The rocky path to the “doping olympics”
The Enhanced Games, which plans its first edition for 2025, “will be a pharmaceutical freefor-all”, said Mike Henson on BBC Sport. It will have no drug testing, with athletes “free to pump, juice and dope however they see fit”. The event – which has yet to find a host – is the brainchild of the Australian businessman Aron D’Souza, who has a trio of Big Tech investors, including the libertarian venture capitalist Peter Thiel. There will be big financial prizes to lure athletes. “The Enhanced Games can turn humans into superhumans,” claims D’Souza. But the sporting authorities are not impressed. Travis Tygart, of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, called it “a dangerous clown show”. Lord Coe, the president of World Athletics, called it “bollocks”, and warned that anyone who took part would be banned from sport for a long time.
Even so, some athletes are tempted, said Matt Lawton in The Times. Two-time world champion swimmer James Magnussen was the first to sign up, offering to “juice to the gills” in a bid to break the 50m freestyle world record, and win a $1m (£790,000) prize. Now it has been announced that the American TV star Rob McElhenney – also the co-owner of Wrexham AFC – is to make a docuseries on the Enhanced Games. His involvement “is likely to raise eyebrows”, since his chairmanship of a League Two football club means he is expected to abide by UK Anti-Doping’s rules.