The drug that got American skeleton racer Zach Lund barred from the Turin Olympics hours before the opening ceremony is being removed from the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list.  Lund tested positive for finasteride, an ingredient in a popular hair-restoration pill that also was believed to be capable of masking steroid usage. It was prohibited in 2005, but after further study showed athletes gain no tangible advantage from the drug, it will be removed from WADA’s banned list on Jan. 1.

Lund served a one-year suspension and could not race in Turin, where he would have been a gold-medal favorite.

“When it happened, I said they would make this legal in a year or two, because that’s what WADA does,” Lund said in Lake Placid, where he’s training for the upcoming World Cup season. “They put stuff on the banned list without any scientific proof saying why. They’re not held accountable. It’s not like I’m getting a ‘Sorry we took the Olympics away from you. Sorry we almost ruined your career.’”

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Yeah, this would stink for Lund.  But I find it hard to believe that he didn’t know that the drug was considered to be a masking agent.  He also should have known that the stuff he was using to battle his baldness contained the banned substance.  If I was an Olympian, I would obsess about what I was putting in (and on) my body and I would make sure that nothing would keep me from participating.  You would think that Lund would have had a trainer who would have made it part of his job to keep track of things like that.

The Beijing Olympics ended a month ago and still, not a single American athlete has been reported for a positive doping test.

A reason to celebrate? Not quite at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, where good news — all news, really — is looked upon skeptically, and bigger goals are always out there.

“I think there’s a premium to one day being able to show that someone can potentially prove they’re clean instead of just saying they passed a drug test,” USADA’s CEO Travis Tygart said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That’s the ultimate dream.”

That dream will come at a cost and might not be realistic. The most logical way of reaching it would be for USADA to vastly expand its pilot testing program, the regimen that 12 American athletes, including Michael Phelps and Allyson Felix, signed up for before the Beijing Olympics.

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I don’t know if it will ever be possible to have an Olympics that is completely free of performance enhancing drugs.  There will always be someone that is trying to cheat.  But I think we are getting closer and closer to controling the problems and making the games as fair for everyone as possible.