New York (AFP) – A Texas therapist was sentenced to three months in jail on Wednesday after pleading guilty to supplying performance-enhancing drugs to Olympic athletes including banned Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare, US authorities said.
Eric Lira, a “naturopathic” therapist based in the city of El Paso, became in May 2023 the first individual to be convicted under a US law introduced in the wake of Russia’s state-backed Olympic doping scandals.
The 2020 law, named after Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, enables US authorities to prosecute individuals involved in international doping fraud conspiracies.
Lira admitted to supplying drugs to Okagbare in the build-up to the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
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Okagbare 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.
She was subsequently banned from the sport for 10 years.
“Today’s sentence sends a clear message: violating the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act comes with serious consequences up to and including incarceration. That message is especially important this year with the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Paris,” US attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
“In addition to the prison term, Lira, 44, of El Paso, Texas, was sentenced to one year of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $16,410,” Williams’s office added.
The maximum sentence for violating the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act is 10 years in prison.
