Morrison slams BHA over drug investigations

TRAINER Hughie Morrison has told a BHA disciplinary panel that for him to have administered an anabolic steroid to his filly Our Little Sister before she ran earlier this year would have been ‘professional suicide’. Morrison, questioning why he would have risked being caught by BHA (British Horseracing Authority) testers, said he had always been fervently anti-drugs. He added: ‘It would have gone against my principles. I have spent 57 years of my life being honest and upright.’ On day two of the enquiry into the positive test for nandralone on Our Little Sister after she was last at Wolverhampton on January 14, Morrison said the strain of the investigation had left his head girl, who had been responsible for security in his stable, needing hospital treatment for a ‘stress-related condition’. Morrison has criticised the BHA’s investigative efforts during the case. It was Morrison, rather than the BHA, who engaged Dr Mark Dunnett, whose testing of hair samples from Our Little Sister indicated the filly had been injected with a drug called laurabolin during a ‘window of opportunity’ between mid-December and mid-January. This suggested that Our Little Sister could have been drugged when she ran at Southwell on January 2. But by the time the BHA reacted, crucial CCTV footage of the stable area at the track had been destroyed. Morrison (above) said: ‘I feel let down. The BHA have not raised their game to a helpful level.’ The trainer was criticised by Philip Evans QC, representing the BHA, for his use of a private investigator who ‘went on a frolic of his own’. Under strict liability rules, Morrison faces a ban of between 12 months and 10 years, but the mitigation put forward could limit his punishment to a fine. The BHA panel will deliver their verdict tomorrow.