The Enhanced Games: A night of hypertrophic delirium in a Las Vegas parking lot

They closed the night with The Killers, vegan rock, but there were no fatalities: no athlete burst a vein or had artificially hypertrophied muscles split open mid-effort; ligaments and tendons held up in the Las Vegas parking lot where, in 35 days, organizers had installed an elevated 100-meter, six-lane sprint track, a 50-meter pool with four lanes, a weightlifting stage and a long platform to seat thousands of spectators. Giant screens and lots of LEDs ran from 6.00 pm to 1.00 am, prime time in the city of vice, the hour when life wakes up.

Via streaming across half a dozen platforms, hundreds of thousands of people watched parts of the seven-hour Enhanced Games, a delirious advertising platform in an exceptional space, outside the laws of sport, competition, and health. A glittering commercial enterprise and a mediocre sporting contest in which 42 athletes (36 of them previously doped with anabolic steroids, amphetamines, EPO, and growth hormone) competed for a $15 million prize pool: $250,000 for the winner of each race, $1 million for anyone who broke a world record — which happened only once, when Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev posted 20.81s in the men’s 50m freestyle, seven hundredths faster than the Australian Cameron McEvoy’s official mark. Gkolomeev, who joined the enhanced culture a year ago and had already beaten the record, used not only drugs but the banned physics of a polyurethane swimsuit that floats and penetrates the water — a model that has been illegal for nearly 20 years.

It was the night’s final event, the only chance for the CEO of the Enhanced Games, Maximilian Martin, to breathe easy; he fell to his knees in a theatrical genuflection at the feet of the Greek giant.

Then, moved, he proclaimed that the future is already here. “We can prove, through the power of science, we are the best we could ever think of — and you are living proof,” he said, as reported by the Guardian journalist present, before an enthusiastic audience of fitness influencers and biotech investors. “For the last three days, Enhanced took over the internet. And now people can also get enhanced and be the best they have ever been.”

The event needed that record because until then the most spectacular thing in Las Vegas had been the return of the perpetually angry alpha Fred Kerley, an Olympic 100m medalist and still at an age to be able to compete against a world-class field, something he cannot legally do because he is suspended for whereabouts failures in anti-doping controls. “I do not need drugs to run fast. I can run fast anyway. I know I am fast. I would not be here if I were not fast,” he said in a report filmed during training in Abu Dhabi. “I can run faster than the others. As a man, a man only has his balls and his words. That is why I joined the Enhanced Games, to show even more of my talent. I have Olympic medals. I have world titles. They have nothing.”

After two false starts, he won the race in a mediocre 9.97s (-0.3 m/s wind), 0.21 seconds slower than his best mark under anti-doping controls and 0.39 seconds off Usain Bolt’s world record — his stated target — and then insulted his five rivals, athletes drenched in substances at the twilight of their careers who did not miss the chance to show off spectacular bodybuilder physiques. “Man, they need to do better than that. They need to train a little harder. They need to step it up and give a little more,” he said, looking angry even though he had just pocketed $250,000 for a sub-10-second performance. “Did you see that? A lot of false starts, a lot of jumps, a lot of people who do not want to run the heats and all that. They have to do better than that.”

Neither Kerley, wearing white Nike ultras, nor any other participant sported recognizable branded sportswear. Anonymous shirts. Behind them, a neon sign read: “Because you know there’s more, live enhanced.” And on the screens, an ad: “Build your enhancement protocol at enhanced.com.” An incitement to consumption and self-medication on the sales platform that underpins the Enhanced Games. A trivialization of doping and its health risks.

Between events, the stream featured Bryan Johnson, one of the techno-capitalists financing the venture who presents himself as an expert in human enhancement. Anti-aging missionary Johnson, 48, is a pale figure under a UV-protective umbrella (“90% of the physical aging of the skin is due to the sun,” he explains; “This is a UV-protective umbrella that protects me”), a venture capitalist and, according to Wikipedia, founder and former CEO of Kernel, a company that makes devices to monitor and record brain activity, and founder, chairman and CEO of Braintree, a mobile and web payments company for e-commerce businesses acquired by PayPal for $800 million in 2013. He boasts of being “the most measured man in history, with 1.5 billion data points collected continuously from his body” through hundreds of wearable devices. He funds the anti-aging Blueprint project under the motto “not to die.” And he talks about testosterone, growth hormone, EPO, and amphetamines as if they were aspirin — drugs from which he profits. “More than 90% of participants have taken testosterone, which helps them develop muscle. It gives more strength and better recovery,” he explained to the delighted hosts with graphics showing how IGF-1, an insulin-like growth factor, helps burn fat.

“Human growth hormone helps repair and recovery. EPO is not usually used in sprint sports, but in reality athletes use it to increase capacity during training. And then some athletes use Adderall [amphetamines to boost concentration and training capacity]. And, regarding body composition, they seek explosive energy, perfecting every part of their tissue to have the necessary explosive power. That means being lean, gaining muscle, and having the ability to win."

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