Zach Lund - Doping Controversy

Doping Controversy

Lund took part in the 2005-6 Skeleton World Cup, but did not compete in the 2006 Winter Olympics due to disqualification for using finasteride, a drug that was removed from the banned list three years later. He was stripped of his second place finish in the Calgary World Cup event after testing positive for this medication, and a one year suspension was issued on February 10, 2006.

Lund said he was using finasteride to combat baldness and that he declared the use of the substance on medical forms. Records show that Lund had been using finasteride (in its commercial hair-restoration form, Propecia) for seven years until his suspension.

Finasteride has been on the banned list since 2005; Lund claims he last checked the list in 2004. "I've been losing my hair since I was a teenager and I've had a prescription for the last seven years and it was never an issue until this year," Lund told freestyle skiing analyst Nikki Stone (Yahoo! Sports, Feb. 10, 2006). "Whenever I've been tested, I always let them know that I was taking . I never had anything to hide."

A panel on the Court of Arbitration for Sport believed Lund and wrote in its ruling that "it was entirely satisfied that Mr. Lund was not a cheat...But, unfortunately, in 2005, he made a mistake."

He returned to the World Cup circuit in 2006 and won the overall World Cup title for the 2006-2007 season.

Alpha-reductase inhibitors, a class of masking agents which used to be banned in- and out-of-competition, were removed from the 2009 list. This class of substances, which includes for example finasteride, has been rendered ineffective as masking agents of steroids through close consideration of steroid profiles by antidoping laboratories. (WADA Q&A: 2009 Prohibited List September 25, 2008)

Mr. Lund earned a second chance, and will compete at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.