In the News – US Athlete is Back in the Olympics After Finasteride Ban Lifted

Here’s the original article from 2006 about US athlete Zach Lund, who was banned from competing in the Olympics due to using Propecia.

Well, there’s been an update. Here’s a snippet from the new article:

Lund was informed he had tested positive for a banned drug. He was told he had to leave, immediately. Within minutes, he went from Olympic contender to Olympic exile.

“I had to pack my bags and walk out in front of everybody,” Lund said. “They cut up my credential. I was on top of the world, and then I was out on the street.”

Lund’s transgression? He was trying to preserve his hair. He was using Propecia, as he had for years to stave off baldness. But the main ingredient in Propecia is finasteride, which was on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list of prohibited substances as a masking agent for steroids.

Lund, guilty of thinning hair, was labeled a drug cheat and kicked out of the Olympics.

Read the full article: Bald is beautiful for U.S. skeleton star

Zach is back in the 2010 Winter Olympics, but it’s a shame that he was banned from competing in the 2006 games. He had been taking Propecia for years, informed the Olympic committee about it, and at some point the medication was added to the banned substance list for a brief time. During that brief time, Zach was banned from competing. The ban on finasteride has since been lifted by the World Anti-Doping Agency, but not before Zach lost all the hair that Propecia had been keeping for him.