On Sunday, the much-talked-about and criticized Enhanced Games, a sports competition where doping is allowed, will conclude. There will be competitions in swimming, sprinting and weightlifting in the entertainment city of Las Vegas.
Ever since the plans for the competitions became known, the criticism has been massive.
“I don’t think that competition deserves any media attention at all,” swimming star Sarah Sjöström told SVT.
Åke Andrén-Sandberg is a doctor and anti-doping specialist. He condemns Enhanced Games as “a business project created by those who want to make money from it.”
“Quite typical that some of the money comes from Trump’s son (Donald Trump Jr),” Andrén-Sandberg tells TT.
One of the headliners is American sprinter Fred Kerley, who has Olympic silver and bronze medals and a World Championship gold medal in the 100 meters. He is currently suspended for failing to comply with whereabouts reporting under anti-doping rules.
Kerley previously said that he was running to challenge Usain Bolt’s 100-meter world record, 9.58, from 2009. But at the press conference before the competition, he said that he was only running for financial reasons – and that he was competing unprepared because he was aiming to compete in the 2028 Olympics.
Andrén-Sandberg says that the starting field in Las Vegas mostly contains “pre-dinner riders who are too old and untrained” and therefore does not believe in world records.
“But if they doped properly, they should achieve very good results,” he says.
“Life-threatening PR stunt”
Åke Andrén-Sandberg is not worried that the competition will affect traditional sports and cause more athletes to dope.
“It’s questionable. It all depends on how big an impact it has. If no world records are broken, people will probably shrug their shoulders and say it’s just old farts who want money. It’s not real, a bit like a circus.”
But former swimming star Therese Alshammar is extremely critical.
“It’s a gigantic, life-threatening PR trick,” she tells Aftonbladet.
“The worst thing about all this is that it can affect young people who have not received any moral education in sports. Kids who are 12, 13, 14 or 15 years old go to the gym and think that cheating or taking dangerous substances is normalized.”
When: May 24.
Where: Las Vegas, USA.
Sports: Swimming; 50 and 100 meter freestyle, 50 and 100 meter butterfly. Athletics; 100 meter and 100/110 meter hurdles. Weightlifting/powerlifting.
Participants: 42 athletes. Among them are swimmers James Magnussen, an Australian three-time Olympic medalist, Briton Ben Proud, who won Olympic silver in Paris 2024, and Greek Kristian Golomeev, who has participated in four Olympics. Fred Kerley, an American sprinter with both World Cup and Olympic medals to his name, is also participating. According to the BBC, the participants have been gathered in Abu Dhabi for the past three months to train and to take doping agents under medical supervision.
Money: A total of 235 million kronor, which goes both to participant fees and prize money. The winners in each discipline receive 2.35 million kronor, but if a participant runs a world record time in the short-distance swimming or the 100-meter run, a bonus of approximately 9.4 million kronor awaits.
TV: Streamed in North America on Roku Sports Channel. It can also be viewed on YouTube, among others.
