Aqueduct Racetrack, the only racetrack located entirely in the New York City limits, will close its doors after racing on Sunday. Originally opened in 1894 and named after the nearby Brooklyn Water Works aqueduct, it was reborn in 1959 as a state-of-the-art facility for the modern era. Winter racing debuted in 1975, turning Aqueduct into New York's workaday facility. We talked to several people who spent years at the facility about their best memories of Aqueduct.Trainer Bruce Levine: It's where I got started. I saddled my first winner there and was stabled there for about 15 years. So I have a soft spot for it. In the heyday, they had big crowds and it was a lot nicer. They knew they were leaving, so they let it get run down. I can't tell you they spruced it up over the last five years. l like the oval and the mile-and-an-eighth races, the two-turn races. You don't get that on the dirt at Belmont. It's all one turn. Belmont is huge. It's hard to watch the races. At Aqueduct, it's all right in front of you. You can go outside on the apron and watch the races. It's cozier. I will miss it. I know the traffic is a nightmare and it's gotten worse over the years. But, yes, I will miss it.Turf Writer John Pricci (Pricci covered New York racing for Newsday from 1977 to 1996): Aqueduct became a part of our lexicon. My wife would ask me what kind of day is was going to be today. She knew that I always checked the weather when handicapping. I'd tell her it's going to be an Aqueduct day today, which meant rainy, stormy, cold and bitter. I saw a lot of great races there. One thing that sticks out is that in 2003 I watched the Wood Memorial. Funny Cide ran second, but I remember thinking this was exactly what this guy needed. And it looked like he had enough in the tank to get the extra eighth of a mile. which is what everybody was talking about in those days. Can he go that far? He could. I cashed a nice ticket on him in the Derby.Announcer John Imbriale: Aqueduct was where I started. The first day I ever worked at the track was November 5, 1979. I went back last week to see some people and say goodbye to the place. You always remember where you started. I cut my teeth there. I was lucky enough to do different things and work with different people. The first significant job for me, I got to work in the background of the Saturday NYRA-OTB TV show. I got to be fairly comfortable and friends with Frank Wright, Charlsie Cantey and Marshall Cassidy, whom I would go on to work with as an announcer. I was there for the very last show they ever did. It was in 1984. Just to be around those people and to see how that show was done was a great experience. To this day, I still get people who come up to me to talk about that show. It really left a lasting impression with people. That was a lot of fun. My favorite race? Probably the 2021 Wood Memorial with Bourbonic. It had everything that makes race calling fun. That horse came from way out of it. He was a big-time closer. Obviously, he paid a huge price. It was a bang-bang finish and everything worked out well from the race calling standpoint.Jockey Robbie Davis: I was leading rider there several times. When I retired, I was the fourth all-time leading rider there. I was surprised by that. When I looked down the list at the time, there were eight or nine Hall of Famers on the list. I was pretty proud of that. I learned a lot there. Angel Cordero schooled me well at Aqueduct. That's where I learned to ride. To really learn to be a top race rider, it happened for me right there at Aqueduct. I couldn't wait to get there and I wanted to ride every race, even when it was so cold. There was a day when I couldn't feel my feet or my hands. I told Mike Venezia, who was the Guild rep at the time, 'I'm not doing anyone any justice out there. I was in survival mode.' In the eighties, that weather would just blow off the Jamaica Bay. It was brutal. I had a lot of good winners there. I won the NYRA Mile on Flying Chevron. That was a big one. I won the Wood Memorial on Coronado's Quest.Trainer/Jockey Rudy Rodriguez: I have a lot of great memories at Aqueduct. I started galloping there. I won my first race there as a jockey. I won my first race as a trainer there and my first Grade I there. There are so many memories I can't count them. To see Aqueduct close is very sad to me. When you start, you never think that's going to happen. I was very lucky, very blessed. We were at Aqueduct training for so many years. It was like a private training center. When we moved to Belmont we had to learn to train differently. At the beginning, we got a lot of horses hurt, a lot of quarter cracks. The track at Belmont is a lot more demanding than the one at Aqueduct. I'm very happy for what Aqueduct did for my family. It is a very special place to me. I am sorry to see it go, but hopefully the new Belmont will bring a lot of happy times for us and everybody in the New York horse industry.Jockey Eddie Maple: It is sort of upsetting to me because so many good things happened to me there. When I first came to New York in 1971, that's where I first started riding. Just the great riders that were there. It was amazing. And then there were the press people. Everybody was so nice. It tugs at me a little bit. I made a list. A racing fan, he reached out to me and asked what I remembered most about Aqueduct. I told him watching Secretariat run there, and riding Cox's Ridge, Temperence Hill, Gone West and Danzig there.Trainer Rick Dutrow: I've missed it for a long time. Since the day I had to leave, I have missed it. I just loved that track. I felt it was the best surface I've ever been around. I loved being stabled there. There weren't a whole lot of horses on the track. It was the best place in the world to train a horse. Training there for as long as we did, we went 11 years without a catastrophic breakdown and the main reason was that at Aqueduct we could pinpoint whatever issues a horse might be having. We would know if they were going the wrong way or if something was off. You could never blame the track. We had so many good horses there. We got to win the Derby from Aqueduct, the Breeders' Cup Classic from Aqueduct and Dubai races from Aqueduct. It was like our right arm. I just loved it. It's not because we loved Ozone Park. We do love Don Peppe, though. Don't get me wrong.Owner Glenn Lane: I had some of my best racing moments and personal memories at Aqueduct, especially Sweet Missus winning the GI Top Flight more than 40 years ago, and also the everyday trips from Jersey Shore at 4-5 a.m. for morning training and the racing day at Aqueduct that always ended with a great early local dinner. 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