A Texas therapist faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty on Monday 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, is the first individual to be convicted under a new US law introduced in the wake of Russia's state-backed Olympic doping scandals, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
The 2020 law, named after Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, enables US authorities to prosecute individuals involved in international doping fraud conspiracies following the Russian doping scandal.
Lira was found to have supplied drugs to Okagbare in the build-up to the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
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.
Eric Lira supplied banned drugs to Olympic stars including Nigerian sprinter Blessing Okagbare
The law Lira was convicted under is named after Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov
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