Henry Miller stood on the trackside apron of the new Belmont Park on Friday trying to decide what he thought of the place.

“It has to grow on me,” said Miller, a 59-year-old retired sanitation worker from Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood who has been coming to New York racetracks for 47 years. “For me, it’s too much concrete. I don’t think it’s as friendly as the old Belmont.”

He missed the familiar trees and the ivy-covered brick facades. He missed the old bar and grandstand. Most of all, he was still mourning Aqueduct, the ramshackle Queens racetrack that shuttered in June as part of the $555m experiment that has made the reimagined Belmont possible.

“That broke my heart,” Miller said.

For the first time in more than three years, horses were racing at Belmont Park on Friday, but almost everything surrounding them had changed.

The cavernous grandstand that once loomed over the home straight is gone, replaced by a smaller, glass-fronted building designed for a sport that no longer expects tens of thousands of people to turn up on an ordinary afternoon. The old Belmont had a footprint of roughly 1.25m sq ft; its five-storey replacement is less than a quarter of the size, at about 300,000 sq ft. Even Big Sandy, the famously deep mile-and-a-half dirt track that became synonymous with the grueling final leg of US horse racing’s Triple Crown, has been relegated to the past, recreated with the same soil composition used at Saratoga with the finish line repositioned for a longer stretch run. There are four rebuilt racing surfaces in all, a paddock 50% larger than its predecessor and roughly 20 acres of newly accessible green space.

Inside, the aesthetic is almost aggressively modern: bright white walls, gleaming floors and long, clean expanses that feel more THX 1138 than old-school racetrack. As one Fox Sports production assistant could be overheard describing it: “It looks kind of like an airport, but it’s beautiful.”

It is a dramatic break with the Belmont that has stood on this corner of suburban Long Island in some form since 1905, a piece of New York cultural furniture right along the Queens-Nassau County line whose hulking structure and sweeping turns were recognizable even to people who never studied a racing form. Secretariat surged into history by 31 lengths here, generations before American Pharoah ended a 37-year Triple Crown hoodoo. The track appeared on screen everywhere from multiple Woody Allen films to a Frederick Wiseman documentary to Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi.

What opened on Friday was not simply a renovated sports venue, but New York’s half-billion dollar gamble that horse racing can shrink its physical footprint, upgrade the experience and find enough new customers to survive a sports betting landscape that has largely moved beyond it.

The $455m state loan that financed the reconstruction was accompanied by another $100m from the New York Racing Association, the nonprofit that operates Belmont, Saratoga and, until recently, Aqueduct. The state money is to be repaid from NYRA’s cut of slot-machine revenue from the Resorts World casino, which sits alongside the now-closed Aqueduct property, only nine miles from Belmont.

At a ribbon-cutting on Friday morning, New York governor Kathy Hochul called the loan a calculated investment in the future of the industry.

“Three and a half years ago, we made a big bet on Belmont,” Hochul said. “We made the bet because we saw the enormous economic potential.”

She described the goal as an “international racing hub” that could double as a concert and entertainment space – “a versatile venue” intended not only for racing fans but “the entire community”.

The bargain came with significant consequences. NYRA consolidated its downstate operation at Belmont, bringing an end to 132 years of racing at Aqueduct and leaving New York City without a thoroughbred racetrack for the first time since the 1821 opening of Union Course in what is now Woodhaven, Queens. The roughly 100-acre Aqueduct site is being returned to the state for redevelopment, with Hochul’s administration planning for a mixed-use redevelopment of housing, retail, community facilities and open space.

Belmont itself has been reconceived around a blunt reality. The old structure, which re-opened in 1968 after a five-year rebuild, was engineered for crowds of a scale that rarely materialized outside the biggest racing days – like the 120,139 who turned out for Smarty Jones’ doomed Triple Crown bid in 2004. Its replacement will hold roughly 10,000 people inside, while access to the infield and temporary seating will allow the property to accommodate around 50,000 for the Belmont Stakes.

The new facility will stage a 46-day fall meet featuring 72 stakes worth $17.7m, before the Belmont Stakes returns next year and the Breeders’ Cup comes back to New York for the first time since 2005.

Fittingly for a venue being pitched as an international racing destination, the first winner at the new Belmont on Friday afternoon was a UK product. Lisa Joy, a British homebred owned by Andrew Rosen, won the opening mile-and-a-quarter maiden on the inner turf for Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey and jockey Antonio Fresu.

McGaughey, a stalwart of New York racing who denied Sunday Silence the Triple Crown when Easy Goer won the Belmont in 1989, was enthusiastic about the rebuilt track even as he acknowledged the place was still finding its feet.

“I think it’s a beautiful place,” he said. “It’s different than what I expected. We just need to get the kinks out and get the people in it and it’ll be really special. I think it’s going to be great when everything gets settled in.”

For longtime patrons, getting used to the new Belmont may take a little longer.

Kathie Riccobono, a 74-year-old from nearby Garden City who has been coming to Belmont for half a century, was impressed by what she saw but immediately identified what she missed about the old place.

“The crowds,” she said.

“It’s a big change,” Riccobono said. “Change is good, but you’re not going to have the old Belmont like we used to. The old people, there’s not many of us left. And the new group don’t know nothing about horses.”

Attendance was capped at 6,000 during opening weekend and will drop to 4,000 beginning next week while construction continues. Right now only the first two floors are open, while the remaining three are expected to be finished early next year.

The transformation is perhaps most obvious in the way spectators are distributed. General-admission customers occupy the first floor, apron and backyard, with bars and food concessions including Big Red’s, Silks, Homestretch Market and the Trackside Lounge accessible without reservations or cover charges. One floor up, the Turf Club, Overlook and Stretch View require reservations. Above them, still under construction, will be the suites and boxes.

The prices rise accordingly. A box seat runs between $55 and $75, while the Overlook and Stretch View can cost $100 to $150 more per person and the Turf Club charges $75 per person, climbing to $150 for its premium menu.

General admission, at least, remains cheap. After opening weekend, tickets will cost $7 in advance or $10 at the gate, the same price NYRA charges at Saratoga. Yet some regulars say the cost of admission tells only part of the story.

Miller was among them. Parking, he noted, costs $20. Factor in other costs like admission and a program and the economics begin to look different.

“You’re spending $35 or $45 before you even make a wager. It’s not going to get people in the doors when you have the other option to stay home and gamble or bet on the app,” Miller said. “That $45 is going on a parlay.”

The same tension can be found in the new backyard. NYRA has promoted a space roughly five times larger than its predecessor as a communal gathering place, but coolers and outside beverages are prohibited, eliminating a longstanding way for families and groups to keep the cost of a day at the races down.

For anyone who spent time at Aqueduct, the distinction is significant. Miller called it “the poor man’s track”.

“I don’t know if there’s another racetrack that you could take public transportation to, directly to the track,” he said. “Everybody knows everyone. The jockeys are even closer with the guys. It’s more interaction.”

Belmont, he said, had always been “more prestige or boutique”. And he had noticed the same trends surfacing elsewhere.

“I was down at Gulfstream, I was at Churchill [Downs]. They’re all gearing towards this boutique kind of thing,” Miller said. “The average horseplayer, the nickel-and-dime guy who keeps the industry going is going to get squeezed out.”

Aqueduct was nobody’s idea of luxury. By its final years it was dim, dilapidated and increasingly swallowed by the casino next door. But entrance was free, the A train stopped outside and patrons could bring their own food. Regulars carved out territories around particular tables, simulcast monitors and betting windows.

That accessibility helped make Aqueduct an increasingly rare thing in American sport: a third place where anyone could walk in off the street and stay the whole day without spending very much. Its democratic crowd reflected the borough that surrounded it: a racially and economically mixed collection of horseplayers, families, retirees and obsessive handicappers. Belmont remains accessible by public transport, with the Long Island Rail Road stopping at the neighboring Elmont-UBS Arena station. But Aqueduct’s location directly on the A line gave it a different relationship with the city.

On Aqueduct’s final day in June, 6,866 people came for what felt alternately like a celebration and a wake. Many posed for photographs in front of the Secretariat mural or pocketed small keepsakes. Others wondered aloud whether they would make the trip east to Belmont at all.

“Probably not,” one retired horseman turned Aqueduct regular, Robert Bourget, said that afternoon when asked whether he would go. “They’ll charge too much to get in.”

Not everyone on Friday regarded the transformation with suspicion. Joseph Gillespie, a 60-year-old retiree from Levittown who was at the track with his wife, Eileen, has been coming to Belmont for 35 years and said he expects to visit even more often now that he is retired. He called the new building “very nice” and was unbothered by what he had seen of the prices: even a $12 beer, he reckoned, “is not so bad these days”.

Gillespie also understood immediately what NYRA appeared to be aiming for.

“I think they’re trying to make this like a Keeneland destination type of thing,” he said. “People get fancied up. Hopefully you don’t get the riff-raff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Hopefully it thrives.”

The question extends well beyond New York. More than 40 American racetracks have closed since 2000 as the sport has contended with an aging fanbase, declining attendance and a gambling marketplace that bears little resemblance to the one that made horse racing a mass spectator sport.

Another signpost of the contraction arrived this year when FanDuel TV, the former TVG and for more than two decades a central hub of American racing coverage, announced plans to wind down its television operation. The network, which reaches about 30m households, is cutting its workforce by roughly 60% and plans to eliminate studio production by the end of the year before ceasing linear racing broadcasts altogether in 2027. FanDuel’s wagering platforms, meanwhile, will continue operating.

For much of the 20th century, the racetrack possessed an enormous house edge: in many places it was one of the only legal ways to gamble. That monopoly began disappearing with the spread of lotteries, casinos and off-track betting and has been obliterated in the mobile sports-betting era. Americans wagered nearly $167bn on sports in 2025, compared with roughly $11bn on US horse racing.

The irony is that Belmont’s rebirth comes as horse racing itself loses ground, but that may be precisely the point. Across American sports, venues have increasingly become anchors for year-round economies of restaurants, shops, hotels and entertainment rather than self-contained destinations. Belmont now has its own version: a $455m racetrack only footsteps from an expanding luxury shopping village and UBS Arena, the 17,255-seat home of the NHL’s New York Islanders.

Miller didn’t need the statistics to understand racing’s demographic problem.

“I’m 59 now, so like my cousins say, ‘I’m in the departure lounge now. I’m not in arrivals,’” he said. “So you got to get the younger people to get more involved.”

He could remember when Aqueduct on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday or Thursday might attract 15,000 or 20,000 people. The Meadowlands on a Friday or Saturday night could be the place to be even for people who had little interest in gambling. That, he believed, was the challenge facing the new Belmont in an age when the casino is already sitting in everyone’s pocket.

“You got to give a person a reason to come,” he said.

Some of the arrivals Miller was talking about were plainly visible on Friday for a re-opening that was intended as a showcase. On a sun-splashed 83F (28C) afternoon beneath a cloudless sky, a sold-out crowd of about 6,000 filled the partially completed grounds, country singer Dierks Bentley performed an abbreviated set and the nine-race card was built around the $1m Jockey Club Gold Cup and one of world’s most famous equine athletes today.

Forever Young arrived at Belmont as a bonafide globetrotting star. Friday marked the five-year-old Japanese horse’s 16th career start at his 10th different track. The strapping bay stallion had won 11 of his first 15 races, including the 2025 Breeders’ Cup Classic, never finishing outside the top three.

His following had traveled too. Hordes of younger fans crowded the paddock and apron for a glimpse of him, including many groups dressed in elaborate anime-inspired cosplay – a strikingly different image of the racing enthusiast from the aging horseplayers the sport has spent years of hand-wringing about losing. They were not the traditional railbirds Miller remembered from Aqueduct, but neither were they indifferent newcomers being coaxed into caring about the sport with trackside concerts and food vouchers.

Forever Young duly supplied the reborn Belmont with its first marquee moment, sitting comfortably behind the early pace before sweeping to the lead around the far turn, winning by three and a quarter lengths and pushing his career earnings beyond $32m. Even that was apparently not enough to satisfy his famously demanding trainer. Yoshito Yahagi pronounced himself only “50% satisfied”, estimating Forever Young at about 80% fitness before his attempt next month to become only the second horse after Tiznow to win back-to-back Breeders’ Cup Classics.

“I think I will never see again a horse like this in my life and my career,” Yahagi said through a translator.

The mania around Forever Young offered one glimpse of the audience NYRA hopes to cultivate, but attracting a new generation of fans is only one part of its attempt to remake Belmont for a changing sport. The physical plant itself has been designed around year-round use. Alongside the traditional mile-and-a-half dirt track and two rebuilt turf courses is a new one-mile Tapeta oval that will become the exclusive racing surface during the winter, allowing NYRA to consolidate a calendar once divided between Belmont and Aqueduct onto a single property.

Even the Belmont Stakes itself may not return unchanged. NYRA is considering shortening its signature race from its traditional mile-and-a-half distance to a mile and a quarter, with NYRA CEO Dave O’Rourke arguing that the historic distance no longer reflects what modern breeders are producing.

Taken together, the changes make Belmont an unusually literal experiment in the future of American horse racing. The old model was a gigantic betting hall that happened to surround a racetrack. The new one is smaller, brighter and more flexible: part racetrack, part entertainment complex, with the biggest crowds concentrated into a handful of destination events and premium spaces available for customers willing to pay for them.

There were signs Friday that the experiment might work. Riccobono, for all her nostalgia for the old Belmont, was struck by the mood around her.

“Everybody is cheerful,” she said. “And that’s how it always is at Belmont.”

After 50 years of coming here, she was less interested in delivering a verdict than appreciating the fact that she had made it to another incarnation of the place.

“I feel lucky to be alive,” she said. “I feel lucky I’m here.”

For one afternoon, at least, the formula clicked. Six thousand people filled the grounds. Families spread across the new backyard, old horseplayers filled the tables and benches at trackside and toiled over their forms (or tablets), while younger fans celebrated the Japanese stallion who had made his name around the world. Whether the same energy can be reproduced on an ordinary Thursday in November – without a $32m global superstar, a concert or the novelty of seeing the place for the first time – will be the more consequential test.