He’s taking a victory lap.
A die-hard horse racing fan whose teenage dollar bets at Belmont Park grew into hall-of-fame, six-figure wins just hit the ultimate jackpot: rebuilding the legendary Long Island grandstand, home of the Triple Crown’s final leg.
“Our company was lucky enough to get the contract to do this, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” Roger Cettina, a hard-hat-wearing senior vice president at AECOM Tishman, told The Post ahead of last week’s grand opening.
“Like, wow, a horse player like me could actually build the new Belmont Park — someplace that I came so often when I was younger,” the 59-year-old added.
Cettina loved the equestrian sport since he was a boy growing up in Tenafly, New Jersey, and would spend his afternoons at Belmont before hightailing it back to the Garden State to catch night races at the Meadowlands track in East Rutherford.
He began his betting modestly as an 18- and 19-year-old, placing $2 or $5 fixes, but about 15 years ago Cettina took things up a notch by getting involved in national high-stakes contests where he saddled up over $5,000 of his own hey.
It was more for fun than a cash grab and never took priority over the day job, the construction worker said.
“I enjoyed it. It’s math,” Cettina said. “It’s a puzzle – trying to figure things out, and it’s just something that I totally got into.”
The builder made a name for himself in the 2013 National Horseplayers Championship, where he earned a cool $200,000 in second place with the odds stacked against him.
“There are eight or 900 entries that you’re playing against, and it’s over three days,” he explained.
“You bet basically to win and place on 15 races a day from all over the country, and whoever has the highest cumulative total wins.”
Cettina came $1.20 short of first place, but remains “glasses half full” all these years later.
His wife Wendy is anything but a neighsayer – especially after getting a brand-new Lexus from the winnings.
He kept at it and again cruised to a runner-up spot in 2015, pocketing another $230,000.
“I cashed almost a half a million dollars between the two – and I’ve definitely not put that much money into it,” said Cettina, who co-owns a pair of horses.
“You have to be really lucky,” Cettina said.
Cettina’s lucrative longshots make him the NHC’s only contestant to have placed second more than once.
The Daily Racing Form billed Cettina as “the master” of his craft in 2016 – a year before he was inducted into the NHC Hall of Fame.
After some “up and down” seasons that followed into the 2020s, Cettina estimates a stable lifetime net profit of around $300,000.
“Not nearly enough to retire,” he joked. “Not in New York and New Jersey.”
Instead, Cettina kept happily working his 9-5 through it all and worked on major projects like the Goldman Sachs Headquarters in Lower Manhattan and renovations to the Javits Center.
That’s in addition to both One and Two Manhattan West near Hudson Yards.
The latter was one of Cettina’s all-time favorites, until a dream job reconstructing Nassau County’s racing crown jewel from scratch came calling in 2024.
There was just one problem – Cettina has since moved about 75 miles south to Sea Bright on the Jersey Shore.
“I went home and talked to my wife about it because obviously I couldn’t commute,” he said.
Wendy was on board with Cettina bunking in a friend’s West Hempstead basement on weekdays, and sometimes at another’s in the Bronx near the Throgs Neck Bridge.
“Then I packed my bags – and here I am.”
He’s spent the past two years galloping back home on weekends.
“I don’t know of any other workers that are actually into this like I am,” Cettina said.
“It was an unbelievable experience, and the chance for me to build a racetrack was just incredible.”
