Former world sprint champion Fred Kerley has become the first track athlete and first American to join the highly-controversial Enhanced Games.
Kerley is serving a ban for missed doping tests and is not at the world championships in Tokyo this week. His lawyers have said he is looking to contest the so-called whereabouts failures that led to his suspension.
The 30-year-old sprinter is the most high-profile signing for the start-up league, which also recently signed Paris Olympic silver-medal swimmer Ben Proud.
In a statement on the Enhanced Games website, Kerley said, “This now gives me the opportunity to dedicate all my energy to pushing my limits and becoming the fastest human to ever live.”
Kerley won the 100 meters at the worlds in 2022. He has two medals at the Olympics — silver in Tokyo in 2021 and bronze in Paris last year in an historically close 100-meter final.
The Enhanced Games is set to debut next May in Las Vegas, with track, swimming and weightlifting contests offering $500,000 per event, including $250,000 awarded to first place. There is also a $1 million bonus for breaking world records in the 100-meter sprint on the track or in the 50-meter freestyle in swimming.
Seb Coe, the president of World Athletics, did not initially comment on the news. “We’re in a championships,” Coe said, referring to the ongoing World Athletics Championships in Tokyo. “There’s nothing more I need to say. We’ll look at it when we get out of here.”
This year, World Aquatics passed a rule to banish athletes who participated in the Enhanced Games. Enhanced Games then filed an $800 million lawsuit against the federation and others for what it said was an illegal attempt to get athletes to boycott its league.
Brett Clothier, the head of the Athletics Integrity Unit that handles anti-doping matters for World Athletics, said, “Among our biggest concerns is about the health of Fred Kerley and other athletes who sign up for” the Enhanced Games.
“It’s kind of grotesque, the athletes, the people who are being signed are being used.”
AP
