Fran Lawrence enjoys a hard day's work and he loves horses. The Long Island native has combined those passions to carve out a unique money-making niche at the racetrack. For the past decade, Lawrence's company EquiCycle has undertaken one of the dirtiest jobs on Saratoga's expansive backstretch.

"My phone starts going off at 5:15 or 5:30 in the morning. When I get up in the morning and I see the orders, I say I can’t wait to get to work," Lawrence said, who owns and breeds a small string of thoroughbreds. "Horse racing is the best sport out there. I love it, I love just watching them get out there and run and graze."

Each day his crews haul away all of the manure left behind by the horses.

"I didn’t even know this was an opportunity until about 10 years ago,” Lawrence said, who initially married into his wife’s family’s business in the waste removal industry. "If we did not have the outlets to go to, we would be in a lot of trouble because I do not know what you would do with it."

The waste is shipped and sold to mushroom farms in Pennsylvania.

"On average, we haul about six tractor-trailer loads every day out of here," Lawrence said, who has an exclusive contract with the NYRA. "There is a very good chance the mushroom you have eaten has been on manure that came from a New York racetrack. We are the largest supplier to the mushroom farms in, I would say, the country."

EquiCycle also sells the wood shavings many trainers use to line their horses' stalls.

"There are large flakes, there are small flakes, there are minute flakes," Lawrence said, who sells to about 40 trainers in Saratoga. "Todd Pletcher, Bill Mott, they like the really large flakes because it looks pretty in the barn."

It may be one of the messier ways to get into the industry but it allows Lawrence to work in the sport he loves.

"It’s a passio. It’s something I love to be involved in and this just happens to be another way I am involved in horseracing as opposed to just owning horses," Lawrence said.

Lawrence's business handles all three NYRA racetracks, as well as tracks in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

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