On Saturday night, Meadowlands Racing and Entertainment will step back in time, paying tribute to the local history of harness racing as they host “Roosevelt Raceway Legacy Night.”
Meadowlands’ Chairman Jeff Gural has fond memories of the Westbury, NY, half-mile oval that shut its doors in 1988.
“I grew up about 20 minutes from Roosevelt Raceway and when I was in high school my friends and I would pile into a car and drive to the track almost every weekend.” Gural said.
“The place was packed, we saw the best horses in the world race. It was just a great place to go and it was heartbreaking when it was torn down.”
The festivities kick off after the running of the Preakness, with an autograph session featuring three of Roosevelt’s best drivers: Carmine Abbatiello, Herve Filion and Lucien Fontaine.
“We had a lot of fun,” said Abbatiello, reminiscing. “There were a lot of good drivers there. [Herve] was a good driver. He was a tough man to beat.”
Filion became the sport’s all-time leading dash-winner in his early days at Roosevelt. It was a title he kept for over 40 years.
“I came there on a regular basis in 1970 when I was 30 years old and five years later, I was in the Hall of Fame,” said Filion.
Unlike today, drivers also trained a stable of horses, with the exception of Fontaine, who became New York’s first official catch driver. Eventually, more drivers (including Abbatiello and Filion) stopped training and focused solely on driving.
According to Fontaine, in the 1960s and 70s, harness racing was the top-drawing sport in New York. He remembers his lifelong friend, Rangers forward Rod Gilbert, coming to the track often with his teammates.
“I’d be walking down the street with Rod and as many people knew me as knew him,” Fontaine said.
The Meadowlands is also turning back the clock on some of its food and beverages with $1 Budweiser and Bud Light Drafts, $1 canned sodas, $1 hot dogs and $1 pretzels, like they had at Roosevelt.
Dave Johnson and Spencer Ross, co-hosts with the late Stan Bergstein on “Racing from Roosevelt,” which ran on WOR-TV Ch. 9, will be part of the in-house show prior to the races.