Drugs in sport: Enhanced Games president Aron D’Souza’s plan to change Olympics, sport forever
Change is coming in the form of the ‘Doping Olympics.’ But will it just be a fad or stand the test of time? The president of the Enhanced Games chats to Rebecca Williams.
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The president of the Enhanced Games, aiming to shake up the “old, slow” Olympics by encouraging the use of performance-enhancing drugs, claims the concept will be the “safest sporting event in history” as it brings doping out into the open.
Self-titled the “Olympics of the future”, the Enhanced Games has set its sights on becoming the world’s premier sporting event by backing the science of performance medicine to unlock the true potential of athletes and will reward them with a multimillion-dollar prize purse for every world record broken.
Enhanced Games president Dr Aron D’Souza has unveiled his vision for the event, which has been backed by some of the world’s top venture capitalists and aims to break down the stigma surrounding the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport.
The Enhanced 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.
Retired Australian Olympic swimmer James Magnussen is one who has already put his hand up to compete and D’Souza said he has already had interest from 4000 athletes around the world, many who were “currently competing in an Olympic sport”.
D’Souza said he has had received interest from “many Australian athletes”, but most were either retired or outside of the Olympic system.
The Enhanced Games also claim to have uncovered the “fastest man in the world” who has broken Usain Bolt’s 100m world record, having “unlocked his body’s true athletic potential”, although D’Souza would not reveal details regarding who or what time was run.
The event’s concept has been met with disdain by the Olympic movement with the International Olympic Committee responding to the idea as one which did “not merit comment”.
The Australian Olympic Committee said the Enhanced Games could not be “taken seriously” as it reinforced the need for sport to be clean and safe for all athletes.
“The Olympic movement is devoted to clean sport and athletic excellence,” the AOC said in a statement.
“We know next to nothing about this organisation – but sport needs to be clean and it needs to be safe for all athletes.
“This is not something that can be taken seriously.”
But D’Souza said the Olympics were an “outdated” model and predicted the enhanced athletes backed by performance-enhancing drugs would revolutionise sport.
“I think if you are an athlete, do you want to be the fastest man in the world or the fastest natural man in the world?” D’Souza said.
“I think you actually just want to be the fastest man in the world.
“If you are a broadcaster, are you going to pay billions to broadcast the old, slow Olympics? I don’t think so.
“If you’re a fan, do you want to see world records getting broken, or do you want to see the equivalent of organic food in the natural sport competition?
“I believe in science. I believe science has the capability to extend human life spans, to extend human health, to make us stronger, make us faster, to jump higher and to live longer.
“The field of performance medicine, which has been so heavily stigmatised by the International Olympic Committee, is the same field that is going to unlock the keys to anti-ageing to the Fountain of Youth.
“I know that sounds like sci-fi, but just remember artificial intelligence was sci-fi five years ago and today it is real.
“The human enhancements revolution will be the biggest of all time.”
SAFEST GAMES
The overt use of performance-enhancing drugs has raised questions about athlete safety and the potential for competitors to go too far with their use.
However, 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”.
“Let’s analogise it to Hollywood. In Hollywood, it’s a highly competitive environment filled with young people chasing their dreams and willing to do anything to become a star,” the Melbourne businessman and lawyer said.
“The use of cosmetic enhancements is rife, particularly among female actors in Hollywood, there are no drug testings, no rules, no regulation.
“It’s a self-regulatory market and I don’t see, you know, the Kardashians dying in the streets for taking too much cosmetic medicine.
“Why is that? Because they use clinical supervision. They are not injecting themselves, they are going to their doctors in Rodeo Drive, the best doctors, very expensive doctors actually.
“In contrast today, the 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.
“The compounds that they are taking are ones designed to beat drug-testing, so they need to metabolise very quickly and that’s why they are liver and kidney toxic. It’s tough on your liver and kidneys to metabolise these drugs very quickly.
“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.
“The Enhanced Games, 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.
“Let’s remember why the drug-testing regime at the Olympics — and by extension all sports — was created. It was not about safety, it was about fairness. The East Germans can’t have a state-sanctioned doping program when the Ghanaians don’t have access to it.
“It’s a fairness system, not a safety system.”
THE MONEY
D’Souza was aware that in order to break down the stigma associated with enhanced sports and encourage athletes to leave the Olympic system, the Enhanced Games would need to provide significant monetary incentives.
And the organisers of the Enhanced Games are planning to do that — handsomely.
D’Souza said the support of some of the “most powerful venture capitalists in the world” would provide the financial backing to make the Enhanced Games a reality.
A “multimillion” prize purse would be offered for breaking a world record and hundreds of thousands for winners.
“In terms of prize purse, it is certainly a multimillion prize purse because I know there is a stigma associated with Enhanced Sport and we have to break down that stigma,” he said.
“For athletes to leave behind the Olympic system, their sports federations to come over to our side will require significant financial incentive.
“(It’s) to be finalised in due course, but we are talking multimillion prize purses for world records. If we break the 100m world record, I’ll write a $10m cheque out of my own pocket if that’s what it takes.
“We need to make this financially compelling for athletes and we now have the equity capital to do that.”
For D’Souza, of equal importance to the massive world record rewards on offer is the base compensation, which is likely to start at US$100,000 for qualifying athletes.
“It’s wonderful to pay prize money but at the end of the day athletes, like everyone, need financial stability and to come over to the Enhanced Games side we will need to significantly improve upon the compensation they are presently on.
“So US$100,000 a year is probably a good starting point in terms of base compensation in terms of athletes who are preselected for the Games.
“(That’s) not every athlete that wants to compete, you have to qualify, you have (to have) the potential to break world records, you have potential to medal.”
D’Souza said it was the “financial exploitation” of Olympic athletes which initially led to him developing for the Enhanced Games.
“I learned that half of all Australia’s Olympians live in poverty, half of all Olympians in the United States live in poverty, yet the International Olympic Committee president is flying around the world in private jets,” D’Souza said.
“That’s only where the hypocrisy starts. Forty four per cent of athletes …. use performance enhancing drugs, but only one per cent get caught.
“The field isn’t level, the testing doesn’t work. The system of financial exploitation and not just the exploitation of athletes, but also of host cities.
“We only need to look at Athens, Rio and see the ruins of Olympic excess, literally the capability to bankrupt countries and I thought to myself there must be a better way.”
THE NEW GAMES MODEL
It’s not just on the sporting field where the Enhanced Games plan to shake things up.
Describing the Olympic Games as an “outdated” model, the Enhanced Games will initially only focus on the “sports that matter” and a “distributed methodology” of hosting sports in different cities.
“It’s a very different proposition from the Olympic Games. The Olympics are 10,000 athletes, hundreds of sports, most of those athletes have no potential to medal whatsoever. Most of those sports aren’t watched in any way shape, or form. They don’t even sell out the stadiums,” D’Souza said.
“We are focused on the sports that matter and the athletes that have the potential to medal.
“It’s not a host city question, it’s more of a venue question. We don’t need taxpayer funding, we don’t need a city to change its whole apparatus to host us. That’s not what we are looking for.
“Instead of building expensive specialist infrastructure so we can have all the events in one place, it is entirely possible to do it in a distributed methodology.
“We can add more sports in a really super cost-effective way (if they are in different cities) without overwhelming a city with visitors and hotel room prices skyrocket etc.
“I’m pretty certain that we can become the world’s premier sporting event by having just a much more efficient model.”
Organisers want the Enhanced Games to be held annually, if not more frequently.
“One of the core issues of the Olympic Games is that they are (held) once every four years,” he said.
“We have shorter attention spans in the TikTok era and we forget who these extraordinary athletes are, they don’t have the opportunity to build fame and that is actually central to why they can’t monetise efficiently.”
Enhanced Games organisers are already in discussions with major broadcasters around the world, but D’Souza argued a full-streamed event could be the better option.
“We are the Games of the future, should we be broadcast on broadcast television or should we be streamed on Netflix, or actually should we just live stream this straight on YouTube?” D’Souza said.
“It makes a lot more sense for the Games of the Future to be on the platforms of the future, not stuck to the past.
“As much as I love a big-broadcasting cheque from an American broadcaster, it makes increasingly little sense in this modern world. That model is going the way of the dodo.
“We are embracing the future and we don’t want to be locked into dying legacy platforms.”
BRISBANE FEARS
D’Souza suggested the current Olympic model for host cities was short-lived and he feared for the Brisbane 2032 Games.
In fact, he said Brisbane organisers should follow the lead of former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, who pulled the pin on the 2026 Commonwealth Games, and scrap the 2032 event.
“This model of sporting events that move around the world and change and build dozens of stadiums and then throw them away after two weeks has gone,” D’Souza said.
“The Commonwealth Games are officially dead as far as the sporting world is concerned now, I don’t think they are ever going to be resurrected and it’s a canary in a coal mine for the Olympics because there aren’t many cities in the world that want to bid to spend a hundred billion dollars of taxpayer money on building useless infrastructure.
“When Sydney bid for the Olympics … there were a dozen or more cities competing. Now, the Olympics can’t even find one.
“Brisbane thought they were doing so well getting the 2032 Olympics and I think the IOC just hoodwinked the Queensland taxpayer because no one else wanted it.
“I worry for the state of Queensland …. I hope that Queensland has the sense that Daniel Andrews had and cancels the 2032 Olympics because it is just too expensive and by that time I think it is going to be a very outdated concept.
“I think by the time we roll forward almost a decade to the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane, the Queensland government is going to be feeling the same thing.”
ENHANCED WORLD RECORDS
The Enhanced Games website contains a list of 40 “Enhanced World Records” recorded by athletes who had their records “revoked” or “challenged by the Olympic apparatus”.
D’Souza said they were all sporting achievements which should be recognised.
“We have reinstated them,” he said.
“We call them enhanced world records. I think we should distinguish between enhanced world records and natural world records.
“Really no sport is natural today, we wear these super shoes, these slick swimsuits, all this technology goes in, but the Olympics has drawn this very arbitrary line based on a doctrine or fairness and we’re saying let’s move that line to the doctrine of safety and allow all technology and all progress.”
While the use of performance-enhancing drugs will be encouraged, D’Souza said “natural” athletes would also be welcome to compete.
“We welcome all athletes to compete at the Games, whether they are natural or enhanced,” he said.
“Let’s be very clear, you do not have to take performance enhancements to compete at the Enhanced Games, you can compete as a natural athlete and I hope some natural athletes show up and beat all the enhanced ones because it would make for great television.
“If the IOC wants to ban them because they have come to our competition, that is their decision. I think that would be very misplaced by them.
“The other thing is we are creating optionality for athletes – they can compete on the enhanced side of the spectrum or the natural side.
“Right now if you don’t believe in natural sports, you have no other choice.”
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Originally published as Drugs in sport: Enhanced Games president Aron D’Souza’s plan to change Olympics, sport forever
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