This is why athletes are drugging themselves to compete in the 'Enhanced Games'

The inaugural event has been dubbed “dangerous” and gained the popular moniker of “Steroid Olympics”. Sporting institutions such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have described the games as immoral and threatened criminal charges.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) expressed “outrage”, and World Aquatics (WA) was the first international federation to threaten to ban competing athletes from its sanctioned events.

But are the Enhanced Games highlighting some serious problems with international and Olympic sport, or could their disruption change world sport for the better?

Doping scandals have a long history within sport. Athletes, doctors and countries have constantly sought loopholes, new drugs, micro-dosing and novel ways to avoid detection.

Along with Dr Alex Thurston and Dr Mathew Dowling from the University of Loughborough, we have interviewed 17 elite swimmers and coaches who have represented their country at the Olympic Games between 1976 and 2024.

Common themes suggest there is less outrage at the Games themselves than a number of other issues within the traditional sporting system, including ineffective anti-doping regulation, misuse of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) permitting athletes to use otherwise prohibited substances or methods to treat a condition, and the inability of anti-doping agencies to fully sanction cheating athletes.

They also revealed to us that doping in traditional Olympic sport is an ‘open secret’. Enhancement is happening, but only for those who can afford the best doctors and diagnoses and stay on top of the regulations. Enhanced, the company behind the games, aims to point to this open secret.

Another huge problem in some less commercialised sports is finding enough money to fund training. Athletes who have moved to the Enhanced Games, or are seriously considering it, frequently cite money as a significant factor.

The Games have a total prize pool of $25 million with $250,000 for a first place in each event and a $1 million bonus for breaking world records in designated events like the 100m sprint and 50m freestyle.

Financial rewards on offer have seen “clean” athletes like American swimmer Hunter Armstrong and British track sprinter Reese Prescod choose to compete.

Their participation can be seen as a political statement, but they are also the most dangerous to traditional sport, as they could open the floodgates for other “clean” athletes to compete in future competitions.

What is more, traditional governing bodies currently have no real leg to stand on to ban athletes from competing in these alternative competitions.

My recent research also highlights how institutions, such as elite sport, can be maintained but also changed by innovative disruptors.

The Enhanced Games draw legitimacy from various institutions of traditional sport in an insurrectionary way by adopting similar rules and regulations, but fundamentally challenge those same institutions. They are a disruptive force and have substantial financial backing, with public trading on the New York Stock Exchange opening with a valuation of $1.2 billion.

Whether they become the “Olympics of the Future” remains to be seen, but they are not going away. What happens in Vegas will certainly tell us more.

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Dr Simon Parker is a Senior Lecturer in Business and Society at Bayes Business School in London.

This article was written with assistance from Dr Alex Thurston, Lecturer in Sport Management and Dr Mathew Dowling, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management at the University of Loughborough.

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