Quote:
Originally Posted by BMustang
Funny how your perceptions change over the years. When I was younger, just starting out in the sport back in the 60s attending River Downs every opportunity I could, going to Aqueduct was at the top of my wish list. To me, Aqueduct was the holy grail. However, because I was working and had limited funds, I never had the opportunity to go there, but always watched the Race of the Week from Aqueduct with Fred Capossela telling me that it as now post time. The feature race on Saturday was normally $25,000, with horses such as Affectionately, Roman Brother, Kelso and Gun Bow running across my TV screen.
Now that I'm older, retired, and have the means to make the trip to The Big A, I have still never been there, despite going to Belmont and Saratoga numerous times. However, I still have a poster hanging in my man-cave with a Big A in the middle, and the verbage saying that "When your ship comes in it might just be a horse."
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Aqueduct obviously isn't what it once was- how could it be, as it was the place where 50,000 people would crowd the grandstands to see horses like Kelso and Damascus?
But Aqueduct is still a really nice place to see a horse race. Its big problem normally is weather- when you go to Aqueduct for races, it's usually cold. But this year's fall meet will give fans a chance to actually attend the races at Aqueduct when it is nice out. They only use a small portion of the original plant, but you can still get a sense for what a palace the place was when NYRA first opened it in the late 1950's. I highly recommend it.
