Enhanced Games on Sunday: Medical risk meets big money

Las Vegas is set for the Enhanced Games on Sunday night—an event promising a multi-million prize and a competition where doping rules are fundamentally different. Organizers say drugs will be FDA-approved and doctor-prescribed, with independent oversight and m

On a Sunday night in Las Vegas. elite athletes will step into a custom-built arena at Resorts World Las Vegas and compete under a banner that sounds like the future of sport: elite performance. a huge jackpot. and no rigid doping rules. The stakes are clear from the first details—this is a one-night event with a $25 million prize pool. and each athlete will be allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs that are banned in internationally recognized competitions.

But for many outside experts, the most urgent part of the Enhanced Games isn’t the size of the prize. It’s the way the competition treats drug use: as something medical supervision can tame. That argument is at the center of the controversy.

Organizers describe the Enhanced Games as a global competition where elite athletes push the limits of human performance. The privately funded event is backed by Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm. 1789 Capitol. and by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The company behind the games. the publicly traded Enhanced Group. is also selling peptides and other supplements. and it is documenting the effects of the drugs on athletes for its own research.

The event is built to look and feel like a high-tech showcase. In the Resorts World Las Vegas arena, there is a four-lane 50-meter pool, a six-lane sprint track, and a weightlifting stage.

More than 40 athletes from across the globe will compete across three sports: swimming. track and weightlifting. along with a “strongman” deadlift showdown. Swimming includes 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle races and 50-meter and 100-meter butterfly races. Track features the 100-meter sprint and 100-meter and 110-meter hurdles. Weightlifting will include both clean and jerk and snatch events.

The purse structure adds to the spectacle. CEO Max Martin told Front Office Sports News that the total prize pool is $25 million, with $500,000 per individual event. First place in each event earns $250,000. The company also said that if an athlete breaks a world record in either the 100-meter sprint or the 50-meter freestyle. they will receive an additional $1 million—though those marks would not be recognized by governing bodies such as World Athletics. which requires drug testing.

What’s allowed—and who uses it—has become the central point of contention.

Enhanced Games competitors are allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs that are banned in internationally recognized sporting events. Enhanced says the drugs are FDA-approved and prescribed by doctors. The company did not break down which specific athletes used which drugs. But ahead of the event on Wednesday. Enhanced said 91% of the athletes competing used testosterone or testosterone esters. 79% used human growth hormone. and 62% used stimulants such as adderall.

Dr. Aaron Baggish—professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. and a clinician who worked with sports teams in Boston for 20 years—argued that the public should not mistake regulatory approval for safety in this context. He said. “FDA approval does not equate with safe use when the drug is not used the way the FDA has approved it.” He also drew a sharp distinction between prescribed testosterone for people who do not produce enough naturally and much larger doses taken for athletic achievement. Research on high doses of drugs like testosterone, he said, has shown an increased risk of heart disease. “The number of Enhanced athletes using testosterone is very concerning,” he said.

Baggish’s concern isn’t only about what might happen during competition. He warned that the most serious consequences may arrive later. “We have to be careful not to confuse short-term success with long term implications,” he said. “These athletes. I assume many of them. will go through the Enhanced Games without any visible problems whatsoever.” Then he pressed the question that keeps the debate alive: “But what happens to them three years from now. five years from now?”.

The International Olympic Committee follows strict doping guidelines aligned with the World Anti-Doping Agency list of prohibited substances, including testosterone, human growth hormones, and stimulants such as adderall, with a few strict exemptions.

Even with the controversy surrounding drug use, the Enhanced Games are also being framed as a scientifically managed experiment. Organizers say the drug administration is overseen by independent medical and scientific commissions. and that protocols include “fully personalized protocols and constant monitoring to ensure their safety and peak performance.”.

Critics say that premise can’t be reconciled with the biology of risk.

Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, called the games a “dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle” in a statement. The International Olympic Committee described the games as a “betrayal of everything that we stand for.” The World Anti-Doping Agency last year urged U.S. authorities to stop the games. The International Federation of Sports Medicine said in 2024 that it sees the medical oversight as “insufficient” to support athletes.

Baggish put it bluntly: “There’s simply no way to make the use of these drugs safe by medical monitoring in the short and long term.” He said the Enhanced Games function like “essentially a natural history experiment to see what happens.”

Dr. Michael Joyner. a clinical anesthesiologist whose research focuses on physiology and human performance. pointed to a wider base of evidence about doping’s harms. He referenced a study linking premature deaths of bodybuilders to the use of steroids and archival data from East Germany in the 1960s. “The question is: What is anybody trying to prove?” Joyner said. “It’s been known for years that anabolic steroids work,” he added. “I don’t understand what’s new here.”.

The clash is also complicated by the way athletes are being positioned inside the event’s story.

There are notable names scheduled to compete. U.S. Olympic gold-medalist swimmers Cody Miller and Hunter Armstrong. a former world-record holder. are set to race. along with British Olympic silver-medalist swimmer Ben Proud. U.S. runner Fred Kerley—also a three-time world champion and two-time Olympic medalist—will compete as a sprinter.

Kerley’s situation carries extra heat. He was banned from competing in globally recognized competition for two years after missing drug tests. a violation of anti-doping rules announced by the Athletics Integrity Unity in March—an infraction that does not necessarily mean an athlete is taking drugs. Armstrong and Kerley have said they are among the athletes who won’t be using performance-enhancing drugs in the games.

Most of the participating athletes trained for the competition in Abu Dhabi as part of Enhanced’s own study.

The faces of the broadcast add another layer to the event’s public identity. Former NFL player Emmanuel Acho and MLB Network broadcaster Abby Labar will be the anchors.

Behind the scenes, the Enhanced Games have evolved quickly. Enhanced Games was founded by Aron D’Souza. an Australian entrepreneur and lawyer who previously worked with Thiel to file litigation against Gawker Media. The CEO, Max Martin, took over in November for D’Souza. In 2023. D’Souza announced the Enhanced Games. and last May at a launch event he laid out details. saying the idea came to him in 2022 “during a moment of reflection.”.

At that event, D’Souza said, “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.” He also said the company is exploring athletic enhancement “openly, responsibly and ethically.”

In a 2024 statement responding to the International Federation of Sports Medicine’s concerns. D’Souza said the competition’s approach “aims to reduce the risks associated with unregulated practices and bring them under medical oversight.” He added. “The Enhanced Games do not promote the indiscriminate use of restricted substances.” “Instead. we advocate for the safe. responsible and clinically supervised use of performance enhancements.”.

Enhanced Games representatives did not respond immediately to a request for comment on the criticism.

As the competition draws near, the debate is unlikely to fade with the countdown. The event has been built around the promise that drug use can be brought under medical oversight. and it has positioned itself as both a sporting spectacle and a research platform. But critics are asking the same question again and again—whether supervision changes the long-term risk. or simply makes it easier to look away from.

Whatever happens in the custom-built arena on Sunday night, Baggish’s warning stays centered in the argument: even if problems don’t show up immediately, the harm may not be delayed by the timeline of the race.

Enhanced Games Las Vegas doping performance-enhancing drugs testosterone human growth hormone adderall medical oversight sports medicine