ECONOMIST: ‘Doping Olympics’ to hit Las Vegas —Enhanced Games actively encourage performance enhancing drugs

How about this for a bold and controversial idea: a sporting event where the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) is not just permitted, but actively encouraged?

That is exactly what Aron D’Souza, an Australian lawyer and entrepreneur, has been working to organise for the past few years. Mr D’Souza says his sports tournament, the Enhanced Games, is taking a stand for freedom and choice.

Not everyone is convinced. Derided as the “doping Olympics”, the idea has drawn intense criticism from sporting bodies. Nonetheless, after years of speculation, the inaugural event will take place from May 21 to 24 in Las Vegas.

The programme will feature swimming, track events and weightlifting, with prize money of $US500,000 per event (the aim is to add further categories in future years).

A $US1 million bonus ($1.5 million) is on offer for breaking the world record in the 100-metre sprint or 50-metre freestyle swimming — two tests of raw human speed. The organisers promise global live-streaming and broadcast coverage, though details of these partnerships have yet to be announced.

Athletes do not have to use PEDs to compete, and may compete as “natural” athletes. But those who do enhance will have to do so under close medical supervision, and may use only products that have been approved by America’s drug-regulation agency.

The organisers say that, to ensure a level playing field, every athlete will begin their drug protocols at the same time. This will happen in two rounds, with the second round taking place in the run-up to the event.

In 2025 the United States Anti-Doping Agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee issued blunt warnings that allowing PEDs in any form was dangerous. Traditional sporting bodies have also expressed concern that the Enhanced Games might normalise and glamorise drug use for young athletes.

Yet as Luke Turnock, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Lincoln, points out, the normalisation of PEDs is already well under way, driven by social media, gym culture and the broader pharmaceuticalisation of daily life. The pharmaceutically enhanced horse has already bolted from the stable.

Because the use of drugs will be declared and closely monitored, the organisers of the Enhanced Games insist it will be the “safest” sporting event in history. That claim deserves scrutiny. But the organisers’ commercial ambitions will be met only if athletes are seen to benefit from their interventions, because the games will double as marketing for a planned direct-to-consumer telehealth platform, also due to launch in 2026, which will offer supplements and “medically supervised interventions”.

So far few details are available, but this will almost certainly include testosterone therapy, a treatment that is rapidly growing in popularity in America and elsewhere.

The signs are that the drugs do work, however. Kristian Gkolomeev, a Greek swimmer who worked with the organisers to test the concept, broke the 50m freestyle record in 2025 while using PEDs. He will participate again in 2026, along with Ben Proud, James Magnussen and Andrii Govorov, three swimmers.

Mr Proud explained his decision by saying that it would take “13 years of winning a World Championship title” for athletes to earn the amount on offer for a single race at the Enhanced Games.

He noted that even Olympic champions seldom secure enough money for retirement. Britain’s national governing body for swimming condemned his decision to participate.

The Enhanced Games are being contested not just in the stadium, but also in the courts. After Mr Gkolomeev broke his record, World Aquatics, swimming’s global governing body, introduced a new bylaw banning athletes and any other staff (including coaches and doctors) if they participate in any events that permit banned drugs.

The Enhanced Games’ organisers responded by filing an $US800m antitrust lawsuit that alleges a predatory campaign to crush them by forcing a boycott.

There may be much more at stake than just sporting achievement. Mr D’Souza and his backers, who include Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire, and Christian Angermayer, who specifically invests in life sciences and human enhancement, imagine a future where taking drugs to boost performance in all kinds of ways becomes commonplace, redefining what it means to be human.

Whether superhumanity is attainable is uncertain. But sports fans will be divided on whether they want to watch the games.