The Enhanced Games is set to be an Olympic-style, drug-fuelled event that allows competitor doping when it debuts in 2025. Founder Dr. Aron D’Souza couldn’t be happier.
D’Souza launched the competition last year with critics quick to lambast the gathering where World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules do not apply to steroid use.
The Australian-born London businessman has been told his idea is unsafe, unfair and a mockery of the real Olympics, but disagrees with those assessments.
As Fox News Digital reports, D’Souza calls his Enhanced Games “the future of sports” because he believes his event epitomizes the safety and fairness of sports, not sports as we know them today.
He told the outlet in an interview safety is actually his No. 1 priority for this event:
Ultimately, we have one shot to do this right, and if that has any health complications whatsoever, it would not only derail the company and movement we’re creating, but also the social change that we’re attempting to create here.
Ultimately, what we are doing is heavily destigmatizing performance enhancements and I think unlocking the field of performance medicine, which leads to longevity and anti-aging technologies, and the giant publicity storm that we’ve gone through, there’s so much attention, we know the world’s eyes are on us – we know we have to do this right.
We know the expectations are very, very high, and there’s a great prize well beyond the future of the Olympics if we do it right, so we have to do it right.
The Enhanced Games are planned to include athletics, swimming, weightlifting, gymnastics and combat sports, though no date or venue for the event has yet been set, the BBC reports.
D’Souza says the competition will be the safest international sporting event in history and that they prioritise athlete safety, with competitors undergoing medical screening prior to competition.
Recent studies – highlighted on the Enhanced Games’ website, which D’Souza says is the Olympics’ “own research” – have shown that roughly half of Olympic athletes actually use performance-enhancing drugs but only around one percent of them get caught as sports doping scandals become a norm not a surprise.
Now any and all athletes will be able to compete against each other without facing the prospect of any testing whatsoever.
“There’s of course concern about health and safety, and I always underline the fact that everything will be done under clinical supervision,” he said.
“The best thing to do is to enhance yourself with clinical advice, with clinical supervision, and that is much safer.”
The Enhanced Games are planned to include drug-fuelled athletics, swimming, weightlifting, gymnastics and combat sports. (Getty Images)
Some former Olympic athletes have already expressed disgust over the prospect of an Enhanced Games. Speaking to The Guardian, former Olympic gold medalist Anna Meares called it a “joke.”
“It’s a joke, to be honest. Unfair, unsafe — I just don’t think this is the right way to go about sport,” she said.
“Athletes are adults … and they have a right to do with their body what they wish – my body, my choice; your body, your choice,” he told The Guardian in response.
“And no government, no paternalistic sports federation, should be making those decisions for athletes – particularly around products that are FDA regulated and approved.”