The Enhanced Games are dangerous. They’re not a celebration of science |
The Enhanced Games are dangerous. They’re not a celebration of science
May 22, 2026 — 11:55am
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Twelve months ago, I proposed that the Enhanced Games constitute a circus freak show masquerading as sport. I was wrong, by some measure.
Not about the freak show bit; but about the masquerade. Because if you fast-forward to now, with the inaugural Enhanced Games dropping its kids off at a purpose-built pool at Resorts World Las Vegas this Sunday night (US time), the mask has slipped clean off.
It wasn’t ever about sport. Rather, whatever competition takes place is a Trojan horse. It’s a prime-time, livestreamed advertisement for a drug business. Swimming, athletics and weightlifting, the bait.
As it’s so often put: follow the money. In March, two months from their marquee event, the Enhanced Games impresarios did a soft launch of a direct-to-consumer telehealth operation flogging the very substances the Games exist to glamourise.
From the same website that promotes the sporting contest, you can order prescription testosterone, hormone treatments, and a growth-hormone-releasing peptide called sermorelin, plus a copper-peptide skin cream, all on monthly subscriptions.
Also in March, the organisers announced that, subject to US regulatory approval, it would soon offereight additional peptides, including CJC-1295, Ipamorelin, Thymosin Alpha-1, TB-4, GHRP-2/6, Kisspeptin-10, Semax, and Selank.
It’s space-age stuff.
But just as an aside, that’s the same CJC-1295 presently under consideration by the Victorian Coroner, as to whether to hold an inquest into the death of a person prescribed it and other growth-stimulating substances.
These “Games” are merely the shopfront to Willy Wonka land. The peptides are the product, not the sport. The sport is a clinical experiment.
The organisers barely bother to hide it. The data harvested from the sporting business will tell the company how to sell longevity and performance products to ordinary........