FILE PHOTO: Tokyo 2020 Olympics – Tennis – Mixed Doubles – Gold medal match – Ariake Tennis Park – Tokyo, Japan – August 1, 2021. A moth is pictured next to the olympic rings logo REUTERS/Edgar Su
January 12, 2022
By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday charged a Texas therapist with distributing performance-enhancing drugs to athletes participating in the Olympic Games held in Tokyo last summer.
The charges against Eric Lira, unsealed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, marked the first U.S. criminal accusations of doping related to the Tokyo games, which were initially scheduled for 2020 but delayed by one year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prosecutors said Lira, 41, obtained misbranded versions of prescription drugs – including human growth hormone and erythopoietin, used to boost production of red blood cells – from Central and South America and distributed them to two athletes.
“The Games offered thousands of athletes validation after years of training,” Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “Eric Lira schemed to debase that moment by peddling illegal drugs.”
Lira, an El Paso, Texas-based therapist, was arrested on Wednesday and was expected to appear later Wednesday before a federal judge in Texas.
The complaint did not identify either of the two athletes whom allegedly received drugs from Lira.
Prosecutors obtained encrypted messages in which Lira and one of the athletes discussed the athlete’s performance running the 100 meters, suggesting the athlete was a sprinter involved in the athletics competition.
“Eric my body feel so good (sic),” the athlete wrote to Lira on June 22, 2021, according to one of the messages obtained by prosecutors. “Whatever you did, is working so well.”
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Noeleen Walder)
Source: One America News Network
