“Hoots man, there’s juice, loose, about this hoose.”
The slogan from an old Maynards Wine Gums advert was probably not on the minds of such stand-up characters as Omeed Malik and Peter Thiel, two wealthy supporters of Donald Trump who have invested in the controversial sports product called Enhanced Games. The same could be said for Donald Trump jnr and Christian Angermayer, a psychedelics evangelist, who have also invested in the Enhanced Games.
Its president, Aron D‘Souza, an Australian billionaire, claims he is pioneering a new era in athletic competition that embraces scientific advancements to push the boundaries of human performance. His snappy line is that they are hard-selling “superhumanity”. Athletes are not just permitted, but encouraged, to use performance-enhancing drugs (Peds).
Others are convinced it is an ugly spectacle in the mould of PT Barnum, the 19th century ringmaster who sold New Yorkers on the spectacle of General Tom Thumb, the bearded lady and beluga whales that he kept in a tank in the basement and who met a sad end. To make it succeed, Barnum was not above exploiting his patrons’ ignorance and credulity from time to time.
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Fittingly, the Enhanced Games announced on Wednesday that the 100 or so juiced-up athletes will meet in May 2026 at Resorts World on the Las Vegas strip.
The strip and its otherworldliness seems an appropriate venue, although it was almost certainly chosen because European countries would not countenance hosting such an event.
“It’s a dangerous clown show, not real sport,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive of the US Anti-Doping Agency. Taking part would be “moronic”, said World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, declaring that any competitor planning to take part in legitimate sporting events would face a lengthy ban. The World Anti-Doping Association has called it a “dangerous and irresponsible concept”.
The competing athletes will receive appearance fees. Additionally, those who break existing world records will receive a bonus of $250,000 (€221,000) per record and $1 million (€884,000) for surpassing the world records in the 50-metre freestyle and 100-metre sprint.
World records are the point of the Enhanced Games, otherwise they don’t have a purpose. What is the attraction of a group of juiced athletes few people have ever heard of running and swimming in slower times than those who competed in the last Olympics?
As nothing about the event is legitimate, any records broken won’t mean anything except to tell us something we already know – that Peds can make you move faster on the track and in the pool.
But D‘Souza won’t care. Part of the concept is to fuzz the lines and spark a broader conversation about ethics in sport and where they belong, what their limits are and why they even exist, when sport is inherently unfair to start with. Take financial doping. The American sprinter based in California has a better chance of Olympic success than the Syrian sprinter from Damascus.
The Enhanced Games are an affront to legacy sports and the organisations that govern them
D‘Souza has argued the International Olympic Committee (IOC) generates billions in revenue, but the athletes who people want to see “do not receive enough money”. He also said that a survey showed 44 per cent of elite athletes had admitted to doping, but only one per cent were ever caught, before declaring: “I thought someone had to fix this system.”
His altruism is touching. But before swooning, ask why a group of billionaires are prepared to pump money into a project roundly rejected by the governing bodies of sports listed in the Enhanced Games. Usually, businesses invest money to make money. Billionaires don’t provide start-ups with seed capital to enhance the lives of others, who they feel are not being paid well enough.
The Enhanced Games want their concept to replace the Olympic Games. They are betting on there being enough sporty lab monkeys around the globe to make it work. They hope Enhanced will become normalised and will be the Olympics of the future.
But in case you thought it was all about leverage, money and control, there is a faux philosophical attachment involved. It suggests that humanity has a duty to explore the limits of the human body without being held back by tiresome doping regulations.
If there is an upside, it is in the provocation piece. The Enhanced Games are an affront to legacy sports and the organisations that govern them, where clean athletes as role models have been central to the meaning of sport and its existence. The concept is also a reminder that, probably, not enough money has been invested in anti-doping over the years.
There is not enough paper in The Irish Times printing press to name all the medical doctors picking themselves off the floor at the thought of Barnum 2.0.
The long-term effects of Peds, the short-term side effects, the lack of safety protocols, the different dosing regimens of dangerous anabolic steroids and the uses of novel drugs with no safety trials are hair-raising. And the list goes on.
A poorly designed drug trial with no ethical oversight, it will be a ripping success next year in Las Vegas if the athletes do better than Barnum‘s belugas and some don’t die.
