The nine-year-old gelding will parade in front of the grandstand for the last time after the second race on the card, which features $1.6 million in Breeders Crown Championships for older horses. Mr Muscleman won 37 of 67 starts and $4,032,206 while racing for Adam Victor & Son Stable, trainer Noel Daley and driver Ron Pierce. He was voted the 2005 Trotter of the Year by the U.S. Harness Writers Association.

Mr Muscleman last raced on June 22, 2007. He won all four of his starts at the Meadowlands and finished second in Sweden’s prestigious Elitlopp that season before being sidelined by bone chip surgery.

"I tried to bring him back a few times, but it just wasn't to be,” Daley said. “He has been very good to us. It was time."

"He was the best horse I've ever driven,” Pierce noted. “The toughest, the classiest, the gutsiest. He had the manners and covered the ground so easily. He was very much like Moni Maker, a long striding, big powerful horse who needed three strides to get where all the other horses needed four.

“I have to give credit to Noel Daley and Mike Vanderkemp for all the good work they did with him,” Pierce added. “They are the ones who kept him going. The Victors are the ones who put me up. They deserve all the credit, not me."