IMAGINE an Olympic Games in which performance-enhancing drugs are not only allowed – they are actively encouraged.
This is the premise of the hugely controversial Enhanced Games, a new doping-friendly competition backed by a series of venture capitalists including billionaire Peter Thiel.
The inaugural Enhanced Games is due to take place in the summer of 2025, having been pushed back from the scheduled start of December 2024.
It will initially feature five events: swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, track and field, and combat sports.
Unlike the quadrennial Olympics, the Enhanced Games are scheduled to be held once a year at already-existing venues.
There are precious few other details about the multi-sport event so far but a series of announcements are expected to take place at the Paris Olympics this summer.
The Enhanced Games is the brainchild of London-based Australian businessman and lawyer Aron D’Souza, who helped Thiel bankrupt news website Gawker by funding a defamation case brought by WWE legend Hulk Hogan.
D'Souza, an Oxford University graduate, describes the Enhanced Games as "the Olympics of the 21st century."
"The old Olympics are based on an ancient Greek model of natural sport," D'Souza told The U.S. Sun.
"And I think it's very relevant... it's inspirational on many levels.
"But it doesn't include science, it actively oppresses science.
"And so we want to create a sporting event that openly celebrates scientific progress, where athletes and scientists can work together to push and extend humanity to our fullest potential."
D'Souza is encouraging the use of performance-enhancing drugs as he argues that the Olympics is ripe with doping anyway and believes it is better to have it out in the open.
For example, London 2012 organizers had the aim of creating the cleanest-ever Olympics but 150 athletes were found guilty of doping violations.
He also wants to create a new model in which elite athletes and scientists work hand-in-hand to try to smash current world records.
Jamaican sprint legend Usain Bolt has the 100m world record at 9.58sec – and D'Souza is hoping an Enhanced Games competitor will comfortably break that mark.
"Sub-nine would be great in the 100m!" D'Souza says.
"Ultimately, we're very confident we will demolish all the world records.
"Right now, yes, probably the winners of the 100m and the mile and are all taking performance enhancements, but they're taking performance enhancements with masking agents or ones that are suboptimal for their health or performance.
"And so instead of hiding, let's just do it all out in the open, honestly, safely with clinical supervision that will lead to a better result with lower risk."
D'Souza believes the Enhanced Games will be similar to Formula 1 in which scientists will try to make athletes go faster in the same way that engineers try to gain maximum output from their cars.
"Let's be clear, sport isn't a level playing field. You know, I'm 5-foot-10, I'll never play in the NBA.
"Some people have won the genetic lottery and we should be encouraging science so that we can overcome that genetic lottery and the other limitations of our society.
"And I think about it a lot like Formula 1...
"Formula 1 is a combination of the athlete and the engineer and of course, the cars from McLaren and Ferrari and Mercedes are all different, but they fit within a certain regulatory framework.
"And every year, Formula 1 has gotten faster but it's also gotten safer."
D'Souza insists the Enhanced Games will put athletes' health at the top of their concerns despite encouraging them to dope at undisclosed levels.
"This isn't a free-for-all. We care very deeply about the safety and health of our athletes," he says.
"And so we are testing for health and safety, not for fairness. And what does that mean?
"A full system blood checkup, echocardiograms, maybe even MRI so that we can have a comprehensive health picture of our athletes and make sure that they are within certain biomarker ranges.
"So that for example, they don't have an enlarged heart so that there's not at risk of having a cardiac event on international television. That wouldn't be good for anyone."
The Enhanced Games is being backed by PayPay co-founder Thiel and other venture capitalists such as Christian Angermayer and Balaji Srinivasan.
"We have millions of dollars in funding from the world's most prominent venture capitalists," D'Souza says.
"These are the people who have literally built the future over and over.
"And to have their stamp of approval to have their support is just absolutely extraordinary."
D'Souza says "multiple millions" have been invested in the project already and he has been in talks with numerous TV networks and corporate sponsors in partnering with the Enhanced Games.
A key part of the business model is to hold the event annually and to pay the athletes a base salary with additional income based on prize money.
"The plan is to deliver it on an annual basis because 15 minutes of fame every four years isn't good for athlete monetization," D'Souza says.
"And that comes into another really core aspect of the business model, which is that we want to pay all athletes.
"It's very unfortunate at the Olympic Games that the top bureaucrats are earning millions yet athletes on average earn about $30,000 a year.
"Most Olympians are poor and they're struggling. At the Enhanced Games they will be paid and we hope that we can make them rich."
D'Souza says the Enhanced Games will not require host cities to build new venues and adds that costly stadium construction is a symbol of massive wastage with the Olympic movement.
"We will run a very efficient Games because the core problem about the Olympic Games is that they build a dozen stadiums and then they throw them away after two weeks," he says.
"This wasteful model of infrastructure delivery is at the heart of Olympic excess and corruption.
"And so at the Enhanced Games, we're not going to have all the sports that the Olympics does.
"No one's interested in watching modern pentathlon or, you know, curling.
"And instead we're focused on the sports that matter - track and field, swimming and diving, gymnastics, combat sports and weightlifting.
"Therefore, it's much, much cheaper to deliver the event – tens of millions of dollars, not tens of billions of dollars."
Australian swimmer James Magnussen has become the first athlete to publicly declare their interest in the Enhanced Games.
“If they put up $1 million for the 50m freestyle world record, I will come on board as their first athlete," .
“I’ll juice to the gills and I’ll break it in six months.”
D'Souza says that the Enhanced Games is likely to attract athletes who are "a little past their prime."
"They're in their late twenties or early thirties, which is past their prime in the sporting world," he says.
"And they're excited about the potential of using performance enhancements to make themselves stronger and faster and younger again, so that they can compete again on an elite level."
The Enhanced Games has received its fair share of criticism in recent months.
Lord Coe, head of World Athletics, : "No one within athletics takes the Enhanced Games seriously."
Travis Tygart, the head of the US anti-doping agency, as "farcical … likely illegal in many [US] states" and "a dangerous clown show."
D'Souza remains unflustered by the pushback.
"Well, people like Seb Coe and themselves are earning fat salaries, living on a gravy train...and they don't want to lose that," he says.
"It's the same criticism that the taxi lobby made at Uber or Blockbuster video made at Netflix. But this is a history of disruption over and over.
"The incumbents, which are these old fossilized organizations run by committees of people who are lavishly overpaid...
"You know, think that a little start-up that comes along is just a joke.
"But by the time that committee driven fossilized bureaucracy, you know, realizes what's happening, it's too late and they're demolished and relegated to the history books."
