Farewell to the Big A: The 10 Greatest Races in Aqueduct History
By ITM Staff
On Sunday, June 28, 2026, Aqueduct Racetrack runs the final card in its 132-year history, and New York racing decamps for a rebuilt Belmont Park that reopens September 18. Before the Big A in Ozone Park goes quiet for good, we went looking for the ten greatest races ever run over it — with a thumb firmly on the scale for the afternoons when the starting gate held more than one champion. We’ll count them down from ten to one.
Two notes before we begin. First, the two oldest races here, the 1920 Dwyer and the 1944 Carter, were run on the original Aqueduct that stood on this same patch of Ozone Park ground before the 1956–59 rebuild — same place, different grandstand. Second, on the multimedia: every race replay we could verify is embedded below, and the historic photographs, which belong to the libraries and photographers who preserved them, are linked rather than reproduced.
10. Bellamy Road’s 2005 Wood Memorial — 17 1/2 lengths of disbelief
The most jaw-dropping romp the Big A’s biggest race ever produced. In April 2005, George Steinbrenner’s homebred Bellamy Road, lightly raced and trained by Nick Zito, broke from post two under Javier Castellano, cruised to the lead, and simply kept widening — six furlongs in 1:09, a mile in 1:34 and change, Castellano waving to the crowd a sixteenth from home — to win by 17 1/2 lengths in a stakes-record 1:47.16 that equaled Riva Ridge’s 1973 Aqueduct track mark. Tom Durkin called it a dazzling performance by a dazzling three-year-old, and the figure backed him up. Bellamy Road left as the Derby favorite; racing being racing, he ran seventh to 50-1 Giacomo a month later.
Feature & photos: NYRA, “Bellamy Road’s Wood Memorial stands out among century of runnings”
9. Seattle Slew’s 1977 Wood Memorial — an unbeaten champion’s last tune-up
The Wood has launched eleven Kentucky Derby winners, but only a handful of Triple Crown champions used it as a final prep — and none quite like Seattle Slew. Unbeaten and the 1-10 favorite on April 23, 1977, racing over Aqueduct’s main track, Slew did exactly what a great front-runner does, leading at every call and pulling away to win in 1:49 3/5 over Sanhedrin. He shipped to Louisville still perfect and went on to sweep the Triple Crown without ever having lost a race — the only horse to do so until Justify in 2018.
No clean standalone replay survives, but the Wood is included in the Seattle Slew documentary. Feature & photos: NYRA, “Seattle Slew trainer has fond memories of Wood Memorial” · BloodHorse Seattle Slew gallery
8. Cigar’s 1994 NYRA Mile — a legend lights the fuse
Few in the Aqueduct crowd of November 26, 1994, knew they were watching history begin. A month after a quiet eight-length allowance win at the Big A — the first victory of what became a 16-race winning streak — Cigar tackled Grade 1 company for the first time on dirt and dismissed it, drawing off by seven lengths over the favored Devil His Due. Sent off the 8.90-1 sixth choice, he gave Jerry Bailey and trainer Bill Mott the first Grade 1 of a partnership that would carry him to Horse of the Year. The race was renamed the Cigar Mile in his honor in 1997.
Feature: NYRA, “Cigar Mile, Demoiselle, Remsen leave behind rich legacies”
7. The 1944 Carter Handicap — three winners at once
The Big A’s singular oddity, and arguably the best photograph on this entire list. On a sloppy strip on June 10, 1944, at the original Aqueduct, the seven-furlong Carter came down to Brownie (Eric Guerin), Bossuet (Jimmy Stout), and Wait A Bit (Gayle Smith) hitting the wire locked together — a triple dead heat, confirmed only when the photo-finish image was developed. The three split the purse evenly, each collecting $3,623.33. It was just the third triple dead heat recorded anywhere and the first ever in a stakes race; more than eighty years later, it remains the only triple dead heat for the win in a North American stakes race.
This one predates race film. The iconic photo finish (Keeneland Library Morgan Collection) appears in: TwinSpires, “Tall Tales of the Track: Three Times the Victory” · Thoroughbred Racing Commentary, “Remembering the race that had three winners”
6. Easy Goer’s 1989 Gotham Stakes — a clock that still stuns
Sixteen years after Secretariat’s Gotham, the race produced an even faster one. On April 8, 1989, Easy Goer — Pat Day aboard for trainer Shug McGaughey — toyed with four overmatched rivals and won the mile by 13 lengths in 1:32 2/5. It was a track record, the fastest mile any three-year-old has ever run, just a fifth of a second off Dr. Fager’s 1968 world mark, and it eclipsed the Gotham standard Secretariat had set in 1973. New York had a new favorite son; the Sunday Silence rivalry was still a month away.
Feature & photos: America’s Best Racing · Paulick Report
5. Secretariat’s 1973 Gotham Stakes — the win, with the loss right behind it
Aqueduct framed Secretariat’s entire career: he broke his maiden there in 1972, and the track hosted his retirement ceremony in November 1973. In between came the Gotham. On April 7, 1973, trainer Lucien Laurin and jockey Ron Turcotte tried something new — sending Big Red to the lead — and he answered with the first wire-to-wire score of his life, a three-length win over Champagne Charlie in 1:33 2/5 that equaled the track record and stood as the fastest mile a three-year-old had ever run in New York. He is still the only Gotham winner to go on and win the Kentucky Derby, and the tactical wrinkle would shape his Preakness and Belmont.
The flip side arrived two weeks later on the same strip. Sent off the prohibitive favorite in the Wood Memorial, Secretariat was stunned into third behind stablemate Angle Light and Sham — a result later explained in part by an abscess found under his lip hours before the race. He silenced every doubt on the first Saturday in May.
Feature & photos: Secretariat.com: the Gotham · NYRA, “Secretariat and Aqueduct”
4. The 1985 Breeders’ Cup Classic — Proud Truth by a head
The day the Breeders’ Cup came to New York. In only its second running, the World Championships set up at Aqueduct on November 2, 1985, and the Classic delivered a finish worthy of the occasion. Gate Dancer and Chris McCarron struck the front through the lane but moved too soon; Proud Truth, dead last early for jockey Jorge Velasquez and trainer John Veitch, came with a sweeping run to nail him on the wire by a head in 2:00 4/5, with Turkoman third.
Around the Classic ran one of the richest afternoons the sport had ever staged. Precisionist took the Sprint in 1:08 2/5 on his way to champion-sprinter honors:
Life’s Magic romped in the Distaff by 6 1/4 lengths under Angel Cordero Jr.; Cozzene won the Mile for Dr. Fager’s old horseman John Nerud; and England’s Pebbles captured the Turf under Pat Eddery in an Aqueduct course record that stood for nearly 37 years. (Watch the full 1985 Breeders’ Cup Day broadcast.)
Feature & photos: Breeders’ Cup Hall of Champions: Proud Truth
3. The 1920 Dwyer Stakes — Man o’ War vs. John P. Grier
The oldest entry, run before the modern grandstand existed. On July 10, 1920, at the original Aqueduct, the unbeatable Man o’ War met the one three-year-old thought capable of testing him, Harry Payne Whitney’s John P. Grier. Conceding 18 pounds — 126 to 108 — Big Red set a pace so fast that records fell at every pole, yet Grier refused to crack, even poking a head in front inside the final furlong. It was the only time in Man o’ War’s career that jockey Clarence Kummer reached for the whip. Big Red answered in the last seventy yards to win by a length and a half and set an American record for 1 1/8 miles (1:49 1/5). The duel so marked the place that the eighth pole where Grier briefly led was preserved and moved to Saratoga when the old track came down in 1959.
This one predates race film. Photo & feature: Keeneland Library, “Man o’ War and John P. Grier” · BloodHorse, “John P. Grier Made Mighty Man o’ War Work in Dwyer”
2. The 1964 Woodward Stakes — Gun Bow nips Kelso by less than an inch
On October 3, 1964, five-time Horse of the Year Kelso — already a fixture at the Big A and chasing a fourth straight Woodward and Round Table’s world earnings record — met his fiercest rival, Gun Bow, in a five-horse field that also included Quadrangle, the colt who had just spoiled Northern Dancer’s Triple Crown in the Belmont. Gun Bow’s connections, trainer Eddie Neloy and jockey Walter Blum, planned to grab the lead and then conserve, and the tactic held by a whisker. Kelso loomed alongside the length of the stretch and the two hit the wire as a matched pair; the photo showed Gun Bow ahead by less than an inch. The Horse of the Year title would wait five weeks for their rematch in the Washington, D.C. International.
Feature & photos: Sports Illustrated Vault, “The Protruding Proboscis” (Oct. 1964) · Horse Racing Nation, “Kelso and Gun Bow: A Moment in Time”
1. The 1967 Woodward Stakes — “The Race of the Century”
No field in American racing has ever been deeper. On September 30, 1967 — with Belmont shuttered for reconstruction and its races shifted to the Big A — three Horses of the Year went to the post together: reigning champion Buckpasser (1966), Damascus (1967), and Dr. Fager (1968). All three are in the Hall of Fame. Damascus, ridden by Bill Shoemaker for trainer Frank Whiteley Jr., settled off a furious early pace and then loosed the turn of foot that defined him, drawing clear to win by ten lengths in 2:00 3/5 for the mile and a quarter; Buckpasser edged Dr. Fager for second. A crowd of 55,259 watched what the sport still calls the Race of the Century, and the performance sealed Horse of the Year for Damascus.
Feature & photos: America’s Best Racing · Secretariat.com “Race of the Century” program
Ten races, more than a century, one patch of Ozone Park dirt. When the gates swing open for the final time on June 28, the Big A carries all of it into the record books — and across town, a new Belmont gets to start writing its own.
