Enhanced Games are no joke

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The first, best and most hilarious rendition of the "All Drug Olympics" came courtesy of "Saturday Night Live." It was 1988 when Soviet weightlifter "Sergei Akmudov," geeked up on anabolic steroids, Nyquil and "some sort of fish paralyzer," tried to clean and jerk 1,500 pounds — three times the existing world record — only to have his arms snap off at the shoulders. Blood and gore gushed from where his arms used to be. Laughter cascaded as the on-site reporter, Kevin Nealon, threw it back to Dennis Miller in the studio. It took almost 40 years, but finally, the event that tackles that age-old bar question, "What would happen if we just let them all take drugs?" has arrived. "The Enhanced Games," featuring 50 athletes who have been free to use performance enhancers of their choice and will compete in track, swimming and, yes, weightlifting, is set for Sunday in Las Vegas. Is it just a bad joke? Depends on who you ask. "A big success for us would be the athletes being healthy, safe, better paid and happier than they've ever been before," said Max Martin, the CEO and co-founder of Enhanced. Mainstream sports ignoring Enhanced — they're not the only ones The Associated Press spoke with a handful of leaders in the Olympic and anti-doping world, most of whom would not agree to speak on the record, even to denigrate the Enhanced Games, lest they lend oxygen to an idea they largely portrayed as a cynical money grab for washed-up athletes. Benjamin Cohen, director general of the International Testing Agency that spearheads testing for the Olympics along with dozens of individual sports, was among those who would comment. "I've heard some people calling it the 'Doping Olympics,' but even using the word 'Olympics' (is a stretch)," Cohen said. "At the end of the day, it's a one-day event, it's 2,000 people eating popcorn and there's a music concert. It's (50) athletes. It's not right to put it on the same level." The germ of the idea for the Enhanced Games formed in 2022. Then, the event was largely seen as a disruptive, potentially paradigm-shifting sports event meant to poke at the mainstream anti-doping world's troubled enforcement efforts and Olympic sports' inability to pay a living wage to a disturbingly large percentage of their athletes. It has since evolved into a new-age online pharmaceutical company, which describes itself as a "global movement that develops scientific insights, medical discoveries and record-breaking sports events to unite humanity and inspire innovation." Enhanced, which became a publicly traded company May 8 and has seen its initial stock price drop by around half to $5.24 as of Friday afternoon, made some of its biggest headlines early by touting its $250,000 first prizes and bonuses of up to $1 million for those who break world records in top events like the 100-meter sprint. Those marks, of course, would not count in any real sports record book. They have to come in events sanctioned by, say, World Athletics or World Aquatics, both of which require athletes to pass drug tests for any result to count. Another number that might or might not be real is the $12 million that sprinter Fred Kerley says he's making. Arguably the biggest name among the 50 athletes competing, Kerley, the 2022 world 100-meter champion whose personal best is 9.76 seconds — .18 short of Usain Bolt's world record — has been doing live streams leading up to the event. In one exchange about how much it would cost a shoe company to sign him, he said: "My contract was $12 million altogether, so if they're not willing to pay 12-plus, they can kiss my ass." Experts debate what an enhanced record, or no record, would mean All the 2,500-or-so tickets for the specially built venue on the Strip that includes a pool and track are going to people chosen by the organization. The Vegas betting line? Inside the sports book attached to the venue, there was no mention of Enhanced and the ticketwriters didn't know what the Enhanced Games were. What would it mean if somebody breaks a record? What would it mean if nobody does? "For me, it will be difficult to draw conclusions from one race this weekend," Cohen said. "For Usain Bolt to have broken a world record at the Olympics, it means he had to perform at a certain level for a number of months in the lead-up to qualify to get to that stage. It's not the same as a one-day competition where you had a six-month doping regimen." Earlier this year, an Enhanced swimmer, Kristian Gkolomeev of Greece, set an unofficial record (20.89 seconds) in the 50 meters and received the $1 million bonus from the group. He was using performance enhancers and a speed suit that has been banned by world swimming authorities. His ability — or Kerley's — to cash in for the $1 million this week won't be the only measure of success (or failure) for this one-day event. Michael Ashenden, a former drug fighter in the Lance Armstrong era who argued in a 2024 paper that the Enhanced Games weren't such a radical idea, has been working with the group's medical commission as an independent advisor. He says an anti-doping system that oversees elite sports doesn't reflect the real world and its needs. Enhanced, which openly lists an available menu of what have long been sports' most worrisome performance enhancers — nandrolone, erythropoietin (EPO) and human-growth hormone — emphasizes that athletes who choose those drugs are under strict medical supervision and are only using substances that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The records from their training and testing will be used to publish papers and take a stab at that old question: What would happen if we let the athletes dope? "The same science that allows an athlete to enhance might allow a 70-year-old to regain their strength, their recovery, and their energy," Ashenden said. "The Enhanced Games are using the stadium to show what medicine might do for the rest of society." If that works, and the stock price goes up, then Enhanced, which has been bankrolled by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel and others, would view this as a success. "If you're a 25-year-old training for your first marathon, if you're 65 and you're looking for more energy to take your grandkids to the playground and play with them, enhancements can help you be the best at any point in time that you can be," said Martin, the CEO. Anti-doping researcher Oliver Catlin, whose father, Don, was one of the godfathers of the profession, pointed out the upcoming 60th anniversary of the start of the modern-day drug-fighting movement in sports. It was triggered by the death at the Tour de France of cyclist Tom Simpson, whose autopsy blamed overuse of amphetamines and other stimulants for his death. "I have friends of enhanced sports who believe it can be done legally and safely," Catlin said. "But you have to look at the other side of the coin, too. There's a reason we have clean sport, and it's because some of these substances have literally been implicated in the death of athletes." ___ AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports