US officials have disclosed that a Texas therapist who admitted on Monday to providing banned Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare with performance-enhancing substances faces up to 10 years in jail.
The Department of Justice announced that Eric Lira, an El Paso-based “naturopathic” therapist, is the first person to be found guilty under a new US legislation passed in response to Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping scandals.
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The 2020 law, which bears the name of the Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov gives US authorities the ability to pursue criminal charges against anybody connected to global doping fraud conspiracy.
Prior to the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, which were postponed due to the epidemic, Lira was discovered to have given Okagbare drugs.
Okagbare, who was subsequently banned from the sport for 10 years, was expelled from the Tokyo Olympics just before the women’s 100m semi-finals after it emerged she had tested positive for human growth hormone in an out-of-competition test in Slovakia before the games.
US Attorney Damian Williams said Monday after Lira pleaded guilty in a federal court in Manhattan that the case was a “watershed moment for international sport.”
Lira provided banned performance-enhancing substances to Olympic athletes who wanted to corruptly gain a competitive edge.
Such craven efforts to undermine the integrity of sport subverts the purpose of the Olympic games: to showcase athletic excellence through a level playing field.
Lira’s efforts to pervert that goal will not go unpunished.
The maximum sentence for violating the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act is 10 years in prison. Lira’s sentence will be determined by a judge at a later date, the Justice Department statement said.
US anti-doping officials welcomed Lira’s conviction, noting that it was only made possible by the recently enacted law.
“Without this law, Lira, who held himself out as a doctor to athletes, likely would have escaped consequence for his distribution of dangerous performance-enhancing drugs and his conspiracy to defraud the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games because he did not fall under any sport anti-doping rules,” said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, a nonprofit.
