Enhanced Games 2024: World anti-doping body WADA tears strips off ‘Steroid Olympics’

Athletes willing to compete in the Enhanced Games have been given a sobering warning about their futures – and their health – in a stunning takedown by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

***FOR THURSDAY EDITIONS – CONTACT DAVID HELE BEFORE USE*** Australian swimmer James Magnussen pictured at Sun Studios in Sydney to promote the up-coming Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. Picture: Toby Zerna

The World Anti-Doping Agency has warned athletes who take part in the Enhanced Games they risk their lives, anti-doping violations and their reputations as they slammed the concept as “dangerous and irresponsible”.

Dubbed the ‘Doping Olympics’, the Enhanced Games will encourage the use of performance enhancing drugs as organisers back science to unlock the true potential of athletes.

The Enhanced Games – the brainchild of UK-based Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza – has vowed to reward athletes with a multimillion prize purse for every world record broken.

Retired Australian Olympic swimmer James Magnussen last week became the first athlete to publicly commit to competing at the Enhanced Games, which has the backing of wealthy investors, including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.

Magnussen said he would “juice to the gills” in a bid to land himself a cash windfall if he can break the 50m freestyle world record.

Retired Australian swimmer James Magnussen has spoken up about his desire to compete in the concept. Picture: Getty

But the Enhanced Games has been condemned by WADA, which issued a harsh warning to athletes considering competing in the event over the dangers it posed to their health.

“WADA condemns the ‘Enhanced Games’ as a dangerous and irresponsible concept,” the anti-doping authority said in a statement provided to News Corp.

“The health and well-being of athletes is WADA’s number-one priority.

“Clearly this event would jeopardise both by promoting the abuse of powerful substances and methods that should only be prescribed, if at all, for specific therapeutic needs and under the supervision of responsible medical professionals.

“As we have seen through history, performance-enhancing drugs have taken a terrible physical and mental toll on many athletes. Some have died.

“The beauty and popularity of sport is based on the ideal of clean and fair competition. “These values must be protected. Athletes serve as role models and WADA believes this proposed event would send the wrong signal to young people around the world.”

The peak anti-doping body said athletes risked bans from legitimate sport and faced being forever associated with doping if they competed in the Enhanced Games.

WADA also vowed to encourage anti-doping authorities around the world to conduct more testing of athletes planning on competing in doping Olympics.

“WADA warns athletes and support personnel, who wish to participate in clean sport, that if they were to take part in the ‘Enhanced Games’, they would risk committing Anti-Doping Rule Violations under the World Anti-Doping Code,” WADA said.

“They would also put their reputations at risk, as they might forever be associated with doping.

“To be clear, WADA will encourage Anti-Doping Organisations worldwide to test involved athletes before, during and after this event, in order to protect the integrity of legitimate sport.”

The Games have been marketed as the ‘safe’ way to compete, by ensuring the steroid use is under clinical supervision.

D’Souza has argued the Enhanced Games would be safer than any event before by ensuring doping was in the open, under clinical supervision and drugs were not being self-administered and being bought “off the internet”.

“The (current) drug-testing environment has created a very unsafe environment for athletes because they are self-administered without clinical supervision and they are taking compounds …. they just ordered off the internet,” D’Souza told News Corp.

“So by taking everything out into the open, it makes it much safer and by allowing clinical supervision, and open discussion and data-sharing, it allows for the improvement of therapeutic regimes.

“We are creating a safety system. Our goal is to be the safest sporting event in history and how are we doing that? Through pre-competition clinical screening: blood tests, cardiograms, maybe even MRIs in a protocol designed by leading clinicians and scientists.”

The Games will initially concentrate on the core sports of swimming and diving, track and field, combat sports, weightlifting and gymnastics.

Qualification for the event is set to begin in December this year with the first “full production” of the Enhanced Games to be held in the middle of 2025 and there are plans for the Games to be held annually thereafter.

Originally published as Enhanced Games 2024: World anti-doping body WADA tears strips off ‘Steroid Olympics’