On Sunday afternoon, June 28, 2026, at about 5:50 p.m. ET, the thundering sound of hooves striking the ground at Aqueduct Racetrack will forever go silent.

After 132 years of serving New York racing fans, the ninth race Sunday will be the last one ever contested at the Big A as a transformation of downstate racing begins. Aqueduct joins the likes of the now-forgotten Jamaica Race Course and Brighton Beach as a past home of the sport in the bustling metropolis.

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In less than three months, on Sept. 18, the New York Racing Association will unveil its half-billion-dollar, reconstructed, ultra-modern Belmont Park as its lone downstate track. The days of taking the subway to Ozone Park for a day at the races will become just a memory for the millions who visited or worked at the track over the past century.

"This was the home of my youth. I'll miss it quite a bit, but I am also looking forward to Belmont. So it's a little bittersweet," said NYRA chairman Marc Holliday, the CEO of SL Green Realty, the largest commercial landlord in New York City. "On the one hand, I'm a developer. I'm a real estate guy, so I respect the history. I do a lot of adaptive reuse and historical renovations, but I'm always about the future and progress. (Aqueduct) was first constructed in the late 1890s, so I think it's time for a new chapter of racing in New York. It's not going to be a mourning process. It's going to be celebrating a track that gave us 130 years of thrills with some of the greatest races and horses of all time."

New York State will ultimately decide what happens to the 200-acre parcel of land, but for countless others, there will always be sweet, or funny, or bitter memories attached to Aqueduct, its famed races, and the horses that became stars there, regardless of what it eventually becomes.

There are millions of stories that could be told, but perhaps the most poignant ones belong to the track's royalty. While Saratoga Race Course has a king in jockey Angel Cordero Jr. and a grande dame in owner Marylou Whitney, Aqueduct had its own pantheon of stars, led by a king in jockey Richard Migliore, a queen in trainer Linda Rice, and a first family in the three generations of Martins who each trained a Grade 1 winner at the Big A.

Richard Migliore

"The Mig" will forever be in the record books as the leading rider at Aqueduct with 2,238 victories in a career that spanned from 1980-2010.

Now a popular analyst on Fox Sports' coverage of NYRA racing, Migliore was a charismatic, year-round presence at NYRA who braved the cold winters and became a fan favorite.

One of Richard Migliore's 2,238 trips to the Aqueduct winner's circle. (Eclipse Sportswire)

"I am going to be sad when it's gone. This place is woven through the fabric of my life. Migliore said. "Back in 1975, this is the first place I ever went to the races. I grew up eight miles from here and I can distinctly remember telling my father I was going to be a jockey. We were leaving here, taking the train home, and I had it in my head and I just blurted it out. 'Pop, I'm going to be a jockey.' Then to have all the success I had here, which is the place that started it all for me, means a great deal. Aqueduct will be missed. I won't miss the traffic on the Belt Parkway, but it will be missed."

When Migliore thinks about all of the Hall of Fame jockeys who have ridden at the Big A, he takes great pride in being at the top of the wins list.

"Having more wins than anyone else means a lot to me. I know as time goes on that the memory of it will fade and it will probably mean a lot to me and nobody else," said the 62-year-old Migliore, who had nearly 600 more Big A wins than second-place Cordero (1,656). "But you think about all the great riders who have plied their trade here over the years. It's a pretty strong list to lead."

Though he won many of Aqueduct's premier races, such as the Wood Memorial Stakes and Carter Handicap when they were Grade 1 stakes, his six wins in the Toboggan Stakes at Aqueduct had a special meaning for him.

"That day I told my dad I would become a jockey, we had seen the Toboggan Handicap, and I said I would win the Toboggan. Every time I won it, I would get emotional thinking about that conversation with my father," he said.

In the years to come, Migliore says he will never forget the Big A and he hopes fans also will remember the venerable city racetrack.

"We are losing a big part of our history and I hope we never forget just how important Aqueduct has been to New York racing over the years," he said.

LINDA RICE

Rice leads all trainers with 1,217 wins at the Big A through June 21, a figure that has grown considerably in the last 1 1/2 years with 252 victories since the start of 2025.

Aqueduct's all-time winningest trainer Linda Rice. (Eclipse Sportswire)

It's understandable why she will be sad after Sunday's card.

"I have spent most of my career in New York," said Rice, who started training at Aqueduct in 1995. "We've won a lot of races here and had some great moments. We've won stakes races and training titles. It's a big part of my personal racing history and it's sad to see it go. It doesn't have the festivities it used to have, which was probably before my time. I see the pictures on the wall and it looked incredible, but we will embrace the new Belmont and hopefully have the same memories there. We have to change with the times. The glory days for Aqueduct are in the past. It's been good to me and with the changing of the guard, we have to move to Belmont and try some new things."

Each of NYRA's tracks has its own personality and Rice enjoyed her days at the Big A with the always vocal and opinionated crowds that surrounded the winner's circle, many of whom were working-class folks who came to the track via the subway.

"It's a different crowd than Belmont or Saratoga. It's kind of a hardcore, broad-spectrum, average American fan and bettor, but they are passionate about racing here at Aqueduct," she said.

CARLOS MARTIN

It's no surprise Carlos Martin became a trainer. Both his late father, Jose, and his grandfather, Frank Sr., were trainers who enjoyed great success at Aqueduct.

"It was truly special to watch my grandfather and dad train there. There are so many memories for me at Aqueduct," said the 57-year-old Martin. "It was one of the places I grew up. It's sort of like losing a member of the family."

Rain, or sleet, or snow, Aqueduct delivered. (Adam Coglianese/NYRA)

New York started year-round racing in 1975 and if that happened when the facility was rebuilt for $34.5 million and reopened in 1959, then Frank "Pancho" Martin Sr. might have been the all-time leading trainer at the Big A. Even with less racing in the 1960s and early 1970s, he won 910 races at Aqueduct.

A master at claiming horses and turning them into stakes-caliber competitors, Martin also developed famed runners such as Sham and Outstandingly. He won 10 straight New York training titles from 1973-82 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1981.

One of his best horses was Autobiography. Bred by the Phipps family's Wheatley Stable, he was bought by Sigmund Sommer for a price of roughly $40,000-$50,000 and turned over to Martin.

His greatest success came in the two-mile, 1972 Jockey Club Gold Cup at the Big A, where he won by 15 lengths over a field that included Key to the Mint and Riva Ridge, and was named the year's champion older runner.

"Aqueduct was the best track for winter racing. My grandfather had such great success there. He won the (2 1/4-mile) Display Handicap four years in a row with Paraje (and also Hitchcock)," Carlos Martin said.

Martin's father, Jose, trained a number of top horses, including Groovy, Goodbye Halo—who won the then-Grade 1 Demoiselle Stakes for him in 1987 at Aqueduct—Noble Nashua, Wayward Lass, and Lakeville Miss.

The most emotional of those wins for his son was a victory in the 2002 Demoiselle by Roar Emotion, which came shortly after his father was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Many fans loved Aqueduct. (Eclipse Sportswire)

"Watching that Demoiselle with my dad is something I'll never forget," said Carlos, whose father passed away in 2006.

Carlos, whose uncle, Gregory, was also a trainer, followed in the big footsteps of his grandfather and father by winning the 1991 Top Flight Handicap, which was a Grade 1 then, with Buy the Firm at the Big A.

"That was a great memory," he said.

Being a year-round trainer in New York, Martin says he takes pride in being one of the trainers who wintered at the Big A and kept the circuit rolling for 12 months a year.

"Aqueduct was a blue-collar track. The trainers who were successful there were the unsung heroes of the sport. Aqueduct was for the meat-and-potatoes claiming guys who have kept New York racing going for the last 50 years. They don't get the credit they deserve," said Martin, who trains for Holliday's Blue Devil Racing Stable. "But everything changes. It's sad but change is good. It's like anything else in life. You have to go through it."

And after 132 years of serving as a hub for New York, change will indeed come to Aqueduct Racetrack Sunday.

Permanently.