A new sports competition featuring Olympic medalists will take place in Las Vegas on Sunday. The twist? The competitors can take performance-enhancing drugs.
The Enhanced Games, dubbed the “Steroid Olympics,” will see 42 athletes compete across swimming, track and weightlifting.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee have been highly critical of the games, which were announced in 2023. Others, however, see opportunity.
Donald Trump Jr.’s investment firm, 1789 Capital, is joining Peter Thiel on the cap table of the company behind the games and leading its Series B in 2025.
Trading as Enhanced Group, its stock is up by around 35% over the last week ahead of the inaugural games. However, they have fallen by around 40% since going public on the New York Stock Exchange via a SPAC earlier this month.
“The Enhanced Games represent the future — real competition, real freedom and real records being smashed,” Trump Jr. said in a statement when announcing his involvement.
What will happen?
A purpose-built arena will host 2,500 spectators to witness dozens of athletes. They’ll also catch rock band The Killers performing at the post-event show.
Alongside the standard training regime athletes go through for competitive events, most of those taking part will also have been using performance-enhancing substances.
Athletes can only use substances that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Participants using such substances have been monitored under strict medical supervision, organizers have said.
They aren’t releasing individual details of athletes’ substance programs. But the company said competitors have used testosterone and testosterone esters, human growth hormones, stimulants like Adderall, metabolic modulators used alongside anabolic agents, erythropoietin, and anabolic steroid agents. All of these are banned by WADA.
And the event has convinced some big-name athletes to compete.
Among them is American 2022 100m world champion Fred Kerley, who also won silver and bronze medals at the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games, will be taking to the track. Australian swimmer James Magnussen, who has won a silver and two bronze medals at the Olympics, will also be taking part. U.S. Olympic gold medalist swimmer Cody Miller is also on the roster.
Selling peptides
Beyond the games, the company has plans to sell performance-enhancing substances.
Enhanced announced a range of supplements in March, alongside performance and longevity products such as hormone replacement therapy for men and women.
The company said in a statement that this was “the first step in the company’s plan to become the leading provider of personalized enhancement products improving health, performance, and recovery.”
It has also said it’s planning to offer access to peptides, which have seen a boom in usage in recent years. Hugely popular GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, which include the likes of Wegovy, are peptide-based.
“Understanding how popular peptide usage has become globally we intend to invest heavily in this space,” said CEO Maximilian Martin in March.
