The Enhanced Games is a Stupid Scam of Toxic Masculinity and Optimisation Culture

The first-ever Enhanced Games, a mini sporting competition wherein athletes are paid to take performance enhancing drugs to push the limits of the human body beyond its natural capabilities, was a flop. All of the Silicon Valley bro hype and claims that this would advance both sports and our species stumbled at the first hurdle. Of course it did. This was always a supremely stupid idea. Yeah, I know, everyone jokes that they’d love to see a 100m race where everyone is ‘roided up to the gills, but in practice, it was a rather tragic sight.

This contest did not draw the best and brightest to its PED roulette table. These contestants were largely retired or those who openly admitted they’re only doing it for the money (the paydays offered to competitors was certainly enticing, given that fields like swimming and athletics are underfunded.) The track events were mired in issues with false starts, and a distinct lack of records being broken. Fred Kerley, an American runner, won first place in the 100m race with 9.97 seconds, which isn’t even his personal best. While one swimmer, Kristian Gkolomeev, did break a record in the 50m freestyle (which will not be officially recognised), former world champion James Magnussen, who was the first high-profile athlete to publicly sign onto the Games and pledge to use performance enhancers, flopped and finished last in the 100m freestyle final. Second place in that race went to Hunter Armstrong, the “non-enhanced” swimmer.

None of these competitions were fun to watch. These people were doped up and their “enhanced” efforts to achieve a hundredth of a second higher than a non-doped athlete felt more desperate than aspirational. At least it’d be a curiosity if the results were markedly different from the real thing, but the entire presentation was so slapdash. Who was this for, other than tech bros and men who think 3% body fat is a substitute for a personality?

We don’t want to admit that sports is a concept rooted in bias and unbalanced advantages but it’s true. It requires money, training, time, and sheer biological luck. Sometimes, people are just born stronger or taller, and watching them achieve the kinds of feats most of us could only dream of is a big part of the draw. I don’t think fans want more inequality in sports - we’re already dealing with mass corruption, racism, sexism, transphobia, and doping cover-ups in many fields - and the claim that the Enhanced Games levels the playing field rings hollow. It’s not supposed to be level, but it is meant to be fair. The fight should be to enforce fairness, not create vanity projects fuelled by hubris and petty grievances.

And make no mistake: the Enhanced Games are a politically-driven operation fuelled by right-wing sullenness and straight-up eugenics rhetoric. Donald Trump. Jr is an investor and has said this event is exactly the kind of thing MAGA is about. The Winklevoss twins, the losers from The Social Network who are now crypto bros, are on board too. So is Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Sauda, a Saudi Prince whose family leads an authoritarian regime. Peter Thiel’s involvement alone should be enough to render this entire pantomime bust.

The toxic masculinity that fuels this concept is evident. It’s the same sense of tech bro entitlement and tantrum throwing that gave us losers investing their life savings in cartoons of apes and claiming it was the future. Everything about it reminded me of Bryan Johnson, the man so scared of death that he’s sacrificed every iota of joy in his life to be a guinea pig for a cycle of quackery. While it wasn’t exclusively focused on male athletes (and even in this fake science parade, they still enforced transphobia), it’s tough to ignore how much this was centred on selling the Adonis ideal of muscled men dominating one another on the modern battlefield. Really, all of the marketing material for this felt like it could have come from some looksmaxxing loser’s Instagram page. Is Clavicular not on enough testosterone for this?

The people involved kept talking about “doing it right”, using the best doctors to make sure the athletes didn’t fall foul of side-effects, but their safety is not guaranteed. Some of the most notorious dopers in sports history did it under medical supervision and still ended up with problems. The increased attempts to normalize this kind of bodily abuse is built into the ethos of the manosphere. Social media is full of juiced-up brick-sh*thouses of men who look ready to keel over after a sharp intake of breath, and they’re heralded as transparent just because they’re open about the PEDs they take (and, implicitly or otherwise, advertise to their fans.) They’re connecting “proper” manhood to a cocktail of drugs that is quackery at best and murderous at worst. The point is to make it seem as though this is the only route to being a real man, to being the best of the best. Just ignore the acne and mood swings and multiple deaths a year.

Aron D’Souza, who founded the games (and is a BFF of Peter Thiel), kept using the language of queerness and bodily autonomy to celebrate doping as a sign of my “body, my choice.” He claimed it was “anti-science” to oppose doping, and insisted that nobody wants to see the fastest natural person, but the fastest person full stop. The rhetoric of libertarian pseudo-science and always-be-optimising hustle culture is embedded in these games. It’s not simply about being the better athlete through any means necessary: it’s about the rich and powerful enforcing their ability to change the status quo and make everyone else follow along (and pay for it.) This is “inevitable” to them.

If these games did anything, it’s remind us that the corporatised world of sports is a mess that should be fumigated from snout to tail. We all know that doping permeates our favourite events, that the exclusion of trans women from competitions is pure bigotry based on junk science, and capitalism has marginalized working class fans and athletes alike. We watch our beloved teams play even though we know they’re owned by sleazy billionaires who would sink their clubs’ legacies for an extra dollar. And despite it all, we still love the essence of competition, of community, and of watching people try their best. The Enhanced Games isn’t about the love of the game; it’s a smarmy exercise in profit over people.

We can demand change from sports, but not this charade. They’re proud of their dirty little sandbox. At least the real world knows that their handmade participation trophies don’t count.