On Sunday evening, May 25, 2026, 42 athletes will compete in a parking lot at Resorts World Las Vegas — and the world record books may never look the same again. The Enhanced Games, branded by critics as the “Doping Olympics,” officially launches its first edition in what might be the most brazenly honest sporting event ever staged : the drugs are not hidden. They are the product.
What athletes actually take at the Enhanced Games
The competitors spent weeks training in Abu Dhabi under medical supervision, following a protocol that reads like a pharmacology textbook. Human growth hormone, EPO, testosterone, various peptides and stimulants — all of it FDA-approved, all of it administered by doctors. The organisers are quick to point that out. Whether it reassures you or unsettles you probably depends on how you feel about the word “approved.”
Here is what each substance actually does for athletic performance :
- EPO (erythropoietin) : boosts red blood cell production, dramatically increasing oxygen delivery to muscles — critical for endurance and sprint recovery
- Human growth hormone (HGH) : accelerates muscle repair, reduces fat mass and shortens recovery time between training sessions
- Testosterone : increases muscle protein synthesis and explosive power output — the most studied performance enhancer in sports science
- Peptides : a broad category that includes compounds targeting inflammation, tissue repair and neural recovery
- Stimulants : sharpen focus and reduce perceived exertion, particularly relevant for short-duration maximum-effort events like the 100m sprint
The results are measurable. Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev posted a 50m freestyle time of 20.89 seconds at a private Enhanced event last year — 0.02 seconds faster than the previous world record held by Brazilian Cesar Cielo. Australian champion Cam McEvoy, the reigning Olympic champion, acknowledged the number but was blunt : “Outside of that camp, no one is going to see it as a world record.” He is right. Gkolomeev’s team will also wear polyurethane swimsuits banned by World Aquatics since 2009 — adding a second performance layer that mainstream sport explicitly rejected fifteen years ago.
The gap between Enhanced Games performance protocols and traditional anti-doping rules is not subtle. WADA-compliant athletes compete under strict prohibited substance lists, regular out-of-competition testing and potential career bans. Enhanced competitors face none of that. The regulatory difference is total, which is exactly why every athlete, coach and medical professional involved has already been banned by their respective international federations.
| Substance | WADA status | Enhanced Games status | Primary performance effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPO | Prohibited | Permitted (FDA-approved) | Aerobic endurance |
| Testosterone | Prohibited | Permitted | Muscle power and mass |
| HGH | Prohibited | Permitted | Recovery and body composition |
| Polyurethane suits | Banned (2009) | Permitted | Hydrodynamic drag reduction |
The real business hiding behind the sprints and deadlifts
Fred Kerley, who won the 100m at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, will run on Sunday. Icelandic strongman Thor Bjornsson — known globally as The Mountain from Game of Thrones — will attempt to beat his own deadlift world record of 510 kilograms for a $250,000 bonus. These are genuine draws. The event streams free on Kick, Rumble, Twitch, YouTube and Roku. No ticket revenue, no broadcast deal. So how does anyone make money ?
That answer requires understanding the founding network. Aron D’Souza, the Australian venture capitalist behind the Enhanced Games, connected with tech investor Peter Thiel during Hulk Hogan’s 2013 lawsuit against Gawker Media — a case Thiel secretly funded to the tune of $10 million, leading to a $31 million settlement and Gawker’s bankruptcy. D’Souza brought Thiel the idea. Thiel brought the capital. The instinct — use resources to dismantle institutions you dislike — carried directly into the Enhanced Games model targeting the IOC and WADA.
By early 2024, the investor list had expanded to include German biotech entrepreneur Christian Angermayer, Bitcoin advocate Balaji Srinivasan, Donald Trump Jr’s 1789 Capital fund, Saudi royal Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud and the Winklevoss twins, better known as Olympic rowers turned crypto investors. Then in May 2026, Enhanced Ltd merged with shell company Paradise Acquisition Corp in a de-SPAC transaction, creating Enhanced Group Inc, listed on the NYSE under ticker ENHA. The stock opened above $8, jumped 21% to $10.17 briefly valuing the company at $1.2 billion, then shed 60% of that value within a week before stabilising around $5.50.
The sports competition was never the core product. The Enhanced website already sells fat-loss injections, testosterone protocols and sleep-improvement compounds — some available without a prescription, others requiring one. A six-month testosterone course is advertised at $169 per month, currently with a 28% discount. CEO Maximilian Martin described it plainly on Bloomberg, Fox and Yahoo Finance on May 8 : there is the annual sports event, and then there is “the live Enhanced consumer platform” — the direct-to-consumer telehealth business. That second part is the one the investors care about.
What performance enhancement means beyond the competition lane
The Enhanced Games frames its supplement protocols as cutting-edge science. Frankly, that framing deserves scrutiny. Several of these substances — testosterone, HGH, EPO — have decades of research behind them. Their performance effects are well documented precisely because they were studied as prohibited drugs. The novelty is not the compounds themselves but the open, medicalised context in which they are being administered.
A small number of Enhanced athletes compete without pharmacological enhancement, presumably as a natural control group. Their results will not break records. That contrast, however, provides the most scientifically interesting data point of the entire event : a direct, same-day comparison between enhanced and unenhanced performance under identical conditions. No study has ever had that setup at competitive scale.
The longer-term health picture remains genuinely uncertain. Short-term gains from EPO and testosterone are established. Long-term cardiovascular and hormonal consequences of combined multi-drug protocols at athletic doses are not. Any consumer considering Enhanced’s telehealth products based on Sunday’s performances should factor that gap into their decision — the athletes are consenting adults making calculated choices, but they are not equivalent to a general consumer population seeking anti-ageing products online.
