Hair-growth drug leads to suspension

Aug 2007

A professional pitcher has become the first player suspended from Japanese baseball for doping after testing positive for a banned substance found in a hair-growth drug, baseball officials said on Friday.

However, a spokesman for the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks said that responsibility for the incident lay with team management and that Rick Guttormson, a 30-year-old pitcher from the United States, was not to blame.

Guttormson tested positive for Finasteride, which officials said was not performance-enhancing but is banned because it could mask other drug use, during a random test after a game on July 13.

It was contained in a hair-growth drug he had been taking for two years under prescription from a U.S. doctor.

The team spokesman said Guttormson had reported his use of the medicine to team officials earlier this year but had not been told to stop taking it.

"We should have told him. It was a management miss," the spokesman said.

Guttormson has been suspended for 20 days and the team has been fined 7.5 million yen ($A75,000) but the spokesman said they were thinking of asking for his punishment to be relaxed.