Tennis: Nielsen may appeal drugs ban

Mark Nielsen said taking the drug was a foolish oversight. Picture / Paul Estcourt.

Top New Zealand tennis player Mark Nielsen is considering an appeal over the two-year-ban he has received for testing positive for a masking agent at the Australian Open in January.

The suspension by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) will end in March 2008, two years after he withdrew from a Davis Cup event after learning of the test results.

The ITF anti-doping tribunal said it was not relevant that Nielsen had since obtained a therapeutic use exemption which entitles him to use the hair product without breaching the anti-doping programme.

Nielsen's request for a reduced period of ineligibility was therefore declined, the tribunal said.

Nielsen said in a statement he was very sorry to have let down New Zealand Tennis by what he called "a foolish oversight".

He was devastated by the decision which he considered to be a very harsh penalty for someone who was not a drug cheat.

"It is too soon to say what the decision will mean for my career," Nielsen said.

"However, preliminary advice from my lawyer suggests that there may be grounds for an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and I intend to pursue that if possible.

"The decision to give me a two-year-year ban seems out of proportion compared to decisions made in other cases."

Nielsen said he had taken the drug, Finasteride, in a prescription medicine he had been using since 2003 and was unaware it had been added in 2005 to the ITF's list of banned substances.

The tribunal said it accepted that Nielsen had inadvertently taken the substance but described Nielsen's lack of knowledge about the drug going on the banned list in January 2005 as a "serious dereliction of duty".

"It is clear that a player who is taking medication has a continuing duty to check properly whether that medication is permitted under the anti-doping rules," the tribunal said.

Nielsen, 29, is ranked No 413 in the ATP Tour, with a career high of 172 in May 2000.

Nielsen, who has led New Zealand's Davis Cup team for nearly a decade, was replaced on the team by Alistair Hunt. New Zealand lost 2-3 to Kazakhstan in April.

Finasteride can be used as a masking agent for steroids.

It is commonly found in hair-restoration products and has led to a spate of recent doping cases.

US skeleton competitor Zach Lund was ruled out of the 2006 Turin Olympics on the eve of the games after a positive test.

Argentine tennis player Mariano Hood and German soccer player Nemanja Vucicevic were banned for taking the same drug last year.

Tennis New Zealand chief executive Don Turner said Nielsen's circumstances were accepted by the ITF tribunal to have been a combination of unintentional mistakes.

"The decision is a salutary lesson to all athletes that they must take full responsibility for everything they put into their body."

-NZPA