Plan for doping-forward Enhanced Games lacks real juice
It looks like the Enhanced Games could use a shot in the arm.
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Aron D'Souza, the Oxford-educated founder of the Games, had two years to get his act together and could do no better than what looks like a four-day trade show for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) next May inside the Resorts World hotel/casino complex in Las Vegas, the American city built on artifice, avarice and hype.
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The Games program contains three sports — athletics, swimming and weightlifting — and just nine events. They could hold this thing during intermission of a Cirque show.
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But, hey, be sure not to miss out on the line of Enhanced Performance Products — including advanced supplements and medically supervised therapies — that will be on offer through a 'tele-health experience.'
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One year out, the roster of confirmed Games athletes consists of exactly four male swimmers — one each from Australia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Greece. That's just a wee bit shy on star power, not to mention diversity.
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Little wonder why there has been no announcement of a deal with network TV or a major streaming service.
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In 2023, when D'Souza began talking up the Games, his packaged passion for PEDs as the key to human achievement was the lowest-hanging fruit around and major international media outlets wanted a taste.
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Today, there isn't much of anything left on that tree. While D'Souza convinced some of those platforms to publish his predictions of a 'sporting mega-event aspiring to rival the Olympic Games,' it appears likely his little show will be more akin to Battle of the Network Stars or American Gladiators.
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While gathering seed funding, D'Souza railed against the excess and wastefulness of the Olympic movement — and goodness knows there are many expensive and abandoned venues to prove the case — and he told Australian Associated Press the Enhanced Games would be economically sustainable.
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'By reducing it from 13,000 (Olympic) athletes to maybe a couple of thousand — no specialist infrastructure — instead of costing $100 billion to deliver this, it will cost double-digit millions.'
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D'Souza now says there will be 200 athletes. So, just a wee bit less than 'a couple of thousand.' And to get from four to 200, one assumes they will recruit the rest through the website's sign-up page, so imagine how thrilling it will be to watch juiced-up weekend warriors from Iowa and Illinois competing in the testosterone triathlon. If that's what citius, altius, fortius looks like now, then by all means pity us.
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To justify their vision, the Games team put Greek-Bulgarian swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev on an enhancement protocol in hopes of breaking the world record in the 50-metre freestyle. They claim he did exactly that while on PEDs and wearing a body suit that has been banned by World Aquatics. Wow. What an accomplishment.
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