarter and he won by 10 lengths. I think he paid 2-1.”
Moschera made stakes winner out of many claimers, such as Shoop, Mr. Sinatra, and Videogenic. He said his favorite horse was Subordinate, a claimer who raced 104 times – not all for Moschera – and won 28 times. Eight of Subordinate’s wins came at Aqueduct.
“He was a big, black, fat horse and he ran his heart out,” Moschera said. “I claimed him off of Frank Martin.”
Todd Pletcher, trainer: Pletcher won 972 races at Aqueduct, 228 stakes, including 97 graded stakes. He won 10 editions of the Grade 2 Demoiselle and seven runnings of both the Cigar Mile and Wood Memorial.
On Nov. 24, 2021, Pletcher, in succession, won the Demoiselle with Unlimited Budget, the Remsen with Overanalyze and Cigar Mile with Stay Thirsty, who nosed out favored Groupie Doll with a fortunate head bob.
“I think Eskendereya’s Wood Memorial stands out, and the one day with [Mike] Repole where we won the Demoiselle, Remsen, and then got a tremendous head bob with Stay Thirsty in the Cigar Mile,” Pletcher told NYRA. “I mean, it was the head bob of a lifetime to win that one.”
Linda Rice, trainer: Her 1,217 wins from 1987 to June 21, 2026, are the most by any trainer during that span, according to Equibase figures.
“One of my fondest early memories was winning the 1996 Remsen with The Silver Move. Other memories were winning five races on one day [Jan. 22, 2026]; winning four on Wood Memorial Day was a good recent memory; La Verdad’s last race of her career she won the Interborough [Jan. 9, 2016]. It was her 16th win and she went out a winner.”
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Rice said that another recent memory was “watching Kendrick [Carmouche] win his 4,000th race and jump over the fence and see the enthusiasm of the Aqueduct crowd.”
Rudy Rodriguez, jockey/trainer: At Aqueduct, he won 125 races as a jockey and, through Wednesday, 873 races as a trainer.
Rodriguez said his top memory was when he won his first race as a jockey, April 29, 1992, aboard Hopeforusall, trained by Bob Dunham. He won a maiden $35,000 claimer at first asking and it would be the only race the horse won in 30 starts.
“I galloped him for two months before we ran him,” Rodriguez said.
Nick Santagata, retired jockey; currently a valet: “I won my only Grade 1 over here, the 1986 Vosburgh, and I was leading rider in the winter in 1986,” Santagata said. “That was a lucky day, the Vosburgh, sloppy track picked up the pieces. I’m going to miss Aqueduct. I won’t miss the Belt Parkway.”
Barry Schwartz, NYRA chairman 2001-04, longtime horse owner: “My first great memory was running Degenerate Jon in the Wood Memorial in 1980. I got beat by the filly [Genuine Risk] that came back and won the Kentucky Derby.
“I was in year two of owning horses. At that time my expectation was to win everything. I was young and stupid.”
Schwartz said Degenerate Jon was named after his then 5-year-old son, Jon. “He loved me reading the Form to him.”
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