I woke up in Las Vegas on Monday to an avalanche of messages from people across elite sport asking about the Enhanced Games. Some wanted to know what it was really like. Most, though, wanted to dance on its grave.
So much for the organisers’ promises that we would witness multiple world records. So much for their ridiculous claim to be the “Super Bowl of athletics, swimming and weightlifting!” Hubris meet nemesis.
Perhaps the most farcical moment came just before the women’s 100m final. Only one athlete in the modest field had ever broken 11 seconds. But that didn’t stop the announcer floating the idea that Florence Griffith Joyner’s world record of 10.49sec might be under threat. “Are we going to witness history?” she asked. “Let’s hope so.” Of course we weren’t. Tristan Evelyn, who was competing as a drug-free athlete, won in 11.26sec – a time that would have barely made it out of the first round of the 2024 Olympics.
But I have some bad news for my friends in high-level sport, who despise the Enhanced Games and everything it stands for. It is not going away. At least not yet. When I spoke to its chair, Christian Angermayer, on Sunday night he revealed the plan for next year was to invite fitness influencers to race alongside elite athletes. A legends section may also follow, he reckoned.
Shortly afterwards, the Australian swim coach Brett Hawke revealed that his phone had been buzzing with elite stars wanting to sign up. Can you blame them? Hunter Armstrong competed clean and walked away with $250,000 (£186,000). That’s 12½ times what gold at the World Aquatics championships pays. While World Athletics offers significantly more – the winner of each event in its Ultimate Championships will get $150,000 – Angermayer believes he can also lure big track stars over. So dismiss the Enhanced Games all you like. But don’t ignore the underlying reasons why some are tempted. You can’t pay a mortgage with morals.
So what was it like being there on the ground? Most of the time I felt like a puritan in Babylon. I didn’t see the Michael Jackson lookalike, who has had plastic surgery to look uncannily like him and turned up at the aftershow party. But I did see dozens of fitness influencers going round filming each other, showing off their abs, and asking each other which protocol they were on. And hear predictions that there would be a pill that would give you all the benefits of easy exercise in zone 2. It felt like a trip to the Upside Down.
But let us also be fair to the organisers. The arena did look great. Having a 100m track, 50m swimming pool and a weightlifting platform next to each other actually worked. Yes, the performances were mostly mediocre, but the staging made it feel like an event.
The athletes too were disarmingly honest, the slippery question of what drugs they were actually taking aside. They were clear-eyed about the fact they were medical subjects and marketing tools. They understood the risks. And they gravitated towards the rewards.
Before I arrived in Vegas, I thought the Enhanced Games people were grifters. Now I think it is more accurate to say they are evangelicals. They truly believe these drugs have changed their lives. And they want others to enjoy them, albeit while burning a few hundred dollars a month.
Some also believe that the Enhanced Games is a Trojan horse to sell drugs such as testosterone and human growth hormone. I don’t quite agree. Because organisers are not exactly being shy here. The horse is rolling towards Troy draped in a large advert for testosterone cream and peptides.
Their intention is to persuade potential customers their products are safe and will change your life – even if you aren’t a world-record breaker.
Indeed that case is already being made. On Tuesday, Angermayer hailed the 35-year-old US swimmer Megan Romano as the “biggest winner of our inaugural” Games. Why? Because she had beaten her personal best set in 2013 and “defied ageing” with the “power and support of medical enhancements”.
Angermayer also praised the British swimmer Emily Barclay, who retired from elite sport having won just one national championship in 2019 yet ended Sunday night $375,000 richer. “A true Cinderella story – made possible not by a fairy godmother, but by science,” he claimed.
Ultimately, though, I believe the Enhanced Games will fail. Not next year. But probably over the next five. Why? Because while its movers and shakers are rich and smart, they don’t come across as caring deeply about sport. They don’t seem to understand its whims and irrationalities, its rivalries and narratives, its traditions and values.
How can the Enhanced Games be a proper sporting event when the most important results happen off the pitch? How much testosterone cream is bought, how many TikTok clips of the events are downloaded, and particularly what happens to its share price matters more. In the early hours of trading on Tuesday it lost 40% of its value.
Of course Enhanced Inc could still be on to a good thing. The market for steroids and peptides is booming after all. But without drama, stories, and athletes that people really care about, the Enhanced Games will increasingly be a marginal vehicle to sell its wares.
Towards the end of our chat last week, Angermayer told me his companies were also working on new drugs to avoid neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia. “Surely everybody would agree that’s a good thing?” he asked me. “And by the way, sex is a very big topic too. There’s a huge potential market to arouse women but no product on the market. And we are working on that too.”
That, to me, sounds like a better use of his time. I bet Angermayer that by 2031 the Enhanced Games will no longer be going. He believes, however, that it will be the next UFC and the mainstream media will be proved wrong.
I desperately hope I prove him wrong. Because history tells us that whether it was East Germany in the 70s and 80s, or the death of too many cyclists from EPO in the 90s and noughties, drugs in sport should never be normalised.
