Tech Bro-Funded ‘Enhanced Games’ In Las Vegas Were Total Flop
The so-called “Steroid Olympics” — known officially as the Enhanced Games — in Las Vegas promised endless drama, broken world records and a shock to the world of sports as we know it. Instead, the tech bro-backed competition featuring athletes on performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) ended with a dull thud.
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Just one “enhanced” athlete technically broke a world record during Sunday’s events, while “non-enhanced ” — or clean — athletes took home first place in a number of the marquee events.
Investors in the steroid-laced sporting event included Palantir’s Peter Thiel, 1789 Capital’s Donald Trump Jr., biotech entrepreneur Christian Angermayer and the founder of the games, Australian businessman Aron D’Souza.
“The Enhanced Games represent the future — real competition, real freedom and real records being smashed,” Trump Jr. said in a statement revealing his involvement.
The Enhanced Games were created in 2023 but the inaugural competition took place this Memorial Day weekend. Athletes who participated were offered the option to compete clean or to use substances that were banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) but approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), like testosterone and testosterone esters, human growth hormones, stimulants, metabolic modulators used with anabolic agents, erythropoietin and anabolic steroid agents, according to Enhanced Games.
Athletes who finished first in their events received a $250,000 prize, and a $1,000,000 bonus if they broke a world record.
Hunter Armstrong, a U.S. swimmer who previously won gold medals in the 4×100 medley relay in the 2020 Summer Olympics and 4×100 freestyle relay in the 2024 Summer Olympics, finished first in the Men’s 50m Backstroke. Armstrong competed clean and his time was half a second behind his personal best, according to Enhanced Games.
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Fred Kerley, a silver medalist sprinter at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and bronze medalist at the Paris 2024 Olympics, took home first place in the Men’s 100m dash. Kerley, who said he competed clean, ran the sprint in 9.97 seconds — a time that would have seen him finish last in Paris — after predicting that Usain Bolt’s world record 9.58 seconds would be “destroyed.”
Following the race, which featured runners with untied shoelaces and multiple false starts, Kerley taunted his enhanced opponents.
“They’ve got to do better than that,” Kerley said. “They need to train a little harder, get on that shit a little bit more and go a little harder some more.”
Tristan Evelyn — who Enhanced Gamse described as a clean runner from Barbados — won the Women’s 100m dash. Her time of 11.25 seconds was more than half a second slower than the winning time at the Paris Olympics.
Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev was the only athlete at the Enhanced Games to “break” a world record and receive the $1,000,000 bonus. Gkolomeev, who wore a synthetic “supersuit” that is banned in the Olympics, swam the 50-meter free in 20.81 seconds. It was the night’s final event.
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