The Doping Games? Why the ‘Enhanced Olympics’ is stirring outrage worldwide

The coming Enhanced Olympics is being promoted as a way to display the potential of performance-enhancing drugs for the general population by advocates. However, opponents described the competition on steroids as a Roman circus and are calling for it to be stopped before it fully begins.

There are also questions being raised as to other possible motives behind the games attempting to display the potential of these substances that have been banned in official competitions by anti-doping agencies. Athletes, for their part, are being enticed to participate in the games with prize money of up to $500,000 for each event and a $1 million bonus if they break certain world records.

What are the Enhanced Games?

The Enhanced Games are the brainchild of Aron D’Souza, an Australian businessman based in London, who is on a mission to build superhumanity.

He argues that the anti-doping rules in place are failing to eliminate them from amateur and professional sport, and leading athletes doing them secretly and unsafely. He also sees them as “anti-science.”

Through the Enhanced Games he says that that will be reversed, and they will make “a fair, level, transparent field so that innovation can be illustrated in a very public way to support technological progress.”

Athletes aren’t required to take performance-enhancing drugs, they can participate clean if they choose. However, instead of the original idea of letting them use basically any doping regime they wish, they will now only be able to use those that are legal but banned in their home countries for use in official competitions.

These must be prescribed by doctors and the athletes must undergo medical checks to make sure that they aren’t suffering ill health effects from their doping regimen. But, it is more or less up to the athletes and their doctors to be on the up-and-up as to what they are taking as there is no official drug testing.

Early display of Enhanced Games gives mixed signals

While the first installment of these ‘enhanced Olympics’, which will feature swimming, athletics and weightlifting, is set to take place in May 2026 at Resorts World on the Las Vegas Strip, a dry run of sorts of what they want to achieve was put on display earlier this year.

In February, as part of a promotion for the games, Australian swimmer and triple Olympic medalist James Magnussen failed to beat his personal best despite an eight-month training program that included performance-enhancing substances. He had gotten too bulky, so much so that he ripped his full-body polyurethane ‘super suit’.

That piece of kit was banned from Olympic competition after Brazilian Cesar Cielo set the 50m freestyle record of 20.91 seconds in 2009.

In May, Greek-Bulgarian swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev, wearing one of the super suits, managed to beat that and Magnussen. However, weeks later, after continuing his regimen, his time was slower than before. Both he and his trainer admitted to Wired that he could’ve probably broken the record without the enhancement regimen.

Anti-doping authorities oppose Enhanced Games, questions raised about motives behind them

Officials at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have decried the Enhanced Games with the agency’s science director Olivier Rabin calling them a “Roman circus” that “sacrifice the lives of people purely for entertainment. What’s the value of this? I don’t think any responsible society should move in that direction.”

He added, “thinking that because you do medical checks on the spot is going to give you a good idea of the health risks of abuse of doping substances, again, is medical and scientific nonsense.”

His American counterpart Travis Tygart, CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency, said that it’s “not real sport,” adding “it’s a dangerous clown show.”

The games have raised controversy not only for the fact that athletes can dope but also who is behind them and their motives. D’Souza has attracted funding from big-name investors like Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, who is also a “close advisor,” according to the games’ founder.

Other tech, cryptocurrency and hedge fund billionaires are also providing financial support for the Enhanced Games as well as Donald trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital. There is a belief that one of the true motivations is a scheme to sell athletic supplements and sports drinks.

That is a giant market that has very high margins. Along with the Enhanced Games, D’Souza announced Enhanced Performance Products, selling what it calls a “physician-designed TRT protocol” that customers can take at home with the guidance of a board-certified clinician online.

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