By Jorge Garcia and Arafat Barbakh
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) -The Enhanced Games have set their inaugural competition for May 2026 in Las Vegas, with swimming, athletics and weightlifting on the agenda for athletes using substances banned in official competition to the consternation of anti-doping bodies.
Basking in Las Vegas’ neon glow at the launch, founder Aron D’Souza on Wednesday urged athletes to take a gamble on the novel competition that he believes can transform sports science but critics deride as a freak show.
Organizers touted what they believe to be their biggest success story so far: Kristian Gkolomeev, a Greek swimmer who never made the podium in four Olympics but surpassed one of his sport’s great achievements under the Enhanced Games program.
Gkolomeev swam two hundredths of a second faster than the 50m freestyle official world record that has stood for more than 15 years, clocking 20.89 in February with an inline full-body open water suit that falls outside World Aquatics standards.
“I’m kind of like the driver in the car, but I need the team behind me,” Gkolomeev, who finished fifth in the event at the Paris Games, said ahead of the Las Vegas event.
Enhanced Games have held the 31-year-old up as an example of what can be possible under their regime while declining to disclose which “performance enhancements” he used, citing medical confidentiality.
“He should be retired, but in fact, he’s swimming faster than any human being has ever done so. Why? Because he used technology and science to enhance his performance,” said D’Souza.
“Once the world realizes that, I think everyone is going to want it. Every middle-aged guy who once played competitive sport and is now suffering from back pain is going to say, ‘What is he on and how do I get it?'”
The Enhanced Games operate under the principle that banning performance-enhancing drugs in major competition does not protect athletes but rather stifles their performance.
“Our project is a lot like Formula One because the research that happens to make Formula One cars drive faster eventually percolates out onto the road,” the Australian entrepreneur told Reuters.
“And in the same way, the science and medicine that is used to make athletes achieve world record performances at increasingly older ages will allow all humans, all of our society to age more healthily and gracefully.”
‘ROMAN CIRCUS’?
Participants could earn prize money totalling up to $500,000 per event plus bonuses for surpassing a world record mark.
For swimming, the 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 50m butterfly and 100m butterfly are on the agenda. Athletics has the 100m sprint along with the 110m and 100m hurdles, while weightlifting will feature the snatch and clean and jerk.
The World Anti-Doping Agency staunchly opposes the project, warning athletes that they risk bans and their health.
The International Federation of Sports Medicine said the project could lead to exploitation of young athletes.
“Thinking that because you do medical checks on the spot is going to give you a good idea of the health risks of abuse of doping substances, again, is medical and scientific nonsense,” said World Anti-Doping Agency science director Olivier Rabin.
“It’s like the Roman circus, you know, you sacrifice the lives of people purely for entertainment. What’s the value of this? I don’t think any responsible society should move in that direction.”
D’Souza argues that doping in professional and amateur sport is rampant despite efforts to eliminate the use of banned substances, leading to it being done secretly and unsafely.
“Instead, at Enhanced Games, we’re reversing that, making it a fair, level, transparent field so that innovation can be illustrated in a very public way to support technological progress,” he said.
D’Souza announced last year that he had attracted big-name investors in Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, tech investor Christian Angermayer and former Coinbase Chief Technology Officer Balaji Srinivasan.
That year he also signed the first Enhanced Games athlete, retired Australian world champion swimmer James Magnussen, who agreed to take banned performance-enhancing drugs in an attempt to surpass Cesar Cielo’s 50m freestyle record.
Andriy Govorov, the Ukrainian 50m butterfly world record holder and world bronze medallist, and 21-year-old Bulgarian swimmer Josif Miladinov, a European silver medallist, joined the Enhanced Games program last month.
Magnussen, who had retired from competition in 2019, told reporters that training with Enhanced Games reignited his passion for the sport and that the response from his fellow athletes had been “overwhelmingly positive”.
“I was waking up each day with an enthusiasm to train, to compete. I felt so healthy, so motivated,” he said. “It’s honestly the happiest I’ve been in seven years,” he said.
“As athletes we have a greater risk appetite than the general population and see an event like the Enhanced Games as an opportunity.”
The 2026 Enhanced Games are set for Las Vegas from May 21-24.
(Reporting by Jorge Garcia and Arafat Barbakh in Las Vegas; Additional reporting by Nathan Frandino and Iain Axon, Writing by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Christopher Cushing)
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