Drugs and death haunt

If horsemen care so much about animals, why does it take the FBI to stop doping? Sally Jenkins reports.

Why should it take a federal indictment to stop Jason Servis and Jorge Navarro from hurting horses? That question should sicken every good thoroughbred handler. The ‘‘Sport of Kings’’ can’t seem to reform itself from within, so once again the outsiders appear to care more about equine abuse – in this case, a New York grand jury. Good. Maybe if someone winds up doing 10 years in a Rikers cell next to Harvey Weinstein, the horses finally will catch a break.

Servis has been drugging

‘‘virtually all the racehorses under his control,’’ according to the charges issued this week by federal prosecutors for the Southern

District of New York. The allegation will not come as a surprise to anyone in racing.

Servis’s horses have had highly unlikely jumps in performance – none more so than Maximum Security, who went from a $NZ25,000 claiming race to a first-placed finish in the Kentucky Derby before disqualification last spring for interference on the home turn.

After the Derby and Triple Crown series, Gary and Mary West’s homebred son of New Year’s Day went on to win Haskell Invitational Stakes (Group 1) and the Cigar Mile Handicap (G1), giving him three G1 victories for the year that included the Florida Derby. His strong performances during the second half of the year sewed up champion 3-yearold colt honours.

In January, a half-interest in the colt was acquired by longtime partners and Coolmore associates Susan Magnier, Derrick Smith, and Michael Tabor. Maximum Security made history again last month by winning the inaugural $30 million Saudi Cup at King Abdulaziz Racetrack in Saudi Arabia.

Now all of Maximum Security’s performances are being called into question and Servis has been sacked as trainer.

The allegations have also raised fears that other racing countries have the same problems, including Australasian gallops and harness racing, where the use of an electric jigger in training by leading Victorian horseman Darren Weir, since disqualified for four years, and controversy over EPO and blood spinning technology have stunned officials and punters alike.

Weir enlisted Australian rider Michelle Payne to guide 100-1 outsider Prince Of Penzance to win the Melbourne Cup in 2015, the first female rider to win the cup.

Payne was asked by media if she saw signs of Weir’s horses doing unnaturally well in races.

‘‘It’s hard to know,’’ she replied. ‘‘There’s been rumours for years, but there’s rumours about all trainers. So you don’t know.’’

In the United States, the suspicion and gossip about Servis have been rampant for a number of years.

Then there is

Navarro, notoriously nicknamed ‘‘Juice Man’’, whose horses have tested positive for cocaine at tracks in New Jersey and Florida, and who was suspended from racing in Florida for 60 days and banned for the entire 2013-14 season by Tampa Bay Downs for drugging offences involving six horses. Yet he has managed to keep thriving in the sport, right up until he was arrested as part of the federal government’s case against 27 people, including galloping and harness trainers, vets and drug distributors.

Servis and Navarro, as well as the others indicted, are entitled to the presumption of innocence. But the charging documents are full of details, including excerpts from wiretaps, that will make your blood boil until it shoots straight into the cerebral cortex. Horses allegedly were fed junk drugs with names such as ‘‘Red Acid’’ and ‘‘Frozen Pain’’ to mask their inflammations and enhance their performances. In Navarro’s barn, horses were subjected to something called ‘‘a drench’’, a cocktail of enhancers shot into their stomach via a tube forced down the larynx and esophagus.

In a call intercepted between two of Navarro’s underlings, one of them said, ‘‘You know how many f . . . . . . horses he f . . . . . . killed and broke down that I made disappear?’’

In 2019, Navarro won the $3.5m Dubai Golden Shaheen with a horse named X Y Jet, an 8-year-old gelding that had endured multiple knee surgeries. Before the race, according to the indictment, Navarro gave the thoroughbred repeated shots of something called ‘‘Monkey’’. He says on a wiretap: ‘‘I gave it to him through 50 injections. I gave it to him through the mouth.’’

In January, X Y Jet, a notable sprinter, died of a heart attack after a routine gallop. More than 30 horses died last year at Santa Anita, one of the most famous tracks in America. According to the Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database, death rates at American tracks are up to five times higher than in Europe and Asia, where rules and penalties against doping are tougher.

Another wiretap captures Navarro talking about how fellow trainer Servis warned him that a racing official was in the barn area where they both stored and administered drugs to their horses. Navarro was grateful for the heads-up, because otherwise the official ‘‘would’ve caught our asses f . . . . . . pumping and pumping and fuming every f . . . . . . horse [that] runs today.’’

After reviewing the excruciating charges, National Thoroughbred Racing Association chief Alex Waldrop issued a statement calling them ‘‘abhorrent.’’ Yes, they are. But what’s equally abhorrent is that long before the indictments, plenty of people had reason to suspect Servis and Navarro were not taking great care of their reliant charges. Horse owners – wealthy people who didn’t need the winnings and were in it for the thrill – stabled their horses with them anyway.

X Y Jet was co-owned by a partnership that included Rockingham Ranch and Gelfenstein Farm. They knew the gelding had undergone three surgeries for knee chips, but Navarro raced him anyway. The horse was so ‘‘moody’’, as Navarro admitted at one point, that people were afraid to groom him. Must have been his natural temper. It couldn’t have been abuse.

Servis trained Maximum Security for Gary and Mary West, who have been in the game for 30 years. They knew Servis’s winning percentages were extraordinarily high: 45 per cent at Gulfstream one season, 40 per cent or better at Belmont Park and Monmouth. Must have been his slow gallop method.

Within the sport, powerful coalitions of horsemen, such as the Jockey Club and the Water Hay Oats Alliance, voice the best intentions for the animals.

A number of horsemen and horsewomen, families such as Arthur Hancock’s, have been