Sprint coach pleads guilty in US federal doping case involving British Olympian - Town Square #16
In 2017, an unnamed British athlete was charged with the 'Attempted use of a Prohibited substance’ and then cleared. US federal investigators suspect a British Olympian of similar offences.
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Thirty-nine days before the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the Texas-based naturopath Eric Lira boarded a flight to Atlanta, Georgia, in possession of the banned drugs human growth hormone and erythropoietin (EPO).
That same day the former world championship sprinter O’Neil Wright arranged for Lira to meet with his athlete, the Jamaican-born Swiss sprinter Alex Wilson, at a hotel in the state.
Later in the same trip, Lira met a male British Olympic sprinter, who was purportedly coached by Wright, to provide him with the drugs. It was one of three meetings Lira had with the athlete with the ‘purpose of providing him with PEDs [performance-enhancing drugs]’, according to US federal documents.
The Inner City Press now reports that O’Neil Wright has pleaded guilty, before the US Southern District Court of New York, to one federal charge stemming from his involvement in this doping network. Wright will be sentenced on 30th July 2025 on ‘count two’ of ‘Conspiracy to Introduce into Interstate Commerce Adulterated and Misbranded Drugs and to Adulterate and Misbrand Drugs’. Wright will fight a second charge of ‘Major International Doping Fraud Conspiracy’.