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Granada 74 player plans to fight doping suspension
A second division soccer player will fight a two-year doping suspension imposed following a positive test for a hair-loss treatment drug.
Granada 74 player Borja Criado tested positive for Finasteride last February while playing at Murcia and was initially cleared by the Spanish Football Federation.
The Spanish Committee for Sports Discipline, however, overturned that decision.
"I've been given strength to move forward and fight this," Criado told newspaper Marca on Friday. "I'll continue fighting, not only to reduce my sanction, but to keep other cases like this from occurring."
In December, Brazilian soccer player Romario tested positive for the drug, which has been on the list of banned substances since 2005 because it can work as a masking agent for steroids. Finasteride is the active ingredient in the anti-balding medication Propecia.
Vasco's Romario, who said he used the medicine to prevent hair loss, was suspended 120 days.
"I assume my guilt, but I treat me equally if I took something to improve my play," said Criado, who has been on-and-off the treatment since 2001.
"I haven't taken this substance to improve my sporting performance, it was only to deal with the problem I had. I accept my part of the blame for taking it, but I think I'm being used as a scapegoat."
This is not the first time the anti-balding medicine has made headlines.
Tennis player Mark Nielsen was suspended for taking the substance in 2006, when then-Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jose Theodore also tested positive for Finasteride.
Zach Lund - the U.S. skeleton team's top slider - missed the 2006 Winter Olympics after testing positive for the drug at a World Cup event a year earlier. He was later cleared of cheating by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.