Late Sunday afternoon, when the tote board went dark after the final race of the day at Aqueduct Racetrack, Pat Mahony called it a career, one he has cherished and one that has been part of his family history for more than a century. Like his father and grandfather before him, Mahony is a mutuels man.
By his estimation, over the last 50 years, he has spent 14,000 days at the track, watched more than 130,000 races and been responsible for the more than $20 billion that has come through the betting windows at the racetracks he has supervised from Florida to New York.