In May next year the inaugural Enhance Games is slated to take place in Las Vegas. Limited categories in three sports – athletics, swimming and weightlifting – will be competed at the Games.
The Enhanced Games is the brainchild of Australian businessman Aron D’Souza, and would allow athletes to use performance-enhancing substances without being subject to drug tests.
Doping has been a contentious issue in sport for more than a century.
The earliest records of doping in sport is said to have taken place during the come from the Ancient Olympics games with some athletes said to have taken figs to improve their performance. In ancient Rome, gladiators drank herbal infusions to strengthen them before chariot races.
Not using performance enhancing drugs was more of a moral choice for athletes. It was not until the 1967 that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) codified anti-doping rules.
The first Olympic athlete to test positive for the use of performance-enhancing drugs was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swedish pentathlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics, who lost his bronze medal for alcohol use, “two beers” to steady his nerves.
He would have been able to keep medal had he competed at the Games after 2019, when ethanol (alcohol) was removed by World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned substance list.
Sports authorities believe that doping is dangerous to the health of athletes. Performance-enhancing drugs such as stimulants, anabolic steroids, diuretics, β-blockers are considered harmful to the health.
The first recorded doping death occurred in 1886 in cycling and while no direct implications can be drawn, several top athletes had met their demise early, said to be caused by doping.
It has been a case of Tom and Jerry with the scientists always playing the chasing game with those propagating performance enhancing drugs finding ways to evade detection faster than the enforcers.
The Enhanced Games is coming out with a completely different approach and believes their way is the right way for sports in the future.
They believe scientific and technological advancements can be safely applied to sport and their use should be embraced and celebrated in elite competition.
All athletes competing in the Enhanced Games will undergo extensive medical profiling prior to competition, which will allow our independent medical commission to make an informed decision about whether the athletes are safe to compete.
This is in contrast with the IOC and international sports federations’ stance for a total ban on all forms of doping.
Enhanced Games claims it is committed to partnering with athletes to safely explore the limits of human performance. It says that comprehensive medical assessments will be used to assess an athlete’s state of health, determine their eligibility to compete, and provide invaluable insights to support their health, well-being and optimise their performance journey – before, during, and after competition.
The have proposed several steps to ensure this.
- State-of-the-art cardiac imaging and heart rhythm monitoring enables early detection of cardiovascular risk factors associated with sporting demands and misuse of enhancements.
- An extensive analysis of blood and urine biomarkers will assess how the athlete’s body is handling the physical demands of training and competition, as well as the interactive effects of any performance enhancements.
- Musculoskeletal imaging and movement profiling assess the structural integrity and functional performance of the athlete’s musculoskeletal system, providing insights into changes that occur during key phases of growth and tissue repair.
- Brain imaging and cognitive function assessments will provide the independent medical commission and the athletes with the necessary, high-quality information to make informed decisions about competition.
- Genomic sequencing helps reveal if an athlete may be predisposed to inherited or environment-specific health risks.
The question in everyone’s mind is whether this is indeed the way to future of sports?
Although a majority of experts and even the sports fraternity itself believe that the Enhance Games should be nipped in the bud, there is also a growing number of others, who believe otherwise.
Widespread use of Performance Enhancing Drugs was the reason why Russia were barred from attending the last Olympics.
With strong opposition to their plans, Enhanced Games has now filed a USD 800 million antitrust lawsuit against World Aquatics, USA Swimming and the World Anti-Doping Agency, to stop what they say is the defendants’ illegal campaign.
They claim that the said organisations’ threat to banish athletes who compete in “sporting events that embrace the use of scientific advancements or other practices that may include prohibited substances and/or prohibited methods”— deters swimmers and other athletes from competing in the Enhanced Games.
The next nine months would be an interesting phase for sports and might event change the landscape of sports as we know.
by S.T. Arasu, a former two-time Malaysian Sportswriter of the Year
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