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 blended 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 largest second, swimming 20.89 seconds within the males’s 50-meter freestyle, sooner than the official world file and sufficient to assert a $1 million prize from organizers.

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

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



American sprinter Fred Kerley, who competed as a non-enhanced athlete, gained the lads’s 100-meter closing in 9.97 seconds, 0.39 seconds in need of 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 towards.

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

In the meantime, competing towards 5 enhanced runners, Tristan Evelyn gained the ladies’s 100-meter closing as a non-enhanced athlete, whereas swimmer Hunter Armstrong beat two enhanced opponents to win the lads’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 towards 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 D’Souza has argued that fashionable anti-doping guidelines are outdated.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 in regards to the previous, they’re about Historic Greece,” D’Souza beforehand instructed Decrypt. “They’re about this pure sports activities ethos, and so they’re caught up to now. We’re in regards to 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 number.

“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 medical doctors. 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 different to Olympic guidelines, whereas critics argue it normalizes harmful drug use for spectacle and revenue.

“All the pieces in regards to 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 won’t depend as official data. Regardless of this, organizers mentioned the Enhanced Video games are the way forward for athletics.

“Now that we’ve got damaged the ice and confirmed the Video games might be finished on the highest stage, I count on many extra partnerships to be signed within the months forward,” Angermayer wrote. “We’re simply getting began!”