The fight against doping delivered a new chapter, important, this Monday in the United States. Eric Lira, a 43-year-old therapist charged by US courts with providing performance-enhancing products to athletes participating in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, has pleaded guilty, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor’s office for the southern district of Tokyo said. New York. This Texan had become last year the first person charged under the “Rodchenkov law”, a federal law passed in 2020 allowing the American justice system to prosecute and inflict prison sentences on all people, regardless of their nationality, involved in an international doping system.
Prosecutors said Lira, who was arrested in January 2022, distributed performance-enhancing drugs, including growth hormones, to athletes who competed in the Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021 due to the pandemic of Covid-19. Nigerian Blessing Okagbare was one of his clients. The sprinter-long jumper, several times on the Olympic and world podiums, had been released from the Olympics a few hours before the 100m semi-final, after the discovery of growth hormone in her sample. In February 2022, she was suspended for 10 years for doping. Eric Lira had previously pleaded not guilty. He faces up to 10 years in prison but his sentence could be less important under his guilty plea.
