A new sporting event’s controversial pitch: Performance-enhancing drugs welcome

Competing using banned substances is one of the most fiercely protected red lines in elite sports. But this weekend, in the shadow of a Las Vegas casino, is a daylong competition that has sparked controversy for brazenly crossing it.

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Denounced by anti-doping agencies and world sports federations but championed by a small group of swimmers, sprinters, weightlifters and donors, the upgraded Games will open on Sunday after months of headlines. Rather than prohibiting the use of performance-enhancing drugs, the organizers of the Enhanced Games have built an entire event, as well as a business, around their use and appeal.

Forty-two athletes will compete. Competitors – who include former Olympic medalists including American swimmers Cody Miller, Shane Ryan and Ben Proud and sprinter Fred Kerley – were not required to use drugs to compete in the enhanced Games, but they could choose to do so as part of a 12-week trial overseen by the Abu Dhabi games, where many athletes also trained.

“The old rule is gone,” Miller said last month on social media.

Athletes who chose to compete with PEDs received a personalized medication regimen developed by the games’ medical staff and could choose from five approved categories, “including testosterone esters, anabolic agents, peptides and growth factors, metabolic modulators and stimulants,” according to the company. The most consumed category of drugs? Testosterone or testosterone esters, which 91% of doped athletes used, according to a clinical trial published this week by the Games. Human growth hormone was used by 79% of athletes. Of the 42 athletes competing, 36 took part in the trial, of which 34 used PEDs and two others trained “naturally.”

The games support “safe, responsible, clinically supervised use of performance enhancements,” not “indiscriminate use of controlled substances.”

Last year, athlete-led commissions representing both the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee jointly condemned the enhanced Games, saying encouraging the use of PEDs was “a betrayal of everything we stand for” and “totally irresponsible and immoral.”

The Enhanced Games didn’t just bring attention to drugs. They also offer something else rarely seen in elite Olympic sports: big money. The winners of each event will win $250,000 as part of a promised $25 million prize pool. Any athlete who breaks a world record on Sunday will be eligible to win a $1 million prize, the same amount the Enhanced Games paid Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev last year when he broke the world record in the 50-meter freestyle after passing the PEDs as part of a private event sponsored by the Enhanced Games.

Miller, who did not respond to a request for comment, said he signed in part because he believed athletes competing in the Olympics had not for years received the level of financial incentives they deserved.

“At the end of the day, Olympic athletes don’t get paid a lot of money,” Ryan, one of the most decorated swimmers in Irish history, told Irish broadcaster RTÉ Sport last fall after signing up for the games. “I was making 18,000 euros, which is less than minimum wage for a whole year and hours and hours and hours. … We don’t make a lot of money, and I did for over a decade.”

Founded by Aron D’Souza, a self-described entrepreneur on a “mission to build superhumanity,” the Enhanced Games drew funding from investments by tech billionaire Peter Thiel and a venture capital fund backed by Donald Trump Jr. In May, they went public as Enhanced Group, with officials saying they would host live events and sell telehealth products and “performance medicine products.” Its business model seems to hope that the brilliance of the athletes’ performances at this one-day spectacle will attract customers interested in trying the same enhancements. His website already sells products such as “personalized testosterone,” peptides and GLP-1.

The Enhanced Games began recruiting athletes shortly after a 2024 scandal in which Chinese swimmers reportedly tested positive for PED before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics but were still allowed to compete. Australian swimmer James Magnussen said he joined partly because he felt it was “the first time the playing field was level and I could compete with other ‘drug cheats'”.

The World Anti-Doping Agency called the enhanced Games a “dangerous and irresponsible concept” that “sends a dangerous message to young people around the world who may wish to follow in their footsteps,” WADA President Witold Bańka said in a statement.

“To the few people who choose to participate in the enhanced Games, athletes, coaches and medical staff, I wonder why they would risk forever tarnishing their reputation by being associated with doping in sport,” Bańka said. “The beauty and popularity of sport is based on the ideal of clean and fair competition. Athletes are expected to represent these values, which must be protected.”

Athletes participating in the Enhanced Games weighed the potential for huge winnings as well as the public reaction. Some were let go by their agents. Tristan Evelyn had represented Barbados at the Olympics and holds the country’s records in the 60 and 100 meters, but after joining, the chairman of the Barbados National Anti-Doping Commission quickly denounced the decision.

“We have to be careful how we handle these cases,” Dr. Adrian Lorde, chairman of the Barbados National Anti-Doping Commission, told the Caribbean Broadcasting Corp. “But from a national anti-doping perspective, I would say we are disappointed and we advise people against participating in the enhanced Games.”