It is a simple manifesto. Elite sport — plus performance-enhancing drugs.
The organisers of the Enhanced Games hope the result is equally straightforward: world records and million-dollar prizes.
Athlete safety? Sporting integrity? Founder Aron D’Souza does not share those concerns.
“We want to create as safe an environment as possible and we want to push the limits of humanity as much as possible,” the Australian-born entrepreneur tells The Athletic from his west London base.
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The Enhanced Games proposes an annual event where entrants in five sports — track and field, swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, and combat sports — will be allowed to dope in training and competition.
Sporting bodies have reacted with incredulity and anger, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) with immediate condemnation. Even United States President Joe Biden expressed his “deep concern” at the proposal.
In a way, this all fits with D’Souza’s self-styled view of the Enhanced Games — a disruptor, comparable to LIV Golf, though like the Saudi Arabia-funded league, it is also backed by millions of dollars of investment.
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Their Kensington offices are genteel surroundings from which to start a revolution and are based in a private members’ club. Walking down the spiral staircase to meet D’Souza, one of his assistants is happy to chat. How are you enjoying the job? The response comes without delay.
“I truly believe we’re changing the world.”
It is some statement — this is merely sport, after all. But its investors’ identities imply a deeper purpose. Peter Thiel, Christian Angermayer, and Balaji Srinivasan are all linked with the biohacking movement — ultimately, they are more interested in setting ageing records than athletics records. D’Souza is transparent about the project’s ultimate goals. Think that the idea of running 100 metres in under 9.6 seconds is wishful thinking? The long-term ambition is to “cheat death”.
“I like to say that AI was like science fiction just five years ago,” says D’Souza. “One person, Sam Altman, made it real with ChatGPT. In the same way, the idea of transhumanism, that we can overcome our weak, feeble, biological bodies, sounds like science fiction. But it’s possible.
“We just need an inflexion point, a moment that changes the social psyche. And that will be the first Enhanced Games — when an athlete breaks the 100m world record, demolishes it, openly using performance enhancements.
“The first question everyone is going to ask is what is he on? And how can I get it? I believe ageing is a disease that we should be able to treat, cure, and eventually solve.”
“It’s all bollocks isn’t it?”
This was Sebastian Coe — double Olympic gold medallist, architect of the 2012 London Olympics, and president of World Athletics, speaking at last month’s World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow.
“There’s only one message and that is if anybody is moronic enough to officially take part in it, they’ll get banned for a long time,” he added. “But I don’t get sleepless nights about it.”
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D’Souza reacted with anger, calling it “juvenile insults”, but Coe’s apathy was not unusual. Several governing bodies warned against engaging with the Enhanced Games, concerned it would give the project legitimacy.
“That’s only sports bureaucrats who are earning seven figures, flying around the world in private jets and living in literal palaces, who don’t like that they now have competition,” says D’Souza, pouring himself a peppermint tea. “I’m sure that taxi monopolies would have said, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t talk to Uber — that would just validate an illegal business’.”
These analogies are a feature of the conversation. Across almost two hours, D’Souza is a rapid-burst theorist.
His theory of social change? “Change only happens when someone puts a suit on and goes to work every day to try to solve a problem”.
His idea of a holiday? “To take a laptop to the beach and write a new business plan.”
Comparisons with the entertainment industry? “Hollywood is just as competitive as sports, but the use of performance enhancements is perfectly normalised… Kim Kardashian is enhanced.”
The Enhanced Games’ website terms the phrases “doping” and “cheated” in the context of sporting records as “discriminatory language”. They are campaigning to scrub Wikipedia of such terminology.
When the waiter comes to take a coffee order, D’Souza calls it ironic that he does not drink caffeine despite founding the Enhanced Games. “My body is my temple,” he says.
D’Souza was a former amateur road cyclist in the early 2000s, who says his career was harmed by erythropoietin use among other competitors (a common doping drug, known as EPO, that stimulates red blood cell production) — but who has not yet tried “the full enhancement regimen”. Among organisers, he is not alone in this regard.
Brett Fraser is the Enhanced Games’ chief athletes officer, tasked with recruiting entrants for the five sports, and a former elite swimmer who appeared in three Olympic Games for the Cayman Islands.
“I’ve never taken any enhancements, ever,” he says. “I haven’t really considered it because I don’t know enough about what is out there.”
Fraser argues that the Enhanced Games will form part of that knowledge-gathering process, but is it problematic that he is attempting to convince athletes without that information?
“Not necessarily,” he says. “We’re creating a better model for athletes to be compensated, to be enhanced. If they want to do that, we’ll speak to doctors and scientists — but in terms of the specifics, I can’t really speak to that, not being a medical professional. I can’t advise on whether this is the best thing to do.”
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The existing evidence appears clear. In 1987, West German heptathlete Birgit Dressel died at 26 suddenly due to multiple organ failure. A subsequent inquest found it was “undoubtedly triggered by anabolic doping”.
There have been clusters of cycling deaths linked to EPO use, such as reports of 20 young Belgian and Dutch riders dying in unexplained circumstances between 1987 and 1990 and a further eight from 2003-04.
The autopsy of bodybuilder Rich Piana, who died at the age of 46 in 2017, showed that his heart and liver weighed twice the average amount after heavy steroid use.
“Someone will die if we allow (the Enhanced Games) to continue to prosper and flourish,” said Australian Sports Commission chief Kieren Perkins this week.
“Drug testing is a fairness system, not a safety system,” argues D’Souza. “Our athletes will be happy to have to be healthy to compete, we will screen them in particular for cardiac illness. Because obviously, if an athlete has a heart attack on international television — it’s all over, right?
“Ultimately, we aim to be the safest sporting event in history.”
D’Souza brings up a 2010 study by Imperial College London professor David Nutt that names anabolic steroids as the fifth-least harmful drug to general society — though that research does not legislate for availability.
“It’s safe to say that we’re being a little more cautious than the Olympics,” adds Fraser, who says that health screening could be done daily, with organisers considering the use of real-time electrocardiograms (ECGs).
Details on the exact nature of the safety regimen, like much else in the Enhanced Games, are scant — with D’Souza stating that certain aspects are still being finalised. The ambition is to hold the first Games next year, though organisers have not committed to a specific month. They have, however, recruited a ‘scientific and medical advisory commission’, led by Harvard professor George Church, and D’Souza says he will be guided by its input.
“It’s not a complete free-for-all,” he says. “All athletes will be clinically supervised and only using compounds that are approved by the FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration). We don’t want to do anything that’s like really pushing the boundaries — insurance won’t let me do that.”
A senior official at WADA poured scorn on the idea that FDA approval amounted to safety, pointing out that drugs are only approved in certain dosages for particular treatments. Though some are available over the counter, to get access to several of the drugs, the Enhanced Games will have to find a doctor willing to prescribe it — another reason behind their in-house medical commission.
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“It is the job of a physician to assess the risk-benefit for patients on a case-by-case basis,” said WADA head of communications James Fitzgerald. “Prescribing and administering drugs to athletes who do not have a therapeutic need puts their health at risk unnecessarily. Which medical professionals are going to risk their careers by openly administering these powerful drugs to healthy athletes who have no need for them?”
D’Souza has referred to WADA as a “secret police that shows up in the middle of the night and draws blood from athletes”, but with potential athletes limited in their supplements, the Enhanced Games is set to need its own drugs-testing protocol in place.
“I’ll juice to the gills and I’ll break it in six months.”
James Magnussen is the first athlete to publicly sign up for the Enhanced Games. The Australian is a former Olympic swimmer, who holds some of the fastest 100m freestyle times in history. Magnussen, 32, retired in 2019 having won a silver and a bronze at the 2012 Olympics.
The words above came on a podcast, where he said he would come out of retirement to break the 50m freestyle record — if the organisers stumped up $1million. D’Souza took him at his word. One month on, Magnussen has committed to training to break the record — though he regrets the tone of his initial comments. Asked whether his statement was a joke or a serious expression of his terms and conditions, the swimmer called it a 50/50.
“I’d spoken to a mate about it before and we’d have a conversation like any blokes would in a pub,” he tells The Athletic from his home in Sydney’s Bondi Beach. “And he sort of said to me, ‘Would you do it?’. It was a satirical comedy podcast, so some of the wording I used was not ideal. I also didn’t really think it was going to be globally broadcast.”
Such a step comes with a major reputational risk. Though Magnussen was one of the world’s best swimmers at his peak, his fastest time came over a decade ago. There is also the safety aspect. Is he nervous?
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“I’d say like trepidation,” he replies. “I don’t think I fully understood the gravity of the situation until it exploded, but the reputation side of it has been something that I’ve thought deeply about and being a trailblazer is always going to come with criticism.”
Ultimately, his body is the one bearing the risk — so his words should carry weight. Magnussen is happy to be guided by the Enhanced Games’ doctors, but he also plans to consult independent medical specialists.
“Once we’ve got dates, then I’ll reverse engineer everything,” he says, outlining his plan. “I’d go and get a full-scale medical — my levels of every single hormone, where my body’s at, checking on any little niggling injuries. I’m not going to ‘bro science’ it. We want to document a way to do this properly.”
Asked which substances he anticipates taking, Magnussen cannot yet go into specific detail.
“Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is the only one I’ve done research on. It’s the biggest product in this space at the moment. It’s not going to be going above and beyond — it’s getting my levels back to where I was as a 20-year-old.”
TRT is a treatment prescribed for individuals with low levels of the testosterone hormone — but in sport, an athlete with high levels would have the advantage of stronger bones and greater muscle mass.
D’Souza points to its usage by 70-year-old U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr — “Watch the videos, he’s doing pull-ups, he’s got a perfect six-pack; he’s of the same vintage as Donald Trump (77) and Joe Biden (81), but they’re weak” — but the politician has been accused of hypocrisy, given his high-profile opposition to vaccines. Though TRT has been approved by the FDA, the governmental medical body makes clear that it should only be used in conjunction with an associated medical condition — warning of an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes.
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Magnussen says that drug testing is not working at the elite level, estimating that about a quarter of the field in major finals were doping, describing it as an unequal playing field. Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov has said that 30 of his country’s 73 medallists at the 2008 Olympics were doping. According to WADA, measuring doping prevalence is a priority but a complex process, with huge variances across the many prevalence studies that have been carried out.
Some of D’Souza’s criticism of sports’ governing bodies is warranted. Last year, a study from the Australian Sports Foundation found that 46 per cent of elite competitors in the country were living below the poverty line and earning less than A$23,000 (£12,000; $15,000) per year.
D’Souza says he plans to address this — with bulky investment funding a prize pot that will offer more than $1million to any broken world record and a six-figure base salary to a group of some two-dozen athletes who they hope will initially form the Enhanced Games’ core competitors. He said he is attempting to negotiate broadcasting deals to secure further funding, primarily with streaming services, but cited commercial confidentiality in refusing to give further detail of their identities.
“They now need to make it a bit more incentivised for the athletes in the Olympics or else a lot of them are going to choose to go down this path of the Enhanced Games,” British swimmer Duncan Scott, an Olympic medallist who will compete in Paris this summer, told iNews this week.
“If there’s a lot of monetary rewards or if the sponsorships start to kick off, I can see a lot of athletes being like, ‘Yeah, why not do that for four or eight years? I can make way more money’.”
In all likelihood, the money on offer is a temptation rather than a solution to these sports’ problems, but according to D’Souza, athletes are taking notice.
“On our peak day, we’ve had 4,000 inbound requests,” he says. Magnussen adds that Australian international swimmers, both retired and current, have already contacted him to express their interest.
It will not be a requirement for competitors to take enhancements — so-called “natural” athletes will be able to compete. Fraser and Magnussen brush off the suggestion that it would be embarrassing for them if a natural athlete won an event.
Asked why, amid all this interest, only Magnussen had been announced as a competitor, D’Souza claimed that the next tranche of athletes would be announced in late March.
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On the flip side, several high-profile athletes have publicly condemned the proposals — such as men’s 800m world record holder David Rudisha and cyclist Anna Meares, who has won six Olympic medals. Their concern is that, despite the riches on offer, young athletes who sign up not only risk their health but also future income. Once they have doped, any route back to professional sport is long and arduous.
“WADA warns athletes and support personnel who wish to participate in clean sport that if they were to take part in the Enhanced Games, they would risk committing anti-doping rule violations,” says WADA’s Fitzgerald. “WADA will encourage anti-doping organisations worldwide to test involved athletes before, during and after this event to protect the integrity of legitimate sport.”
In the face of strident opposition, what is the compulsion behind, in D’Souza’s words, donning a suit and changing the world?
“Oh, but as much criticism as there is, I would say that love and hate are symmetrical feelings. For all the hate that comes, there’s also a lot of the biggest investors in the world, the biggest broadcasters, some of the greatest athletes,” says D’Souza.
The identity of these athletes and broadcasters are not yet apparent — if they come at all — but the Enhanced Games does have serious financial backing from the biohacking movement.
Thiel, for example, a co-founder of PayPal, plans to be cryogenically frozen after his death and has donated millions of his $9.7billion fortune into anti-ageing research. This is why the Enhanced Games’ organisers make such grandiose statements. In their mind, there is a wider purpose at play, beyond the sport itself. The unspoken reality is that there could be millions of dollars in play.
Listen to Magnussen’s take and in many ways, he is prepared to use his body as a human advertising hoarding for an incipient industry.
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“I watch a lot, listen to a lot, read a lot in this space,” he says, outlining his belief that TRT slows ageing, a claim heavily contested within the scientific community. “What I need to do is get my body back in the shape that it was at the peak of my powers in my early twenties — and that’s going to be basically decreasing the effects of ageing. I believe this can be done medically and I want to set an example to people of how to do it.”
Organisers and investors see the biohacking movement as the business explosion of the next decade. In that sense, it does not even necessarily matter if the science is accurate, but that people are willing to believe it is accurate. Think of it as analogous to the Red Bull strategy — sports as the marketing arm for a background product, interest sparked for further investment. In this world, all advertising, even if critical — from WADA, from the Olympics, from Joe Biden — is useful.
Late last month, the Enhanced Games held an event at the House of Lords, gathering industry leaders.
“Britain has a long history of developing amazing technologies and then losing out on those opportunities,” D’Souza says. “Human enhancement will be the largest industry of all time. If you can reverse ageing, or cheat death, definitionally you will pay everything for that.”
It is big talk of big numbers, underpinned by sobering reality. In this Black Mirror world, it may be the investors’ money on the line, but it is the athletes’ bodies. Under the Enhanced Games’ vision, sportspeople are its paragons and potential prey.
D’Souza accepts that there are two versions of science fiction — a utopian future and a dystopian future. “You have to be an optimist,” he concludes. This is a sticking point. Despite the Enhanced Games’ slogan — “Science is Real” — there comes a point, just like religion, where you have to believe.
Does he ever doubt? He pauses, for the first time in the interview.
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“No,” he replies, leaning back in his armchair. “You can’t have doubt. If you really, sincerely believe you’re going to build the future, you can’t have doubt. Our end goal, we want to enhance humanity as a whole. I believe in that.”
Doubt is for the rest of us.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
