Enhanced games are on Sundays. Here’s what you need to know about this controversial event

Let’s think about the Olympics. There are multi-million dollar jackpots and no strict doping rules.

The Enhanced Games will be held in Las Vegas on Sunday and promises to create a global sporting competition in which “elite athletes will challenge the limits of human performance,” according to organizers.

The privately funded game has received a lot of attention online, with financial backing from Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm 1789 Capitol and tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The event’s organizer, publicly traded company Enhanced Group, uses the game as a springboard for its business, selling peptides and other supplements. Enhanced also documents the drug’s effects on athletes for its own research.

“I understand there is a huge commercial opportunity for this company, but I think it borders on ethics,” said Dr. Aaron Baggish, a professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland who has worked for Boston sports teams for 20 years.

The one-night competition will be held at Resorts World Las Vegas’ custom-built arena, which features a four-lane 50-meter pool, a six-lane sprint track, and a weightlifting stage.

What happens in enhanced games?

More than 40 athletes from around the world will compete in three sports: swimming, track and field, and weightlifting. There will also be a “strong man” deadlift showdown.

The four swimming events are freestyle, butterfly, 50-meter race, and 100-meter race. Track and field events include the 100 meter dash, 100 meter hurdles, and 110 meter hurdles. The weightlifting series includes clean, jerk, and snatch events.

The total prize pool for the game is $25 million, CEO Max Martin told Front Office Sports News. The total prize pool for each event is $500,000, with first place receiving $250,000. The company also announced that athletes will receive an additional $1 million if they break the world record in either the 100-meter sprint or the 50-meter freestyle. However, neither mark is recognized by governing bodies such as the World Athletics Championships, which require drug testing.

Enhanced Games competitors are allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs, which are prohibited at internationally recognized sporting events. The company says the drugs are FDA-approved and prescribed by doctors.

Enhanced did not say which specific athletes used which drugs, but it announced Wednesday that 91% of competing athletes used testosterone or testosterone esters, 79% used human growth hormone and 62% used stimulants such as Adderall ahead of the competition.

Baggish said the public needs to understand that “FDA approval does not equate to safe use if the drug is not used in an FDA-approved manner.”

He added that there is a difference between someone who is prescribed testosterone because they don’t produce enough testosterone and someone who takes much higher amounts of testosterone to enhance their athletic performance.

For example, studies of high doses of drugs such as testosterone have shown an increased risk of heart disease, Baggish said. He said the number of enhanced athletes using testosterone was “very concerning”.

“We have to be careful not to confuse short-term success with long-term impact,” Baggish said. “I think many, if not all, of these athletes will be able to get through the Enhanced Games without any visible problems.”

“But what will they be like in three years, five years?” Baggish said.

By the way, the International Olympic Committee follows strict guidelines on doping based on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list of banned substances. These include stimulants such as testosterone, human growth hormone, and Adderall. There are some strict exceptions.

Who is behind the game?

Enhanced Games was founded by Australian entrepreneur and lawyer Aron D’Souza. He previously worked with Thiel in filing a lawsuit against Gawker Media. Martin, Enhancement’s CEO, took over from D’Souza in November.

In 2023, D’Souza announced Enhanced Games and revealed its details at an announcement event last May. At the event, he said the idea for the game came to him in 2022 “while I was mulling it over.”

“I imagined a new kind of competition where science, sport and society could evolve together, where we stopped apologizing for progress and started embracing it,” D’Souza said.

He added that his company seeks to improve athletic performance “openly, responsibly and ethically.”

He said the administration of the drug was overseen by an independent medical and scientific committee. D’Souza said the drugs will be administered according to “completely individualized protocols and continuous monitoring to ensure safety and peak performance.”

Baggish, a professor of medicine, said he was approached to join Enhanced Games as a doctor, but immediately declined. He said people should not be blinded to the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs by obvious medical oversights.

“That’s the same as me saying, ‘If a doctor watches you smoke, he can make it safe for you,'” Baggish said.

Representatives for Enhanced Games did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the game’s criticism. In a 2024 statement responding to the International Sports Medicine Federation’s concerns about the event, D’Souza said the event’s approach “aims to reduce the risks associated with unregulated conduct and bring it under medical supervision.”

“Enhanced Gaming does not promote the indiscriminate use of restricted substances,” D’Souza said. “Instead, we advocate the use of performance enhancements safely and responsibly with clinical supervision.”

Which players will participate?

There are some big names in the game.

Olympic gold medalist Cody Miller and former world record holder Hunter Armstrong of the United States and Olympic silver medalist Ben Proud of Great Britain will compete. American runner Fred Curley, a three-time world champion and two-time Olympic medalist, will compete as a sprinter at the event. Athletics Integrity Unity announced in March that Curley had been banned from competing in globally recognized competition for two years after failing a drug test. This is an anti-doping rule violation and does not necessarily mean the athlete is taking drugs.

Armstrong and Curley said they are among the players who do not use performance-enhancing drugs during matches.

Most of the participating athletes trained for the event in Abu Dhabi as part of Enhanced’s own research.

Former NFL player Emmanuel Acho and MLB Network broadcaster Abby Lover will anchor the event.

What do the experts say?

The match has been criticized largely by outside medical experts and the sport’s governing body. Multiple recent studies have assessed the harms surrounding enhanced games.

Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, called the event in a statement a “dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle.” The International Olympic Committee said the Games were “a betrayal of everything we stand for.” The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) last year asked U.S. authorities to halt the competition.

In 2024, the International Federation of Sports Medicine said medical supervision was “inadequate” to support athletes.

“There is simply no way to make the use of these drugs safe with medical monitoring in the short or long term,” said Baggish, the medical professor. “This is essentially a natural history experiment to see what happens.”

Dr. Michael Joyner, a clinical anesthesiologist whose research focuses on physiology and human performance, said there is a reliable body of research showing the effects of doping on a wide range of people, including studies linking steroid use to premature death in bodybuilders, and archival data from East Germany in the 1960s.

“The question is, what is someone trying to prove?” Joyner said. “We’ve known for years that anabolic steroids work,” he added, “and I don’t understand what’s new.”