The Sporting Event Where Everyone Is Doping - The Atlantic

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In person, they did not seem quite real. Gathered on a blue carpet under bright lights, inside a $50 million Las Vegas venue that had been built just for them, the athletes of the Enhanced Games—colloquially known as the “doping Olympics”—looked like action figures. When they stood next to other people, the effect was different but no less uncanny; it was as if they’d been Photoshopped, blown up 25 percent compared with the rest of their species.<br>They were here competing in three sports—running, weightlifting, and swimming—under the banner of Enhanced, a sporting event and supplement company that has, over the past few years, raised more than $300 million in venture capital, including from Peter Thiel and 1789 Capital, which aims to fund “the next chapter of American exceptionalism” and counts Donald Trump Jr. as a partner. The games, once announced, quickly became one of the most controversial sporting events in recent history. The premise was that anyone could take any FDA-approved substance; whoever broke a world record would win up to $1 million. (Non-doping athletes were welcome to compete for the same prize pool, if they could handle the odds.) The event would be broadcast live on YouTube and Roku, but really, it was designed to be clipped into vertical video—“built for social media, not for television,” Enhanced’s CEO, Max Martin, told reporters proudly during a press conference on Saturday. Every competition would be less than a minute.<br>The athletes were doping under the close supervision of a team of doctors, as part of a clinical trial conducted this past spring in Abu Dhabi. Each athlete’s regimen—Enhanced prefers the more science-y term protocol—is kept confidential as a matter of safety and trade-secret protection: no copycats. But collectively, the competitors were on some combination of 37 substances, including Adderall, beta-blockers, human growth hormone, and five forms of testosterone.<br>They have reported various effects: mood swings, increased power, faster recovery times, new facial hair. Padding around the pool, the Australian swimmer James Magnussen, age 35 and a holder of three Olympic medals, was impossible to look away from, his head balanced atop a bulging neck, traps spilling out like over-risen sourdough from his bronze swimsuit, a state-of-the-art, super-buoyant model that is banned from mainstream competition. (As big as he was, Magnussen had actually been forced to dial back his enhancement protocols after encountering some practical issues: He had put on so much muscle that he was sinking in the pool, and he couldn’t find a swimsuit big enough to fit him.)<br>Among the other athletes was the 32-year-old Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev, who broke the world record in the 50-meter freestyle at a previous Enhanced event, earning the organization’s first million-dollar check. Megan Romano, a 35-year-old former world-champion backstroker, had been retired for almost a decade when she became the first woman and first American to sign up for the games; she said she did so to “see what’s humanly possible.” Hafþór Björnsson, a 37-year-old Icelandic weightlifter, wanted to break the world record for deadlift: 1,135 pounds, which is heavier than a yearling Angus steer, several refrigerators, or most grand pianos. Andrii Govorov, 34, a Ukrainian who holds the world record in the 50-meter butterfly (swum clean), is doing it for the paycheck, he has told reporters: High-end training costs at least five figures a month, and after Russia invaded his country, he needed a more stable way to support himself and his family.<br>Boady Santavy, weightlifter (Maggie Shannon for The Atlantic)<br>Each of these athletes had signed on to enhancement at least in part as a reaction to the cruelties of their chosen profession: the criminally low wages, the limitations of the human body, the math that makes a 35-year-old in elite condition basically a senior citizen, the fact that no matter how much any governing agency polices performance-enhancing drugs, some people will always find new ways to use them undetected, edging out athletes who have not taken the advantage. And they each did so knowing that they have made a choice from which there is essentially no going back.<br>Because doping is prohibited and under-studied, we do not have a clear understanding of what it does to the body, long term, although evidence suggests that it can be associated with mood disorders, high blood pressure, infertility, and organ damage. Perhaps of more immediate concern for athletes who’ve dedicated their life to a sport and its community is the reputational risk. The idea that doping is cheating and cheating is wrong is sports’ ground truth; until Enhanced, every professional sports league on Earth (and many amateur ones) had banned it.<br>The mainstream sports establishment denounced the Enhanced Games, in many cases permanently barring from future...