Flatter: 5 years after Navarro-Servis, case still affects racing

It was five years ago this week when Rudy Gobert walked into the Utah Jazz media room in Salt Lake City, answered questions, joked about the buzz surrounding the new term coronavirus, touched all the recorders on the desk in front of him and walked out of the room.

Two days later he tested positive in Oklahoma City, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver doth decreed a suspension of sports around the world.

Those were the basics.

Gobert put his grimy mitts all over those handheld devices only a few hours after a temporarily bigger bombshell played out in the Daylight Saving Time darkness at stables in New York and Florida. That same Monday morning, trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis had their barns raided by federal agents.

It was the morning Navarro, Servis and 25 other people were indicted in a case brought by the Justice Department, specifically the U.S. attorney’s office in the southern district of New York. It was a day that would live in horse-racing infamy.

The anniversary of these two events came and went Sunday. As much as COVID came to rock 8 billion human lives, the argument may be made that the indictments have had much more tangible effects on horse racing.

Of course the imprisonment and isolation we felt in our own homes cannot be erased, and we never will get that time back. But doesn’t the whole dystopia of 2020 seem like it was a lifetime ago?

Navarro-Servis continues to be felt every day in racing. That case became the keystone for another pair of names. Barr-Tonko. Those hyphenated names were the quick and easy way to refer to the Congressional bill written by representatives Andy Barr of Kentucky and Paul Tonko of New York. After floundering for years, their proposal for horse-racing reforms got the seal of approval from Mitch McConnell when he was Senate majority leader. When it was made one of the thousands of amendments to a COVID-relief bill in the final days of Trump 1.0, Barr-Tonko became a law.

Now we know it as HISA.

Regardless of feelings for or against the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, there is no question the federal case built on the abuse of illegal and misbranded horse medications was the missing link that led to its passage.

It came in the literal wake of 37 horse deaths the year before at Santa Anita. They, too, fueled the calls for reform, but spates of equine casualties came and went before. Remember Aqueduct in the winter of 2011-12, when 21 racehorses died? That was part of the inspiration for Barr-Tonko, but it did not lead to government intervention the way Navarro-Servis finally did.

By the time HISA began to take effect four years ago, COVID was old news. It was as close as a pandemic could be to a fad. Vaccinations helped get us through it. Or they did not. That debate will not be won or lost here. Now we live with the virus. I presume most of us have caught it. I know I tested positive at least three times. Otherwise I do not pay much attention to it anymore.

I do, however, pay attention to HISA. Whether I like it or hate it is immaterial. It is difficult to deny it has had a role in the recent reports of racing deaths dropping to historic lows nationwide. The key word there was racing.

By comparison, it is important to point out that of the 37 deaths at Santa Anita in its annus horribilis, 16 were in training. Those 16 did not show up in the equine injury database that has been The Jockey Club’s baseline when it thumps its chest about safety.

The times they are a-changin’. HISA has promised a thorough report any day now on the number of racehorses who died in 2024 doing work other than racing. For that it should be applauded for going the extra mile to shine a light on previously secret or even undocumented numbers.

It was said five years ago that Navarro-Servis might be the tip of the iceberg. There were some more indictments in the weeks that followed March 9, 2020, but nothing that resembled the promise and-or fear that some of racing’s biggest names would tumble when federal prosecutors continued their sweep of racing.

We heard the same thing in 2017, when the same U.S. attorney’s office on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge went after corruption in college basketball.

The next big thing never happened. In fact, Geoffrey Berman, the lawyer who led both cases, was fired three months after he announced Navarro-Servis. It seems he flew too close to the political sun when his office investigated lawyers close to President Trump.

Berman nowadays works for the other side. He is a partner in a New York firm that defends accused white-collar criminals. He did not respond to a Horse Racing Nation request for an interview about the five years since Navarro-Servis.

Been there. Done that.

Even in the book Berman wrote three years ago, Navarro-Servis was practically a footnote to a reporter asking him about a case against operatives from Russia who were accused of illegally influencing U.S. elections.

“The question came to me during a press conference on an unrelated case having to do with illicit doping of Thoroughbred horses.”

That was it. The only reference in the whole book.

The poster children remain in Florida prisons. As Natalie Voss pointed out last week for Paulick Report, Jorge Navarro’s five-year prison term ends in June with the expectation he will be deported right away to his native Panama. Jason Servis, who fought his case before accepting a guilty plea, will not get out of his minimum-security hold until the summer of next year.

Most of the other accused criminals did their time or had some minor charges dropped in exchange for their testimony. At least practically, the widespread wish that they be banned from racing for life may have come true.

Maximum Security, the big name among horses in the federal case, lives on. He stands for $5,000 at the Ashford Stud stallion farm in Kentucky. Nothing close to the $10 million his owners Gary and Mary West had to concede after the horse’s triumph in the inaugural Saudi Cup was taken away just this past year.

The case may be one for the books now, but Navarro-Servis reverberates in racing’s little corner of the world through the evolution of Barr-Tonko. The ripples in the pond became HISA, which was carved into being in our government’s legislature. The executive and judiciary branches seem likely to decide whether it is here to stay.

As for Rudy Gobert, he has recovered fully. Not just from COVID. He had a back injury that cost him 10 games. He is back with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Oh, all those devices he touched? I bet the batteries ran dead. Seriously, there ought to be a law.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below and at RonFlatterRacingPod@gmail.com are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.