Right next to the golden Trump Tower on the Las Vegas Strip and opposite the golf course of the famous Wynn Casino, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and an athletics track were built this week, covered by a steel construction that is packed with lights, screens and cameras.
From this Sunday, the temporary stadium will be the setting for the first Enhanced Games, the much-discussed sporting event where doping is permitted. Forty athletes will swim, lift weights and sprint. In Las Vegas, “human 2.0” must arise, says Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza, who invented the Enhanced Games.
“Dangerous and irresponsible,” the global anti-doping agency WADA calls the tournament, also known as the ‘Steroid Olympics’, although it does not come close to the Olympic Games in terms of participating athletes. “Immoral,” says the International Olympic Committee. Some participants, including a number of Olympic and former world champions, have been suspended in advance by their international sports federations.
The global anti-doping agency WADA calls the tournament ‘Dangerous and irresponsible’
Nevertheless, the event starts on Sunday with a number of swimming events (50 and 100 meter freestyle, butterfly and breaststroke), the 100 meter sprint and weightlifting. There is 250,000 dollars (215,000 euros) available for the winners. A world record, even if not officially recognized, fetches one million dollars (860,000 euros).
The organization wants to push the boundaries of human performance,’superhumans’ create. The promise is that ‘ordinary’ people can also become stronger, fitter, more beautiful – if they are willing to pay for it. Who are the people behind the Enhanced Games, and what is their goal?
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Thirteen years of world titles
A few days after Aron D’Souza got the idea for the Enhanced Games at the end of 2022, he sat down with tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The Australian talks about it in a recent article in the American magazine Vanity Fair. „That’s pretty cool”, according to D’Souza, Thiel responded to his idea for a ‘doping Games’. Thiel got in early, just like the Saudi Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed and tech and crypto investor Christian Angermayer, who became a co-founder of Enhanced Games. Donald Trump Jr. also followed later.
According to D’Souza, there is a lot wrong with the current Olympic sports. You can test all you want, he says, but doping is still used. So let’s do it openly.
He also likes to point out the meager income of most Olympic athletes. In the United States that would be an average of about $30,000 per year, D’Souza said in June 2024 in the popular podcast of American Joe Rogan. “And then I thought: there is something very wrong with the system.”
Hence the Enhanced Games, where participants are paid generously and doping is not used secretly but under medical supervision. There is nothing wrong with that, D’Souza said an interview with the BBC. “Adults who voluntarily and consciously consent should be able to do whatever they want with their bodies.”
How does that work in practice? According to the organization, only substances are used that are on WADA’s doping list, but which we; have been approved by the FDA, the American drug regulator. These are, for example, anabolic steroids (testosterone), hormone and metabolic modulators (trimetazidine), peptides.
Enhanced does not want to say exactly which substances are involved, because a clinical study into the effects of the doping administered is said to be underway. Doctors administered the drugs in a state-of-the-art facility in Abu Dhabi, where the athletes have been preparing for the Enhanced Games for the past sixteen weeks.
For the money he can earn at the Enhanced Games, Ben Proud would have to accumulate thirteen years of swimming world titles
The criticism continued. “The fact that substances are used under medical supervision does not mean that their use is without risk,” the Dutch Doping Authority wrote when asked. The prevailing view in the anti-doping community is that (too) little is known about the (harmful) long-term effects of many doping substances.
English swimmer Benjamin Proud spoke of a “very big financial incentive.”
Photo Getty Images
It is not denied that Olympic athletes earn little. For example, 31-year-old British swimmer Ben Proud, who won silver at the Paris Games and now competes in the Enhanced Games, had the to the BBC about a “very large financial incentive”. According to Proud, for the money he can earn at the Enhanced Games, he would have to accumulate thirteen years of swimming world titles.
In the Netherlands, the athletes’ committee of the sports umbrella organization NOC-NSF recently released a study showing that more than half of top athletes in the Netherlands have a financial buffer of up to three months. “More money needs to go to athletes,” says Josine Koning, chairman of the NOC-NSF athletes committee. “But this is not the route to it. I would have preferred that all the millions involved in Enhanced Games had been invested in traditional sports.”
The Formula 1 of biotechnology
Enhanced Group, the company behind the Games, now also operates in the growing fitness and anti-aging market. On the Enhanced Games website, the organization promotes ‘protocols’ with hormones, such as testosterone injections or estrogen gel. Or with peptides, such as GHK-Cu, which is said to be good for skin quality, and GLP-1, known from Ozempic. There are also supplements with names like ‘Longer’ and ‘Stronger’.
Co-founder Angermayer himself is fully involved. His personal regimen includes testosterone, the steroid hormone DHEA, a peptide, a diabetes drug that “filters glucose,” and GLP-1, he tells inVanity Fair. The goal is to stay fit, look younger, but also to live longer. Aging is a disease, says D’Souza. He is not alone in this. The “longevity” movement that emerged in Silicon Valley, the pursuit of longer or even eternal life, is a growing part of the huge wellness market, according to The New York Times worth $1 trillion annually.
Timothy Caulfield, a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada who specializes in health law, calls it “wellness 2.0.” Unlike ‘wellness 1.0’ – yoga, spirituality, scented candles – this new form has a scientific slant. Take peptides (short chains of amino acids): scientifically promising, but their use is still in its infancy and can be harmful. That scientific basis makes these types of products sound reliable, says Caulfield, who is also a member of the WADA ethics committee. „Scienceploitation”, he believes: abuse of science.
At a major anti-doping conference in Lausanne at the end of April, where NRC was present, the fear was expressed that the slick videos of Enhanced Games on social media would appeal to young people. The Doping Authority notes that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is becoming increasingly normalized as a ‘lifestyle’. “On social media you mainly see the great results, nothing about the health risks. A vulnerable group, people without athletic ambition who we call ‘cosmetic athletes’, are sensitive to this,” writes a spokesperson.
When asked, an Enhanced spokesperson calls the accusation that athletes are used as guinea pigs and marketing tools “offensive and intellectually lazy.” But in Vanity Fair Director and co-founder Max Martin said that he would like to see Enhanced Games develop into the Formula 1 of biotechnology. A place where experiments are done with new technology and doping to push (human) boundaries.
A dangerous pursuit, says Josine Koning. She points to four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen, who has no chance of winning a new world title this season due to a bad car. “The Enhanced Games are not about a car with something wrong with it, but about a human life.”
Millions in turnover
Then there is the question: will the general public embrace this? Co-founder Christian Angermayer obviously thinks so. “We want to see the best,” he says in Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Timothy Caulfield disagrees. “I don’t think it will really get off the ground.” He cites the marathon as an example. In 2019, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge became the first person to dive under the magic limit of 2 hours, partly thanks to dozens of pacers, so his time was not recognized as an official record. Nice, says Caulfield, but it only became big news when Kenyan Sabastian Sawe ran an official time of 1.59.30 during this year’s London Marathon.
The Enhanced Games are also not an issue among athletes, says Josine Koning. “This goes so against everything we stand for that there is actually no discussion about it.” That does not alter the fact that there are concerns about the influence of the event. “There is a risk that doping use will be further normalized,” the Doping Authority believes. Koning: “This conveys the message: cheating is okay.”
The organization behind Enhanced Games is not sad about it. They already consider the event a success, the organization wrote when asked. “The athletes feel healthy, the construction of our stadium has remained within budget, we have closed a major streaming deal and thanks to several sponsors we are generating millions in turnover. We are very much looking forward to Sunday.”
