Indictment yesterday in court in Sassari for a 54-year-old trainer accused of doping a racehorse .

In this way, the preliminary hearing judge Sergio De Luca asked for further information on a matter that raises many questions.

The Anglo-Arab horse named Batman was found positive for morphine at the end of a race won in Ozieri four years ago . For prosecutor Maria Paola Asara there would be no doubt about doping, a theory supported by the party's consultant, a chemist, who ruled out that the substance could be taken in nature, perhaps through diet. The defense lawyer Sebastiano Chironi had a completely different opinion and recalled that morphine is nothing more than a natural alkaloid extracted from the dried sap of the poppy. And that in Sardinia expanses of poppies are a custom , thus making the hypothesis that the substance ended up in the fodder consumed by the animal plausible . And from this point of view there is a famous precedent , cited by the defence, of the horse of the Queen of England Elizabeth II , which was found positive in a competition at the famous Ascot racecourse. Even in that case, morphine was discovered on the animal only to later ascertain that it was not doping but environmental pollution, as the defender claims in the current case.

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