Entertainment

Track to the future

As a racehorse, City Mint’s heart just wasn’t in it. When the rich brown thoroughbred made her debut at the Finger Lakes Casino and Racetrack in Farmington, NY, last summer she came in dead last. In her second race a month later, she had a repeat performance. The horse’s winnings from the two races were a paltry $478, not enough to cover even one month’s board at most barns.

“She was not fit for the sport,” admits Leslie Bensi, City Mint’s breeder and former owner. “She did not want to be a racehorse.”

Every year in the US, some 30,000 thoroughbreds are born and bred to be racehorses in hopes of producing the next Secretariat or Seabiscuit. While a lucky few find the fame and glory we’ll see on display at Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, a great number are faced with an unfortunate destiny.

According to the USDA, 10,000 to 15,000 horses that don’t make it on the track are driven over the border to Canada and Mexico for slaughter every year. “So many of them end up in feed lots and the slaughter pipeline, and it’s absolutely unconscionable,” laments Bensi.

But, thanks to a unique, pioneering program, City Mint is getting a second chance to be a winner and training for a rodeo competition.

Bensi and her family donated the horse to the Finger Lakes Thoroughbred Adoption Program’s Purple Haze Center, a horsy retirement home right on the racetrack grounds. Former racers are retrained in other disciplines, like trail riding or show jumping, with the aim of their being adopted by amateur and professional equestrians in other disciplines.

Although there are scores of independent organizations that “rescue” former racehorses and combat the sport’s retirement crisis, the Finger Lakes racetrack is the first and only track to confront the racehorse retirement crisis right on-site. The organization’s president, Brian Moore, describes an idyllic scene where former racers look out contentedly at the track and the life they once had.

“The [retired] horses look up when they hear the starting pistol go off,” he says. “And you can almost see them thinking, ‘Oh yeah, that used to be my life.’ ”

In August, as part of her post-racetrack life, City Mint will compete in the Extreme Retired Racehorse Makeover Barrel Race in Negley, Ohio. Barrel racing is a Western-style rodeo event where horses weave at high speeds between obstacles. It’s typically the province of thick, heavily muscled quarter horses, not featherweight, fine-boned thoroughbreds fresh off the track. A thoroughbred barrel racer is

akin to a ballerina playing ice hockey.

Though City Mint had been a failure as a racehorse, the Purple Haze Center’s trainer, Danielle DeSain, 35, recognized her potential. “This horse is extremely athletic,” says the veteran equestrian.

The center has space for 18 horses at a time, and it can take DeSain anywhere from two weeks to one year to transition a horse from a flighty racer to a safe, obedient pleasure mount. After training is complete, the horses are available for adoption. The fee for adopting a horse is just $600 to $1,600, quite a bargain in the equine world. Adopters range from parents looking for a recreational family horse to competitive three-day-event riders who come down from Canada to collect a dozen mounts in one go.

City Mint will be up for adoption after she showcases her skills at the barrel racing competition in August. Though she’s been training for the rodeo sport specifically, DeSain says the horse could be a success in any number of disciplines.

“She’d make a great jumper, a great trail horse,” she enthuses. “There is nothing she can’t do, and she’s capable of anything.”

pets@nypost.com