For most people, track and field exists as a fleeting summer spectacle: ten days every four years when the fastest, strongest, and most gravity-defying humans wage war on a 400-metre oval. For me, this sport is much more. During my time as a varsity athlete, I was consumed by the oval: on it, I trained and competed; beyond it, I devoured every development in the professional track world.
Which is why, when Olympic medalist Fred Kerley recently announced his jump to the Enhanced Games, a new competition that explicitly permits performance-enhancing drugs, I paid attention.
Kerley, a six-time world championship medalist, is not new to headlines. His latest ones, however, stem from a suspension over “whereabouts failures”: missing or mishandling the required paperwork and availability checks that allow anti-doping officials to test athletes outside of competition. It’s a bureaucratic infraction, not a smoking syringe. But it was enough to sideline him, and when your livelihood depends on prize money ($10,000 for a Diamond League win, $70,000 for a world title), even a year out can be financially devastating.
His response? A pivot to the Enhanced Games, where not only are the rules different, but many would also argue they’re inverted.
What Exactly Are the Enhanced Games?
Picture the Olympics’ flash, scale, and spectacle. Now delete the anti-doping lab, toss the rulebook, and add venture-capital dollars. That’s the Enhanced Games in a nutshell.
Set to debut in Las Vegas, the Games promise Olympic-style contests in sprinting, swimming, and weightlifting, but with half-million-dollar purses per event and a $1 million bonus for shattering iconic records like the men’s 100m or the 50m freestyle.
The organizers frame it not as a circus, but as the future of sport: “redefining super-humanity through science, innovation and sports.”
They’ve even attracted heavyweight backing from figures like Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., which tells you everything you need to know about the kind of spectacle (and controversy) they’re aiming for.
Critics Call Foul
Of course, not everyone is applauding this chemical free-for-all.
UK Anti-Doping’s chief executive Jane Rumble minced no words, telling BBC sport: “Any sporting event which permits performance-enhancing drugs is ultimately unsafe - unhealthy for athletes. It is not good for their wellbeing.” The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s chief Travis Tygart went further, calling the Games a “dangerous clown show.” World Aquatics declared them a “circus, built on shortcuts”.
Public opinion reflects that skepticism. A recent UK survey found 85% of teenagers supported bans on athletes who dope, hardly a ringing endorsement for the Enhanced Games’ mission.
And yet, the Games are pressing forward, lawsuits in tow. Organizers filed an $800 million antitrust claim against World Aquatics, USA Swimming, and the World Anti-Doping Agency, accusing them of illegally deterring athletes from participating. If nothing else, the courtroom drama promises to be as compelling as the races themselves.
The Risks Behind the Rewards
Critics’ concerns aren’t simply moral, they’re medical. Prolonged anabolic steroid use is linked to cardiovascular disease, hormonal dysfunction, and psychiatric effects that can linger long after athletes retire.
Trenbolone, one of the more infamous compounds used to gain muscle, has never been approved for human use at all: it was designed to bulk up cattle. Yet, as any quick scroll on TikTok will confirm, it’s widely available for those willing to “get enhanced.”
A 2019 review labeled steroids a “hidden epidemic” and a looming public health threat, with global estimates suggesting up to 6% of men and nearly 2% of women have used them at some point. In Denmark, one retrospective cohort studyfound steroid use tripled the risk of death compared with non-users, a mortality curve rivaling cocaine.
So, when Enhanced Games officials tout their “protocols” for safe, supervised enhancement, many experts remain unconvinced. As Manchester professor Jim McVeigh put it bluntly: “They are focusing on the power sports - sprinting, lifting and swimming - and those athletes will take anabolic agents… Are organizers really watching out for them?”
Spectacle or Slippery Slope?
Even setting aside health concerns, the Enhanced Games raise existential questions about what we value in sport. Is athletic greatness defined by talent, discipline, and resilience? Or is it simply about pushing the human body to its absolute (and chemically assisted) limit?
The Games’ founders argue the latter. Their critics argue that without shared rules, without the notion of fair play, competition becomes little more than pharmacological theatre.
And then there’s the question of audience. While breaking the 100m world record in an “enhanced” context might draw eyeballs, will fans care? Early Reddit chatter suggests otherwise, with most commenters dismissing the idea of watching a competition where doping is guaranteed.
Final Lap
The Enhanced Games are less a sporting event than a cultural experiment. They sit at the intersection of science, ethics, and entertainment, daring us to confront our contradictory desires: we want superhuman feats, but we also want fairness; we celebrate human limits, but we secretly crave to see them shattered.
Fred Kerley may see the Games as an opportunity to redefine his career. But for the rest of us, the real question isn’t whether he becomes the fastest man alive; it’s whether, in chasing spectacle, we’re willing to watch sport transform into something unrecognizable.
Sophie Tseng Pellar recently graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in the physiology program. She will be continuing her graduate studies in the Surgical and Interventional Sciences program at McGill. Her research interests include exercise physiology, biomechanics and sports nutrition.
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