At the Enhanced Games, drugs don’t get athletes banned. They could get them rich.
They took place in Las Vegas this previous weekend, and I wonder what message is being sent here during this “winning at any cost is the only thing” era. According to the article, “Enhanced claims it has science on its side: “If you look at the data, the only logical conclusion is that it is unethical to not allow” PEDs, said Christian Angermayer, a German billionaire who co-founded the games and is their executive chairman. “Because it is the same as if we send people and say, ‘Oh, great, you’re a coal miner, but we don’t give you a helmet.’””
Has no one seen this, or even heard of this?
I’ve seen reports on this on BBC Sport. But I haven’t read or watched anything because I find the whole concept so distasteful.
The 100m final saw the primary contenders cheaters run significantly slower than their best times.
I read an article in Wired about this back in 2025, when it was just a longevity dude/bro thing backed by rich assholes. I didn’t actually think they’d ever hold it, but they did, and, from the very brief research I found, it was incredibly underwhelming. The only world record they supposedly broke (again the timers, etc were controlled by them only) was likely because of the illegal suit the swimmer was wearing rather than the steroids. Also, 3 winners were clean.
It was a silly circus sponsored by a bunch of questionable “longevity” supplements that was better ignored. I’m guessing that’s why there is so little interest.
Here’s the thing: effectively all major top-tier sporting bodies across the globe (IOC, FIFA, NFL, NBA, MLB, EPL, etc.) have banned or limited use of PEDs (as well as things like the technologically-advanced swimsuits).
But, athletes who want to compete at the very top tier, to demonstrate their skill, and receive the fame and fortune which comes from being a successful top-tier athlete, still need to compete in those leagues/games – which means that those athletes need to either (a) be clean, or (b) be careful and circumspect about their doping.
Effectively no one of note is going to compete in a no-holes-barred PEDfest like this, unless and until there is not just serious money (the article in the OP does indicate that these folks are getting paid pretty well), but also serious prestige involved in doing so. No one of note is going to care if someone “broke” a world record at such a competition in the foreseeable future, because the national/international bodies won’t recognize it.
Everyone who cares about track and field today cares who won the Olympic gold medal, or holds the current record; no one cares who might have run faster in an unsanctioned race. This means that the very best athletes aren’t going to jump ship, and go whole-ham into PEDs, to see if they can run a little bit faster, but without the fame and prestige. It sounds like the athletes who are competing in this event were ones who were on the downside of their careers, and/or never really made it to the top, and were willing to take a big payday to compete in a PED-enhanced payday.
Right now, it’s just a publicity stunt (and, as noted, the organizers are using it to promote their quack supplements).
It reminds me a little bit of LIV Golf, the rival golf tour which the Saudi government has bankrolled. They managed to attract a few of the PGA’s better players, by throwing very large amounts of money at them, but ultimately, it hasn’t been terribly successful from a publicity/buzz standpoint, and the Saudis are pulling out at the end of this season.
Edit: I just read through the end of the article in the OP, and this gave me just a little pause:
Eeeeeew.
Yeah, it’s got serious XFL type vibes about it; because the top tier athletic competitions are no-PED, the top tier athletes are also no-PED (or very circumspect about it).
This is basically all the guys who were not Olympic caliber doping themselves absurdly then competing in this farce.
But here’s the thing- how much steroids do you have to use as a second-tier shotputter to be able to compete with Ryan Crouser/? Can that even be done by a second-tier athlete, regardless of PEDs?
The 100m times were 0.2 second off from the gold medal times in the 2024 Olympics, never mind the world record. Hell, there was a high school runner from my old school (albeit a spectacularly good runner) who would have come in second in the “Enhanced games” without PEDs.
It’s just some silliness that is basically a publicity stunt.
Did anybody die? That seemed to be a certainty among commentators preceding the event. I’m glad nobody did, and the resulting crickets are probably a bigger deterrent to future such competitions than an outright tragedy.
Wake me up when the “Enhanced” Games involve cybernetic limbs and shit, regular sports with doped up second tier athletes is just boring.
How does it compare to the All-Drug Olympics from the 1980s?
I saw a couple of blurbs online about this; those who watched it noted that the competition was decidedly underwhelming and that the whole thing was a not very thinly veiled scheme to shill supplements and other drugs.
There’s a collection of short stories called “The Science Fictional Olympics”. One of the stories involved the Olympics with genetic engineering gone wild. Wrestlers with porcupine quills or a hump between their shoulders, long jumpers with grasshopper legs, 800 lb powerlifters, etc.
See, that’s what I’m talking about. That earns the title of Enhanced Olympics.
Whole thing aired for free on YouTube, which should’ve been a red flag right there. Predictably, YouTube’s resident sports reporters had an absolute field day with it. Too many good ones to post here, but Slow News Day, Back Guy, and Total Running Productions are a good place to start.
The thing that gets at me is that the reasons this bombed are the exact same reasons past abortive ventures like the USFL, the Liberty Basketball Association, the first XFL, World Extreme Cagefighting, the AAF, and now the LIV Tour failed. The lessons were all there!
- Just because fans have issues with or even outright hate the current product doesn’t mean that they’ll accept any alternative. Your product still needs to be noticeably better, or at least show the potential for it.
- Even if the fans like your concept (merciless smash-mouth football, fast paced free-swinging team golf), they want to see it with pros. If the best you got are second-stringers and fading veterans and coulda-beens, that’s basically the level of one of those ESPN8 party games. (It’s even worse in this case because any athlete who appears in event that openly promotes PED use won’t ever be able to enter any respectable competition again, so it’s guaranteed to get only dead enders and no-hopes.)
- You can’t be in it purely out of spite. There has to be something genuinely positive holding it all up, even if it’s just giving fading veterans one last shot. Making your league all about tearing down others always ends up turning around on you. Just ask Vince McMahon.
- Don says the fix is in, it better be in. Don’t promise stuff like cathartic hard-hitting football unlike the namby-pamby NFL or highly quality women’s basketball that’s way better than those other failed leagues, we swear, unless you can deliver.
Anyway, given that a Libertarian (me me me take take take more more more more more screw the rest of the universe) and a billionaire in a country that coddles them to a degree that Idi Amin would’ve found egregious is involved, it’s a fair bet that, while certainly disappointed, he wasn’t too financially hurt from this. Which means it’s most likely going to play out like the LIV Tour, where he keeps this sputtering along through sheer force of will for a few years before throwing up his hands and pulling the plug. I don’t anticipate very many, if any, world records being broken, even unofficially (it’s not that easy, all right?), but there will be enough close calls that the true believers will keep on squawking to the very end, like they always do.