Retired Greek Olympic swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev broke the 50M Freestyle World Record for Enhanced Games, a sport competition were performance-enhancing drugs are permitted.Kerrigan Zambrana/Supplied
The Cult of Fitness column by Alex Cyr dives into the wonderful, weird world of fitness trends and why they endure.
When Aron D’Souza made the podcasting rounds in 2023 to discuss his creation of the Enhanced Games, an Olympics where performance-enhancing drugs such as testosterone and human growth hormone are allowed, it raised a litany of questions for me and many others.
Beyond the obvious – “Will Olympians participate?” (probably not), “Is it safe?” (doubtful), “Who is funding this?” (tech billionaire Peter Thiel) – loomed a logistical query: Which country would play host to such an event, and align with what many consider a dangerous pursuit and an affront to sport itself?
D’Souza, an Australian lawyer, was eyeing the United States. But while the U.S. doesn’t have a perfectly clean doping record, it still exemplifies fair play when compared with Russia and its state-sponsored doping program or East Germany and its anabolic steroid factories of the 1970s.
Plus, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has a US$175-million budget and stringent policies of year-round, unannounced testing. How stringent? They had their top 100-metre sprinter banned from competing in the 2021 Olympics – for smoking weed.
So I was shocked when I learned that the inaugural Enhanced Games will see athletes lug their hulking bodies across pools, tracks and weightlifting floors in Las Vegas next May.
Opinion: Will the Enhanced Games survive the stigma around doping in sports?
Yes, it’s official. The most controversial sporting event on our collective future calendar will happen in the U.S. As if they needed another culture war.
And yet here we are. On one side of this war you have a board of directors comprised of a former Harvard professor, a naturopathic doctor and a disgruntled Canadian bobsledder fed up with the Olympics’ poor compensation structure (fair enough). Oh, and the financial backing of Donald Trump Jr.
The athletes they’re supporting include former Olympic swimmers, doped to the gills and breaking world records while bragging about it online, and an anonymous man who claims in a TikTok video that he is “the fastest runner in the world” who has broken Usain Bolt’s 100-metre record. “I am a proud enhanced athlete. The Olympics hate me. I need your help to come out. I need your help to stop hate. I need your help for the world to embrace science. Come join me in 2024 at the first Enhanced Games.”
On the other side are the detractors, including prominent anti-doping officials and Olympic champions from around the world, who are calling the Enhanced Games a clown show, a joke and – in the words of the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency – a “betrayal of everything that we stand for.” There are also sports fans scoffing, physicians fretting and athletes furiously sounding off.
Australian lawyer Aron D’Souza founded the Enhanced Games which has financial backing from Donald Trump Jr.Enhanced Games/Supplied
It’s a classic clash. Would you rather embrace the traditional with all of its flaws (in this case, underpaid athletes and a questionable grip on doping control at the actual Olympics), or align with a new idea despite its medical and existential shortcomings?
But this emerging war on sports does not hinge on whether the Enhanced Games actually takes place on North American soil. It won’t even be the weirdest sport-adjacent event taking place in Nevada (ever hear of BattleBots?).
What really matters is how much support the Enhanced Games get. Whether they find a permanent home in the U.S. will depend on who decides to back this event.
D’Souza said the Games are in talks with sponsorships and network deals. What would happen if, say, Coca-Cola got behind it? Or even Red Bull? What about the networks: Will NBC pick it up? And what happens if some of our top North American athletes chose to participate? James Magnussen, the retired Australian swimmer, is already in. What if one of his American rivals came out of retirement to give him a roided-up run for his money?
Opinion: The Enhanced Games faces plenty of pushback generated by people who don’t want it to succeed
Nations often align with sport in order to improve their self-image. It’s called sport washing, and it’s why the Middle East is pouring billions into soccer. Because who’s really going to remember Qatar’s questionable human rights after that awesome World Cup?
By hosting the Enhanced Games and aligning with their bizarre premise, the U.S. is risking the reverse: ruining what’s left of its reputation as a country that stands for fair competition and athlete safety. It’s a right-side-of-history moment, and the fact that the President of the United States is already appearing in some Enhanced Games marketing is a bad indicator.
If the Enhanced Games do not manage to escape the fringe in 2026, they will perhaps leave North America and hopefully also the face of the Earth, just in time for this side of the world to forget this weird moment and gear up for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
And at that event, we will remember that the Olympics are far from perfect. That people still cheat. That more than 50 per cent of Olympians are underpaid. But an imperfect ideal, when it’s our best bet, is still worth fighting for.