The inaugural Enhanced Games, where sportsmen and women are permitted to take performance-enhancing substances, is set to occur in 2025. This ground-breaking event, governed by Australian tycoon Aron D’Souza, stands apart in its tolerance of such substances, flouting the guidelines set by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada). Closing seed funding for this venture took place in January, featuring notable backers including PayPal’s billionaire, Peter Thiel. The Enhanced Games, planned to be a yearly affair, are expected to showcase athletics, swimming, weightlifting, gymnastics and fighting arts, focusing on individual speed, strength and duration, with team or ball games excluded from the roster. The founders have ambitiously labelled the event “The Olympics of the Future”, however, it has received lukewarm interest so far. Many sporting authorities disapprove this concept, including World Athletics president Sebastien Coe who blatantly dismissed it as nonsense during a recent gathering in Glasgow. Advocates of the Enhanced Games are pushing for a new norm that embraces scientific advancement and presents a candid picture of performance enhancements in contemporary sports. Although the idea of such an event may cause discomfort, it’s possibly influenced by past fatalities linked to boon-chasing athletes resorting to risky substances, such as the demise of cyclists Tommy Simpson in the 1960s and Marco Pantani in 2004. The latter’s passing post the release of a lab-developed variety of the red-blood cell-boosting hormone erythropoietin (EPO), a substance infamous for ending many a sportsperson’s life prematurely. Between 1987 and 1990, 20 robust Belgian and Dutch cyclists succumbed to unexpected nocturnal cardiac arrests during post-race recovery periods, a chilling facet of the sport. The Enhanced Games questions prevailing wisdom and healthcare counsel, which identify the consumption of performance-enhancing substances as detrimental or lethal.
Enhanced, a firm committed to redefining the world of sports, opines that the current state of contemporary drug testing in sports lacks focus on the safety of athletes. It claims that this practice distorts public understanding of fairness and health within competitive realms. In lieu of this, Enhanced is planning to implement a well-thought-out safety protocol that prioritises athletes’ welfare above anything else.
This audacious proposal is not without its sceptics, who might hastily label it a disastrous plan. However, influential opinions like those of high-profile libertarian, Thiel, and deeply connected D’Souza, bestow a level of significance to this concept.
D’Souza’s forte lies in his profound wisdom, unrivalled connectivity, and his critical viewpoint towards the International Olympic Committee (IOC). He perceives IOC as a hub of corruption and greed and is determined to abolish Wada, the regulatory body he describes as IOC’s “anti-science police force.”
This radical redirection reawakens a peculiar interest in a monstrous, lab-engineered entity, sprinting past 100 metres in less than nine seconds, or breaking Michael Phelps’ swimming records.
D’Souza envisages all athletes participating in the Enhanced Games, earning a fixed income and competing to win substantial prizes. €1 million has been earmarked for anyone smashing a world record, although the entirety of the prize fund will be disclosed in mid-2024.
Weightlifting might also see surprising advancements. As the athletes start lifting even more weight–which already appears excessively heavy– an in-competition casualty, although a gruesome spectacle to behold, could be marketed as a testament to freedom of choice in the 21st century by the Enhanced Games.
This crucial proposal sheds light on modern sports’ many issues, such as ethical shortcomings and health risks like head trauma evident in sports like rugby. To magnify these already existing risks with human chemistry experiments seems a dismal contrast to ideally nurturing the athletes’ welfare. Regardless of these concerns, a full-fledged event is planned for the coming year.
James “I’m willing to go the extra mile” Magnussen, a triple Olympic medallist from Australia, suggests that he can shatter the 50-metre freestyle world record “in six months’ time” in the no-holds-barred athletics sphere. Organisers are hunting for such mettle and this is the kind of competitor that Dr James O’Connor and his team from the University of New South Wales School of Business found in their research.
Back in 2012, these researchers posed a question to athletes: would they consume legal drugs for winning, knowing that death could be a possible side effect? Out of a group of 212, a meagre 6 per cent, amounting to 13 individuals, admitted they would resort to the drugs.
This revelation isn’t at all shocking. Those who shortchange moral codes because of their ambition often find themselves stuck in the troubled realm of the sporting world, a niche today visible for manipulation.
Just as Barnum and Baily used to charge for their disturbing displays more than a hundred years ago, which showcased a person having microcephaly as the ‘missing link between man and monkey’, and Joice Heth, an African American woman with a disability who was advertised as George Washington’s 161-year-old nurse, it appears that the Pharma Games will seize their spot on the sports calendar in the coming year.
Step right up, step right up.