After years of promises that performance-enhancing drugs would redefine human athletic limits, the first Enhanced Games ended with a mixed scoreboard, a record-breaking swim, dominant weightlifting performances, and clean athletes beating enhanced rivals in several marquee events.
However, several results undercut the central premise behind the Enhanced Games, with multiple athletes using performance-enhancing drugs losing to competitors who said they were competing clean.
“They gotta do better than that,” Kerley said in an interview after the race, according to SB Nation. “They need to train a little harder, get on that shit a little bit more, and go a little harder some more.”
The event marks the end of a years-long campaign by Aron D’Souza, the Australian lawyer who previously helped lead Peter Thiel’s lawsuit against Gawker Media. D’Souza founded the Enhanced Games in 2024 and is backed by Donald Trump Jr., Peter Thiel, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. D’Souza has argued that modern anti-doping rules are outdated.
How bad were the enhanced games at enhancing?
They somehow took near world-class sprinters, doped them, and made them slower...
Not just from their PRs, but from last season...and in most cases, slower than a good HS runner...
The World Anti-Doping Agency and World Aquatics have both rejected the legitimacy of the competition and said performances from the Games will not count as official records. Despite this, organizers said the Enhanced Games are the future of athletics.
“Now that we have broken the ice and proven the Games can be done at the highest level, I expect many more partnerships to be signed in the months ahead,” Angermayer wrote. “We are just getting started!”
