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Aqueduct Racetrack

Aqueduct Racetrack, known as the Big A, is a horse racetrack in the neighborhood of Ozone Park in the New York City borough of Queens.

History

The racetrack opened in 1894 and rebuilt in 1959, with additional renovations made in 2001 and in 2006.

It is the only racetrack located within the New York City limits. Belmont Park -- also operated by the New York Racing Association -- is located outside the city, in Nassau County. (Some of Belmont's adjoining parking facilities and the Belmont train station are in Queens.)

Yonkers Raceway in Yonkers, New York is a half-mile oval harness racing located in Westchester County, just north of the New York City borough of The Bronx.

Before 1976, the Inner Dirt Track was a turf course and it was known as the Main Turf Course, with the lone present turf course bearing the name of the Inner Turf Course; following the conclusion of racing in 1975 the grass on the Main Turf Course was uprooted and the Inner Dirt Track took its place to permit year-round racing. (In the first few years after Aqueduct was rebuilt in 1959 the track lay idle from early November until April 1; by 1971 this period had been reduced to from shortly before Christmas until March 1, and in the latter year off-track betting began in New York City, creating a demand for horse racing to be contested in the region throughout the year).

Construction of a casino is planned to begin in early 2006 in the Aqueduct grandstand, leading up to the eventual installation of 4,500 video lottery terminals.

Today a single meeting is held annually at Aqueduct; it typically begins on the last Wednesday in October and runs all the way through the first Sunday in May. Races are run on the Inner Dirt Track between the second Wednesday in December and the third Sunday in March in most years. Prior to 1977, a summer meeting was also conducted at Aqueduct, running from mid-June to the end of July. From 1963 through 1967, races normally run at Belmont Park (including the Belmont Stakes) were run at Aqueduct instead while Belmont's grandstand was being rebuilt.

Today few important races are run at Aqueduct, mainly due to the unfavorable weather conditions that prevail during its racing season; however the prestigious Jockey Club Gold Cup was usually run there between 1958 and 1974, and what was perhaps the track's most distinctive race, the marathon, 2¼ mile (3621 m) Display Handicap, was last contested in 1990. The track did play host to the second ever Breeders' Cup, in 1985.

Every weekend, a flea market is run in the racetrack's north parking lot. Pope John Paul II said mass in front of a large crowd at Aqueduct in October, 1995.

Aqueduct Racetrack is where Hall of Fame horse Cigar won the first two races in his sixteen-race win streak. Cigar's second win came in the 1994 NYRA Mile, a Grade 1 race that is now named in the horse's honor.

Aqueduct is also the site of the first, and presently, the only triple dead heat for win in a stakes race. In the 1944 running of the Carter Handicap, Brownie, Bossuet, and Wait A Bit hit the finish line at the same time.

On April 8, 2006, during an eleven-race program at Aqueduct that included the Wood Memorial Stakes, a rare event happened when dead heats for each of the three "money" positions (Win, Place and Show) occurred in three separate races. Saint Anddan and Criminal Mind dead-heated for Place in race 5, Naragansett and Emotrin dead-heated for Show in race 6, and Karakorum Tuxedo and Megatrend dead-heated for Win in race 10.