Las Vegas has built its entire identity on excess. Neon lights, all-you-can-eat buffets, casinos that never close. It is a city that has never been shy about giving people what they want.
So when the Enhanced Games – an Olympic-style competition where athletes are not just permitted but actively encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs – chose the Strip as its home, it felt almost too on the nose.
The ‘Doping Olympics,’ as it had been dubbed, arrived in Nevada with considerable baggage. The World Anti-Doping Agency called it ‘dangerous and irresponsible.’ World Aquatics turned their backs on it. The investors include Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr.
And for many casual fans, the mental image was hard to shake – a back-alley carnival of syringes, excess and a parody of everything sport is supposed to stand for.
Everything about it, on paper, screamed proceed with caution. And the first of the weekend’s activities, the athletes media day, did little to dispel that initial unease.
There was something inherently strange about sitting in a room with world class athletes who are openly discussing the drugs they have been taking – the injections, the protocols, the side effects. It takes a moment to recalibrate.
The inaugural Enhanced Games proved divisive once the dust had settled in Las Vegas
Enhanced Games CEO Maximilian Martin stands alongside Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev – who was the only athlete to break a world record at the event
As a spectacle, it was impressive but it fell short in terms of providing world record times
But spend enough time with the athletes themselves and the picture becomes considerably more complicated; these are not pantomime villains.
They are men and women who have given the best years of their lives to sports that have never come close to repaying them fairly – and who have arrived in Las Vegas in search of the kind of financial security their careers never provided.
Ben Proud spent ten years as one of the best 50m butterfly swimmers on the planet. A decade of early mornings, sacrificed social lives and relentless physical punishment. In that time, the prize money for winning gold at the World Championships did not move. It remains $20,000.
The Enhanced Games, by contrast, offered $1m for breaking the world record in the 50m freestyle alone – with a total athlete compensation pot of $25m up for grabs across the competition.
‘It’s about the money,’ he said, when asked why he was here. He did not dress it up.
Thor Bjornsson, the Icelandic strongman and former World’s Strongest Man winner, was equally candid. ‘I’m not going to sit here and lie and say that’s not the case,’ he said when the subject of prize money was raised.
‘They pay us handsomely considering elsewhere, so that definitely plays a big factor.’
There is also the matter of what the athletes are actually taking – because the reality is more mundane than the image of steroid-fuelled giants might suggest.
Thor Bjornsson was extremely candid when discussing his motivation for competing
Many of the stars admitted that the $1m prize on offer was a large reason for joining
The inaugural event took place in a custom-built arena at Resorts World Las Vegas
The Enhanced Games operates exclusively with FDA-approved substances. The focus, athletes say, is largely on recovery. Compounds that allow the body to train harder and bounce back faster, rather than the raw muscle-building agents most people associate with doping scandals.
Every athlete underwent extensive medical screening before any substance was administered – MRI scans, heart scans, brain scans. Whatever one thinks of the concept, this was not a negligent operation.
Meanwhile, co-founder and biotech billionaire Christian Angermayer was keen to distance the Enhanced Games from the murkier corners of the performance-enhancement world.
‘I’m heavily against all this stuff where people go online and have some crazy people shill them some peptides from China,’ he said.
‘We are scientific, medical, FDA-approved with a doctor – it’s the opposite of an experiment.’
He also made a point that was difficult to entirely dismiss. The biggest sponsors of the Olympics include Coca-Cola. The Enhanced Games, Angermayer insisted, would never go down that road – no fast food, no sugar, no cigarettes, no alcohol.
‘These are the same people who sponsor traditional sports,’ he said. ‘We are using sport to project a positive and healthy view.’
On race day, the Games had promised to redefine the limits of human performance, but what it delivered for much of the afternoon, was far more modest.
While world records were promised, what ensued was a rather modest sporting spectacle
Gkolomeev was the only one to break a world record, doing so in the men’s 50m freestyle
The setting, at least, was striking. A custom-built arena on the Las Vegas Strip, open to the sky and the full force of the desert heat.
As a spectacle, it was impressive enough – for the first hour or so. After that, the temperature began to take its toll. Spectators wilted visibly in the stands. Athletes, too, hinted afterwards that the conditions had not been kind to their performances.
World records – the real currency of the Enhanced Games, the benchmark against which the entire project had been sold – proved elusive as stars stepped to the stage.
There was genuine drama, however. In the men’s 50m breaststroke, Armstrong – one of the athletes competing without any performance-enhancing substances – won the event, claiming the $250,000 first-place prize ahead of rivals who are on protocols.
It was the kind of result the Enhanced Games had perhaps not entirely banked on, and it raised its own uncomfortable questions about what, exactly, the enhancements are delivering.
The redemption came in the final event. Kristian Gkolomeev clocked 20.81 seconds in the men’s 50m freestyle to break the world record, edging past Cameron McEvoy’s previous mark of 20.88. The arena, which had been growing restless, erupted.
Martin insisted that Enhanced Games had ‘made history’ with their controversial event
One world record. One undeniable feat. Enough to send everyone home with something to talk about.
CEO Maximilian Martin, surveying the scene afterwards, was not short of confidence. ‘We have changed history tonight,’ he declared – before being hoisted into the air by a group of athletes who, whatever the critics might say, appeared to mean it.
Whether history will agree is another question entirely. The Enhanced Games is raw, uneven and still finding its feet. The ethical questions it raises are real, and they will not be resolved by a single world record in a pop-up arena in Las Vegas.
