Conflicting Evidence Masks the Bald Facts in Doping Case

At first, it seemed a bizarre claim and one designed solely to get 1860 Munich's Serbia and Montenegro forward Nemanja Vucicevic off the hook.

Vucicevic found himself at the center of a doping scandal in Germany on Monday after it was revealed he was being investigated by the German Football Federation (DFB) after giving a positive sample after the match with fellow second division club Burghausen on Nov. 4. Leaping to his defense, managing director Roland Kneissl said the balding player had used a hair restorer which included banned substance Finasteride in its ingredients.

However, while investigators are looking into the claim that the follically-challenged Vucicevic was in fact using a hair restorer and not taking finasteride to mask the consumption of performance-enhancing drugs, what can't be denied is the fact that Kneissl's wild claim actually has more than a hair's breadth of credibility to it.

Banned substance a legitimate baldness treatment

Finasteride is a legitimate treatment for male baldness. The drug works by inhibiting the enzyme that converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, the hormone which damages hair follicles causing hair loss in men who are genetically disposed to it.

Vucicevic is not the first sportsman to be caught out by the drug. Argentina's doubles tennis star Mariano Hood tested positive for finasteride at this year's French Open. Hood claims to have been taking the substance for nine years in pill form to prevent his own hair loss. The treatment was added to the ATP tennis federation's list of banned drugs last November as a masking agent.

Despite the fact that finasteride is a banned substance in many sports, anyone who used the treatment for more nefarious reasons would also know that its medical application could be used in their defense while taking it to cover up more sinister practices. In the wrong hands, the dihydrotestosterone conversion process could also hide illegal levels of testosterone in the system.

This lends credence to the initial thought that Roland Kneissl’s claim is one to rival some of the best in sport when it comes to explaining a failed drugs test.

CIA conspiracies and four times-a-night sex

But it may not be up there with the likes of Cuban high jumper Javier Sotomayor, who claimed his 1999 positive test for cocaine was the work of the CIA, or Australian cricketer Shane Warne's assertion that the traces of a banned diuretic at the 2003 cricket World Cup came from a treatment he was using to reduce the "puffiness" of his face.

It would also have to go some way to beat that of US sprinter Dennis Mitchell who claimed that the banned hormone testosterone in his sample was the result of having sex four times and consuming five bottles of beer during the evening prior to a big race.

However, finasteride would make for a strange choice of drug to take if performance enhancement was the ultimate goal. Finasteride comes with a number of side effects such as loss of libido, testicular pain, breast tenderness and enlargement -- hardly the symptoms an active sportsman would want to take a chance with.

So for now, the jury is out on what exactly is the bald truth in this case.