Trainer Gary Contessa, a Long Island native who boasts 20 training titles in New York and owns the NYRA record of 159 victories in a single year, notched his 2,000th career winner in yesterday’s seventh race at Aqueduct when the 3-year-old filly Al’s Rosie rallied up the rail under Eddie Castro to win by a half-length.
Contessa, 55, worked with standardbreds at Roosevelt Raceway before moving to thoroughbreds in 1972. He saddled his first winner, Legendary Wealth, on June 25, 1985, at Monmouth Park, and won his first training title when he led the 1999-2000 winter meet at Aqueduct. Since then, he’s won 15 meet titles, 11 of those at the Big A, and four times has led NYRA in victories for the year.
“I’m very honored and humbled to win 2,000 races,” Contessa said in the winner’s circle. “It’s very apropos it happened here in the winter, because most of my wins have come in the winter at Aqueduct. I made my bones here. It’s also very apropos that the horse was claimed.”
He credits the late Hall-of-Fame horseman Frank Martin with being his biggest mentor.
“He beat the daylights out of me and made me a horse trainer,” Contessa said.