When Kristian Gkolomeev woke up one morning in February, the last thing he expected to do was break a world record in the pool. The Greek swimmer and four-time Olympian, who finished fifth in the 50-m freestyle in Paris and Tokyo, had come to Greensboro, N.C., to take part in a preview of something called the Enhanced Games, a new start-up that plans to stage an Olympic-style competition permitting the use of most performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) currently banned in global sports.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]It was another athlete, however, who had come to make a splash that day. Retired Australian swimming star James Magnussen—a former world champion who won three Olympic medals—had said publicly in early 2024 that he’d “juice to the gills” and break the 50-m freestyle world record if the Enhanced Games would put up a $1 million prize. Enhanced Games officials took him up on the offer.
Magnussen, a few months into his PED regimen, was supposed to swim under 20.91 seconds, the mark César Cielo of Brazil set in 2009, in a timed solo effort to prove that the Enhanced Games concept—even before its first formal event launched—would result in performances the world has never before witnessed. But Magnussen, whose body ballooned with muscle while taking drugs, kept falling short. Gkolomeev, on the other hand, was just three weeks into his own low-dosage use of PEDs and feeling better than expected. So Gkolomeev put on a full-body polyurethane swimsuit, similar to the type worn by Cielo in 2009. (Such suits have been banned in competition since 2010, due to all the records that fell while swimmers wore them.) He hit the water and tapped the wall in 20.89 seconds, breaking the official world record and winning that $1 million prize.
You won’t find Gkolomeev’s swim in any official record book, because it wasn’t a sanctioned race, and because he was taking PEDs (Gkolomeev declined to detail his cocktail; the Enhanced Games say they advocate for transparency while also respecting privacy). But he found another kind of value in his accomplishment. “I feel,” he says, “kind of like a superhuman.”
The Enhanced Games, which will announce today that they’ll hold their debut event Memorial Day weekend 2026 in Las Vegas, are, at their core, selling fast times. Founded by entrepreneurs and investors Aron D’Souza, who encouraged Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel to bankroll Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, which ultimately bankrupted the outlet, and Christian Angermayer, a psychedelic evangelist, they are betting that consumers just want to see athletes swim and run as fast as possible, without biotechnical restrictions. They will stage events in swimming, track, and weightlifting and expect to sign up about 100 athletes, who will likely have to give up future Olympics aspirations if they’re going to use drugs.
Enhanced Games officials argue that while the Olympics focus on fairness (testing everyone to make sure no one has an advantage from PEDs), they’re more concerned with safety (monitoring the medical profiles of athletes to ensure they’re healthy enough to compete). They also note that most Olympians don’t earn much money, whereas Enhanced Games athletes will receive better pay and benefits. And, they say, despite the testing protocols, there remains speculation about whether Olympic athletes are clean, so the Enhanced Games make that a nonissue. Rather than have male and female categories, Enhanced Games athletes will compete in XY or XX divisions, though it’s unclear how the company will conduct chromosome testing, which has been deemed invasive and potentially inaccurate by many scientific experts and banned from the Olympics since 1999.
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Health and medical experts are already ringing alarms. “This kind of reminds me of the Roman Circus,” says Charles Yesalis, professor emeritus of health policy at Penn State University and an expert on PEDs in sports. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) says, “If you want to destroy any concept of fair play and fair competition in sport, this would be a good way to do it,” while the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) calls the Enhanced Games a “dangerous and irresponsible concept.” Olympic officials, however, might have to walk a diplomatic tightrope: in February, the Enhanced Games announced that 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, was leading a multimillion-dollar investment in the company. The Olympics are coming to L.A. in 2028, while President Donald Trump is still in office, and the President is featured front and center in a promotional video touting 1789’s Enhanced Games play.
Beyond the athletic competition, the Enhanced Games are making the grand case that safe use of PEDs at their events can trickle down to the general public, allowing people to live happier, healthier, and more productive lives. Their pitch arrives amid a growing interest in longevity, with scientists and biohackers alike looking for ways to extend and improve our years on this planet. When the Enhanced Games convened the Second Conference on Human Enhancement in December, Bryan Johnson, the subject of the Netflix doc Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, was a keynote speaker. This effort also comes at a time when many Americans are fired up about defending personal freedoms–whether it’s their right to opt out of vaccines or to put performance-enhancing substances in their bodies.
Still, how this new addition fits into the sports landscape remains to be seen. Controversy over risk, fairness, and athletic legitimacy feels almost guaranteed. And of course there’s the question of demand. The Olympics, even with all their flaws, broke all sorts of viewership records last summer. Is an audience really thirsting for a doped-up version? And is it all that impressive to push the limits of the human body when you’ve got Lord knows what in your system?
As D’Souza tells it, he was at the gym one day in 2022 when he noticed just how many people around him did not come by their looks naturally. He started working on the Enhanced Games concept, confident there were plenty of athletes being denied opportunities because they took drugs that were perfectly legal in their countries but banned from competition. But it was on a walk around Biscayne Bay in South Florida over Christmas that year that he got a crucial vote of confidence. He shared the idea with his father, a 78-year-old medical professor specializing in cardiology, who not only did not balk but saw real promise. “The first thing he said was, ‘The data that will come out of this will change the world,’” says D’Souza. Though participants don’t have to reveal publicly what they’re taking, organizers hope they’ll enroll in an independently approved clinical trial assessing the impact of PEDs on elite athletes. The results could have implications for everyday living. “We can literally invent humans 2.0,” says D’Souza. “The compounds that allow athletes to run faster and jump higher are the same compounds that will allow my dad to walk up a flight of stairs.”
A medical commission will be tasked with overseeing a battery of blood, heart, brain, and bone tests to ensure athletes are not subjecting themselves to undue risk in competition. A scientific body will communicate key findings to the public. “We’re not in the business of sports, we’re in the business of science and cultural change,” says D’Souza. “And the cultural change that will be the most profound will be a view that medicine is not just about making sick people less sick. Medicine is also an important tool to elevate human performance.”
To execute this vision, the Enhanced Games will need a significant audience against which to sell media rights: Officials say TV and streaming outlets have expressed interest in distributing the first event. A planned direct-to-consumer line of supplements and FDA-approved performance enhancers could provide another revenue stream. “I don’t see anything intrinsically wrong with the Olympics,” says D’Souza. But he doesn’t like that they’re the only option for a multisport international event testing “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” or “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” “Competition is very healthy,” he says. “The fact that the IOC has a monopoly in sports governance today is problematic.”
D’Souza, who is Australian, brought the Enhanced Games idea to Angermayer, a billionaire investor from Germany whom Thiel had first connected him with more than a decade ago. And Angermayer, the founder of the multibillion-dollar fund Aperion Investment Group, with holdings in crypto, biotech, and other sectors, agreed to partner in the venture, with backing from Thiel.
Angermayer is also co-founder and chairman of atai Life Sciences, a clinical-stage psychedelic biopharma company with some $400 million in market cap. He sees a connection between mainstream acceptance of psychedelics and the potential of the Enhanced Games. Society has come around on a variety of things that were once broadly considered taboo: Angermayer points to gay rights, but attitudes have also changed on marijuana and sports gambling, with consumers leaning more libertarian on such subjects. It’s your choice to bet on basketball or take psychedelics. Angermayer sees the expected debut of the Enhanced Games, which he thought would take a few more years to get off the ground, as further proof of shifting winds. “The zeitgeist has changed on all sorts of crazy ideas,” says Angermayer.
He just hopes it hasn’t shifted to the point where all Enhanced Games smoke subsides. “I hope there are demonstrators on the street saying, ‘This is bad!’” he says, with a laugh. “Because doing that, and the controversies, drives attention.”
While Angermayer might not get his protest marches, the Enhanced Games will have no shortage of opponents. “They’re potentially dangerous in several ways,” says Dr. Michael Joyner, a human-performance expert at the Mayo Clinic. For one, says Joyner, the long-term effect of PEDs are not well known: a whole population could be putting themselves at risk for damage. Second are the acute risks of substances like stimulants, which can lead to dehydration, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, and more. While the best medical monitoring can give athletes a clean bill of health going into a race, if they were to, say, load up on stimulants moments before the start—knowing they won’t be drug-tested afterward—the results could prove disastrous.
Plus, it’s no secret that young people look up to elite athletes. As a result of the Enhanced Games, increasing levels of PED use could reach high school sports, an unintended consequence of the endeavor. “These Games are sending an inappropriate message to our children,” says Yesalis.
Furthermore, says John William Devine, a lecturer in sports ethics and integrity at Swansea (U.K.) University, “lifting the ban on performance-enhancing drugs would undermine the purpose of the sport themselves.” If it’s impossible to separate the quality of a pharmacological cocktail from the will and skills of the athlete, an achievement can quickly lose its luster. “The fact that you have run faster or lifted more or jumped longer or jumped higher doesn’t necessarily mean that your performance is more excellent,” says Devine.
Still, experts worry the Enhanced Games could steal some shine from the official record holders. “It’s a little bit unfortunate that it’s a distraction from the greatest-ever performers we have out there,” says Joyner, citing Olympic champions like U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky and shot-putter Ryan Crouser, who also hold world records. “You’re looking for some edge, when these people are pushing limits so effectively within the rules.”
Andrii Govorov, a Ukrainian swimmer who set the non-enhanced 50-m butterfly world record in 2018, says he’s never taken a PED. As a new Enhanced Games athlete, he compares the anticipation of taking these drugs to someone with a fear of heights about to jump off a cliff. “Of course I’m nervous,” says Govorov. “I don’t know what to expect.”
Govorov is taking the plunge, however, for a host of reasons. For one, his future as an Olympic swimmer seemed uncertain. He competed in London in 2012 and Rio in 2016, but just missed qualifying for Paris. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he couldn’t train consistently in his home country. He bounced from Hawaii to Germany to Spain to Portugal in the run-up to Paris, and the unpredictability affected his times. “I was just a guest,” he says. “I could never choose my preparation. You cannot break any record with that approach. You’re a survivor.”
The Enhanced Games will give Govorov access to training, support, and a personalized drug plan. It seemed like a better deal, especially since drug controversies have consistently dogged the Olympics, whether it was U.S. track stars being busted for doping early this century, the state-sponsored Russian sample-swapping antics in Sochi, or Chinese swimmers heading to Tokyo despite testing positive for banned substances (China claimed samples were contaminated in a hotel kitchen). “The system is not providing fairness,” says Govorov. “They are just trying to catch the mouse, and they never do it in the correct way.”
Asked by Joe Rogan last year why an athlete would choose the Olympics given the incentives offered by Enhanced Games, Angermayer answered: “Not our problem.” The IOC is finally adding Govorov’s specialty, the 50-m butterfly, to the 2028 program. But he’s still leaving his gold-medal dreams behind. “I’ll never come back, no matter what,” he says. “This is a one-way ticket for me.” Chasing his own world record—and the $500,000 bonus he can get from the Enhanced Games if he sets the new 50-m butterfly mark–doesn’t feel like settling. “I could potentially be one of the first superhuman athletes on planet earth,” he says.
There’s that word again. The Enhanced Games are hard-selling superhumanity. Doping rules, to the start-up’s proponents, serve as innovation caps that don’t exist in other fields. “We are going to go to Mars,” says Govorov. “We are going to conquer the universe. Why do we need to stop with that? It’s just part of the evolution. We are part of the sports evolution. That’s completely clear.”
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