Some Non-Enhanced Athletes Beat Their Juiced Rivals at the ‘Steroid Olympics’

After years of guarantees that performance-enhancing medication would redefine human athletic limits, the primary Enhanced Video games ended with a combined scoreboard, a record-breaking swim, dominant weightlifting performances, and clear athletes beating enhanced rivals in a number of marquee occasions.

Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev produced the occasion’s greatest second, swimming 20.89 seconds within the males’s 50-meter freestyle, sooner than the official world file and sufficient to say a $1 million prize from organizers.

“The [Enhanced Games] final Saturday weren’t solely a spectacular occasion–they had been additionally a significant enterprise success,” Enhanced Video games investor and co-founder Christian Angermayer wrote on X.

Nonetheless, a number of outcomes undercut the central premise behind the Enhanced Video games, with a number of athletes utilizing performance-enhancing medication dropping to opponents who mentioned they had been competing clear.



American sprinter Fred Kerley, who competed as a non-enhanced athlete, gained the boys’s 100-meter last in 9.97 seconds, 0.39 seconds wanting Usain Bolt’s 2009, 9.58 world file, regardless of claims that Bolt’s file would “be destroyed.”

Regardless of not breaking the world file, Kerley reportedly mocked the improved athletes he ran in opposition to.

“They gotta do higher than that,” Kerley mentioned in an interview after the race, based on SB Nation. “They should prepare slightly tougher, get on that shit slightly bit extra, and go slightly tougher some extra.”

In the meantime, competing in opposition to 5 enhanced runners, Tristan Evelyn gained the ladies’s 100-meter last as a non-enhanced athlete, whereas swimmer Hunter Armstrong beat two enhanced opponents to win the boys’s 50-meter backstroke.

The occasion marks the tip of a years-long marketing campaign by Aron D’Souza, the Australian lawyer who beforehand helped lead Peter Thiel’s lawsuit in opposition to Gawker Media. D’Souza based the Enhanced Video games in 2024 and is backed by Donald Trump Jr., Peter Thiel, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. D’Souza has argued that fashionable anti-doping guidelines are outdated.

“The Olympics are all concerning the previous, they’re about Historical Greece,” D’Souza beforehand advised Decrypt. “They’re about this pure sports activities ethos, and so they’re caught up to now. We’re concerning the future, science, and progress. We’re about acceleration.”

Organizers have framed the Enhanced Video games as a part of a broader motion round biohacking, longevity analysis, and human enhancement, and featured famous biohacker Bryan Johnson as a bunch.

“I’m cohosting the Enhanced Video games this Sunday, first time as a broadcaster,” Johnson wrote on X. “I spent the week with the athletes and docs. So many transferring tales of braveness and triumph.”

The competitors highlights the rising overlap between Silicon Valley’s optimization tradition and elite sports activities. Organizers body the Video games as a science-driven various to Olympic guidelines, whereas critics argue it normalizes harmful drug use for spectacle and revenue.

“The whole lot concerning the enhanced video games appears so deeply unserious and silly,” creator Brad Stulberg wrote on X.

The World Anti-Doping Company and World Aquatics have each rejected the legitimacy of the competitors and mentioned performances from the Video games is not going to rely as official data. Regardless of this, organizers mentioned the Enhanced Video games are the way forward for athletics.

“Now that we now have damaged the ice and confirmed the Video games may be performed on the highest stage, I anticipate many extra partnerships to be signed within the months forward,” Angermayer wrote. “We’re simply getting began!”