What to know concerning the Donald Trump Jr.-backed Enhanced Games : NPR

Two-time Olympic-medalist Fred Kerley attends a press convention forward of the Enhanced Games in Las Vegas, Friday, May 22, 2026. Unlike many of the athletes collaborating within the Sunday evening occasion, the sprinter says he’ll compete with out taking performance-enhancing medicine.

Ty ONeil/AP

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Ty ONeil/AP

Think the Olympics — with a multi-million jackpot and no inflexible doping guidelines.

The Enhanced Games are taking place on Sunday in Las Vegas with the promise to create a worldwide sports activities competitors “where elite athletes push the limits of human performance,” based on organizers.

The privately-funded video games have garnered appreciable consideration on-line, and are financially backed by Donald Trump Jr.’s enterprise capital agency, 1789 Capitol, and tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The firm behind the occasion, the publicly-traded Enhanced Group, is utilizing the video games as a launch pad for his or her enterprise, selling peptides and other supplements. Enhanced can be documenting the consequences of the medicine on athletes for its personal analysis.

“I understand that there’s a very large commercial opportunity for this company, but it is something I think borders on the lines of ethics,” mentioned Dr. Aaron Baggish, a professor of drugs on the University of Lausanne in Switzerland who labored with sports activities groups in Boston for 20 years.

The one-night competition shall be held in custom-built enviornment at Resorts World Las Vegas with a four-lane 50-meter pool, a six-lane dash monitor and a weightlifting stage.

What will occur on the Enhanced Games?

Over 40 athletes from throughout the globe will compete throughout three sports activities: swimming, monitor and weightlifting. There can even be a “strongman” deadlift showdown..

The 4 swimming occasions are 50-meter and 100-meter races in each freestyle and butterfly. The monitor and subject races embrace the 100-meter dash and the 100-meter and 110-meter hurdles. The weightlifting collection will characteristic the clear and jerk in addition to the snatch occasions.

The complete prize pool for the video games is $25 million, CEO Max Martin informed Front Office Sports News. Each particular person occasion has a complete purse of $500,000, with a $250,000 prize awarded to first place. The firm additionally mentioned that if an athlete breaks a world file in both the 100-meter dash or the 50-meter freestyle, they are going to be given a further $1 million. Though, neither mark can be acknowledged by governing our bodies, equivalent to World Athletics, which requires drug testing.

Enhanced Games rivals are allowed to make use of performance-enhancing medicine which are banned in internationally acknowledged sporting occasions. According to the company, the medicine are FDA-approved and prescribed by medical doctors.

Enhanced didn’t break down what particular athletes used which medicine, however they announced on Wednesday within the lead-up to the occasion that 91% of the athletes competing used testosterone or testosterone esters, 79% used human progress hormone, and 62% used stimulants, equivalent to adderall.

Baggish mentioned the general public ought to perceive that “FDA approval does not equate with safe use when the drug is not used the way the FDA has approved it.”

He added that there’s a distinction between somebody being prescribed testosterone as a result of they do not produce sufficient versus somebody taking a lot bigger doses for athletic achievement.

Research on excessive doses of medication like testosterone, for instance, have shown an increased risk of coronary heart illness, Baggish mentioned. He mentioned the variety of Enhanced athletes utilizing testosterone is “very concerning.”

“We have to be careful not to confuse short-term success with long term implications,” Baggish mentioned. “These athletes, I assume many of them, if not all of them, will go through the Enhanced Games without any visible problems whatsoever.”

“But what happens to them three years from now, five years from now?” Baggish mentioned.

For context, the International Olympic Committee follows strict pointers on doping with the World Anti-Doping Agency list of prohibited substances. These embrace testosterone, human progress hormones, and stimulants equivalent to adderall. There are just a few strict exemptions.

Who’s behind the video games?

Enhanced Games was based by Aron D’Souza, an Australian entrepreneur and lawyer who beforehand labored with Thiel to file litigation towards Gawker Media. Martin, the CEO of Enhancement, took over for D’Souza in November.

In 2023, D’Souza introduced the Enhanced Games, and final May at a launch event he divulged the small print. At the occasion, he mentioned the thought for the video games got here to him in 2022 “during a moment of reflection.”

“I imagined a new kind of competition, one where science and sport and society could evolve together, where we stopped apologizing for progress and started to embrace it,” D’Souza mentioned.

His firm is exploring athletic enhancement “openly, responsibly and ethically,” he added.

The administration of the medicine was overseen by unbiased medical and scientific commissions, he mentioned. D’Souza mentioned the medicine can be administered with “fully personalized protocols and constant monitoring to ensure their safety and peak performance.”

Baggish, the professor of drugs, mentioned he was approached to hitch Enhanced Games as a health care provider which he mentioned he instantly turned down. He mentioned the obvious medical oversight mustn’t blind individuals to the hazards of performance-enhancement medicine.

“That’s akin to me saying: If I’m a physician watching you smoke cigarettes, I can make smoking safe for you,” Baggish mentioned.

Representatives for Enhanced Games didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the criticism of the video games. In a 2024 statement responding to the International Federation of Sports Medicine‘s issues over the video games, D’Souza mentioned the competitors’s method “aims to reduce the risks associated with unregulated practices and bring them under medical oversight.”

“The Enhanced Games do not promote the indiscriminate use of restricted substances,” D’Souza mentioned. “Instead, we advocate for the safe, responsible and clinically supervised use of performance enhancements.”

Which athletes are collaborating? 

There are some huge names competing on the video games.

U.S. Olympic gold-medalist swimmers Cody Miller and Hunter Armstrong, a former world-record holder, together with British Olympic silver-medalist swimmer Ben Proud will compete. U.S. runner Fred Kerley, a three-time world champion and two-time Olympic medalist, shall be a sprinter on the video games. Kerley was banned from competing in globally acknowledged competitors for 2 years after lacking drug assessments — a violation of anti-doping guidelines that doesn’t essentially imply an athlete is taking medicine — the Athletics Integrity Unity introduced in March.

Armstrong and Kerley have mentioned they’re among the many athletes who will not be utilizing performance-enhancing medicine within the video games.

Most of the collaborating athletes educated for the competitors in Abu Dhabi as a part of Enhanced’s personal research.

Former NFL participant Emmanuel Acho and MLB Network broadcaster Abby Labar would be the anchors for the competition.

What do the consultants say? 

The video games have been largely panned by exterior medical consultants and sports activities governing our bodies. Multiple recent studies assess the harm surrounding the Enhanced Games.

Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, referred to as the video games a “dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle” in a statement. The International Olympic Committee said the games are a “betrayal of everything that we stand for.” The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) final yr urged U.S. authorities to stop the games.

The International Federation of Sports Medicine mentioned in 2024 that they see the medical oversight as “insufficient” to help the athletes.

“There’s simply no way to make the use of these drugs safe by medical monitoring in the short and long term,” Baggish, the professor of drugs, mentioned. “It’s essentially a natural history experiment to see what happens.”

Dr. Michael Joyner, a medical anesthesiologist whose analysis focuses on physiology and human efficiency, mentioned that there is a credible physique of analysis displaying the consequences of doping throughout a large spectrum of individuals, together with a research linking the premature deaths of bodybuilders to using steroids, and archival data from East Germany within the Sixties.

“The question is: What is anybody trying to prove?” Joyner mentioned. “It’s been known for years that anabolic steroids work,” he added, “I don’t understand what’s new here.”