Final stretch: NYC’s last horse track, Aqueduct, ending live races

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s last horse racing track, where Seabiscuit, Man O’ War, Secretariat and other legendary thoroughbreds graced the winner’s circle during the sport’s heyday, is on its final stretch.After more than 130 years, the once grand Aqueduct track is set to run its last live races this weekend. The final race, appropriately titled, “It Was a Good Run,” is posted for Sunday at 5:44 p.

m. The track, located next to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, will remain open for betting on televised races — known as simulcasting — through Sept.

7. “There’s a lot of history here. Just so many good horses,” said David Donk, a veteran horse trainer, in between afternoon races at Aqueduct earlier this month.

“It’s had its use. But, you know, times change. Everything changes in life.”

Racing is a contracting industryThe end of the “Big A” comes amid increased competition for gambling dollars. Slot parlors, casinos, state lotteries and, more recently, legalized online and sports betting have all steadily eroded the allure of what once was dubbed the “sport of kings.” There are roughly 75 thoroughbred tracks nationwide, compared to the more than 300 facilities offering some form of horse racing during the sport’s Gilded Age peak in the late 1800s, according to the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, an industry trade group.

Among the other major tracks that have closed in recent years are Arlington Park in Illinois, which was purchased by NFL’s Chicago Bears for a potential new stadium, and Golden Gate Fields in the San Francisco Bay Area.“For over 100 years, thoroughbred racing was one of very few sports outlets you could legally bet on,” said Tom Rooney, the association’s president. “With the expansion of sports gambling, our sport will naturally condense and coalesce around a more pragmatic number of marquee tracks and locations, similar to other sports.”

Indeed, a large chunk of Aqueduct’s hulking site, where a crowd of 75,000 celebrated Mass