Vegas' Enhanced Games were an abject failure

LAS VEGAS — When Olympian Kristian Gkolomeev took his starting mark at the end of a four-lane pool in the evening air of Las Vegas on Sunday, it was no secret that he was preparing for the most consequential swim of his life.

Gkolomeev, a four-time Olympian, was about to participate in the closing competition of the Enhanced Games, a controversial tech billionaire-backed athletics event that allowed its participants — swimmers, weight lifters and sprinters — to take performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) barred from every international competition. The 32-year-old himself spent the past year on a carefully monitored regimen of PEDs (the contents of which have not been made public) while training with world-class coaches under the most ideal conditions money can buy, all with one goal in mind: break the 50-meter freestyle world record, again.

The Greek international had already done this in February 2025, in an accomplishment that organizers believed brought legitimacy to the Enhanced Games’ mission. Even though international bodies wouldn’t recognize the then-record time of 20.89 seconds, no human being had traversed 50 meters in a pool faster than Gkolomeev had in history. That set up Sunday, where expectations were simple but ambitious. Ideally, the dozens of “enhanced” athletes would shatter multiple world records, and this would be the first step toward a new era of human evolution unleashed to its maximum potential.

Yet by the time Gkolomeev was ready to dive into the pool again, every world record remained untouched, and the athletes who were not on PEDs defeated their “enhanced” competitors in multiple events. The mission goals were flailing, the sound of disappointment from the crowd when athletes came up short became all too familiar, and the tension under the arched metal open-air arena structure that served as a venue was palpable.

So how did this event, with all the money, medicine, technology and names behind it, end up riding on a single aging swimmer fueled by banned substances and an illegal swimsuit? Perhaps it’s because the Enhanced Games as a sporting spectacle seemed doomed for quite some time. 

For some of the tech world’s biggest names, there has long been a publicly stated desire to beat aging as if it were some sort of disease to be cured. Enhanced founder Aron D’Souza, an Australian lawyer and entrepreneur, came up with the idea of an Olympic-style venture where athletes would take steroids before they compete when he overheard two gym bros at a Miami Equinox talk about their juicing regimens. He secured funding from billionaire Peter Thiel, another man who has espoused the desire to extend his life as long as possible and someone D’Souza came to know when they financed Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker.

“This is the route towards eternal life,” D’Souza said in a 2024 interview with the Independent. “It’s how we bring about performance-medicine technologies, that then create a feedback cycle of good technologies, selling to the world, more revenue, more R&D, to develop better and better technologies. And what is performance medicine about? It’s not about steroids and getting jacked muscles. It’s about being a better, stronger, faster, younger athlete for longer. And who doesn’t want to be younger for longer?”

Over time, it was difficult to disassociate from the image of “jacked muscles,” especially as more and more outlets dubbed this event the “Steroid Olympics.” How could an American sports fan see “steroid” and not think of the large, hulking behemoths of baseball’s past like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco? If nothing else, the term created an image of a drug-fueled free-for-all where athletes were encouraged to take substances that would get them banned from any other competition. 

But beyond the “Steroid Olympics” headlines, it was apparent sports weren’t necessarily at the forefront of the goals of the games. D’Souza admitted to Vanity Fair that he’s “not really that much of a sports fan” and stepped aside as CEO after a failed lawsuit against the World Anti-Doping Agency, World Aquatics and USA Swimming. His replacement, Maximillian Martin, was able to describe the purpose of the games more succinctly for sports fans, but touched more on longevity than record-breaking when he spoke with SFGATE in March.

“You think about my top three athletes that, on average, are quite older than the rest of the field that they’re competing against: LeBron , Djokovic and Cristiano Ronaldo,” he said. “Imagine what they could do if they had the ability to enhance themselves as well. They will be not just able to like, perform the sport that they love for longer, but they will also be able to give the fans for longer what they want to see. They want to see their heroes play for longer. When you approach the end of their career, mostly you’re at the peak value in terms of your commercial value, right? You can also work for longer with the brands.”

Martin said the most important outcome, beyond any personal bests or world records, was showing the world that performance enhancements were safe under proper clinical and medical supervision, which could be inspiring to anyone “whether you’re 25 and you’re training for a marathon … but also when you’re 65 and you’re looking for more energy to take your grandkids to the playground and play with them.”

The signs were quite clear that the fantasy of a technolibertarian steroids fest with athletes smashing records by comical margins wasn’t happening. For one, all enhancements had to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Enhanced then created a prominent storefront on its site rife with products for the modern-day looksmaxxer, including testosterone injections, a copper peptide — which “supports collagen and elasticity” — and weight loss drugs such as GLP-1s. The jump went from looksmaxxing to revenue maxxing as the company went public to a valuation that at one point was $1.2 billion, thus solidifying that this was more about selling the product that might lead to whatever would be accomplished on Sunday than the accomplishments themselves.

And then there was the talent who signed up to partake. For every Olympian like British swimmer, and Paris silver medalist, Ben Proud, Canadian weightlifter Boady Santavy and American sprinter Fred Kerley, there were athletes who had not competed in years, or even a decade, as was the case with swimmer Megan Romano. Even with Gkolomeev breaking the world record last February, there was James Magnussen, who said he’d juice up to break the 50-meter record if he could make $1 million doing it — and ended up getting slower during his enhancement procedure. How close would a PED regimen really bring those athletes to world record form?

The fact that there were any names at all — D’Souza once claimed over 4,000 athletes were interested — was simply because of the money. For every four-person competition, first place received $250,000, second got $125,000, third got $75,000 and fourth got $50,000; track events still gave seventh-place finishers $20,000. With all swimmers competing in two events, that meant the minimum was $100,000 just for one evening’s performance before possible bounty payouts for breaking a world record.

“It’s just such a different ballpark financially — it gives me the opportunity to earn that sort of money and setting myself up, my family, and supporting my mum,” Proud said last September. “These are opportunities as a 30-year-old I just can’t pass by.”

On top of the financial incentive, the games flew all of the athletes to Abu Dhabi for state-of-the-art treatment, care and training in luxurious accommodations as they prepared for six to eight weeks before their big athletic endeavor. At one point, Iran began to bomb the United Arab Emirates during their stay, and they’d wake up to missile defense sirens. As the event got closer, the hype surrounding it only grew, especially with the term “Steroid Olympics” being thrown around enough to get anyone who knows about sports interested in what was to come. It certainly helped that people like Martin and Kerley talked about the possibility of breaking records, adding to the social media buzz.

The games certainly worked hard to maintain the appearance of wanting to smash records early. As the first event was about to kick off in the mid-afternoon, an intro video blared through the speakers about how humans have wanted to become bigger, faster and stronger since the dawn of time, and at long last there’s an event that is willing to help humanity achieve that goal.

It quickly took a turn. Of the first six athletes, all of whom were weightlifters, only one was able to successfully set a personal best: American Dylan Cooper, whose most recent accolade on his Enhanced bio page was an eighth-place finish at the IWF Junior World Championships in 2017.

By this time, maybe a few hundred people had arrived at the arched metal open-air venue set up outside Resorts World at the end of the Las Vegas Strip. Those who arrived to catch the early action were stuck facing the Vegas sun well before it began to set. Influencers had started to trickle in, and some of them looked a bit more “enhanced” than the athletes themselves, with muscles and veins bulging in incomprehensible ways on the arms of several men. Shortly after, anti-aging advocate Bryan Johnson, whose eyebrow-raising attempts to extend his life have been well documented, arrived underneath a UV umbrella at the on-site broadcast set to serve as one of the hosts.

As the games prepared for the first swimming event, a video played on the big screen discussing the “history” of enhancement, which included ancient Greeks consuming figs and berries, and early 20th-century athletes taking part in “protein-rich diets,” which were considered fads at the time. But the pool didn’t provide much relief for the overarching goals of this project, even as they were adjusted. Hunter Armstrong easily took first place in the 50-meter backstroke, the first swimming event of the night. While he didn’t set a record-breaking time, he was notable as one of four athletes competing in this event without any PEDs. (Armstrong even got tested by the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency later on Sunday.) The former Cal swimmer’s only banned advantage was that he wore the infamous “super suit” that World Aquatics deemed illegal in 2010, which all swimmers were allowed to use. 

This was the trend for most of the evening. Try as they might, the enhanced athletes came up short of breaking, let alone shattering, any world records, as organizers had boasted they would in the days leading up to the event. Breaking personal bests is certainly admirable, but it does not make for particularly compelling television, especially when those personal bests aren’t that impressive in the grand scheme of world athletics.

The closest moments were all in the water. Gkolomeev was 0.2 second off the world record in his 100-meter freestyle swim with a 46.6 time after a promising 50-meter split — Magnussen, Enhanced’s original golden boy, finished dead last. Proud was agonizingly close during his 50-meter butterfly swim, finishing in 22.32, a mere 0.05 off of the world record.

The real agony of defeat came in the weightlifting section, when organizers gave Santavy, a two-time Olympian, and Wesley Kitts, an American two-time Olympian, a fourth chance to complete their respective world record attempts. The extra attempts would be unheard of in any sanctioned competition and made the cynical record-breaking goal that much more explicit. But neither succeeded, with Santavy collapsing into his hands and slamming the platform in frustration after his failure, which was then broadcast in slow motion to the crowd.

As the evening arrived in Las Vegas, desperation had also made its way to the games. An official X account was getting defensive in the replies of its highlights, which users quickly pointed out did not achieve what the games promised they would. Enhanced spokesperson Chris Jones, who told reporters in the media suite that he himself is proudly “enhanced,” watched in silence as the weightlifters’ extra attempts did not bring the coveted world record. Notable Twitch streamers Adept, JasonTheWeen, Lacy and StableRonaldo were brought to the end of the track so their combined audience of over 50,000 concurrent viewers could see the end of the less-than-impressive women’s 100-meter sprint. It’s worth noting that the winner of that race was Tristan Evelyn, who was also not enhanced, as was the winner of the men’s 100-meter sprint, Fred Kerley, who proudly disrespected his enhanced competitors.

Prior to Gkolomeev’s last-gasp attempt in the 50-meter freestyle swim to end the night, it seemed that Icelandic strongman Thor Bjornsson, known for playing the Mountain on “Game of Thrones,” had the comment that summed up the evening.

“What can I say?” he told reporters after his world record attempt came short. “Sometimes you’re successful, sometimes you fall short. Today was not my day.”

For the first time all evening, the $20 million makeshift arena felt almost full, but that just meant there were more people to share in the nerves of what had happened so far, or rather what hadn’t happened. Still, this was the final event for a reason. Organizers might have expected more broken records, but they knew the 50-meter freestyle was their best hope at getting just one. 

It might have very well been the disappointment that hung over the evening, but the crowd was tepid in its cheering at the start of the race, the tension palpable. About halfway through, however, the crowd began to buzz, while the swimmers who had gathered en masse poolside to try to witness history started to get excited. In the final quarter of the race, Gkolomeev used some combination of the enhancements, the suit and his own years of hard work to pull away not just for first place, but for the world record: 20.81, an even bigger jump on the record than his first swim a year ago. After he took a couple of seconds to collect himself and realize what he’d just done, he let out a primal scream. At long last, the crowd cheered for a world record accomplishment.

The wave of relief rushed over the crowd and stayed there well past the end of the event. The organizers gathered all the athletes around the weightlifting platform to celebrate by handing out superlative awards to their participants. When Martin got to Gkolomeev, he couldn’t help but fall to his hands and knees and bow to his game’s new champion. 

“We have changed the world tonight,” Martin declared in a post-event speech.

“We are here to stay,” he said later in the speech. “Enhanced is culture. We are now at the pulse of where the world is going, and we’re ready to share this with the world. Becoming the best of yourself — you guys have proven you can do it, and now the people at home can also get enhanced and become the best they’ve ever been.”

If there is one agreed upon success that the Enhanced Games created — Gkolomeev’s record will not be recognized by any official governing body — it’s the money that the athletes made, all of which is certainly more than what they would have earned on the traditional path through their sport, especially given how most of the times stacked up against elite global competition. When one reporter asked Gkolomeev, who earned $1.5 million in winnings Sunday, what he wants this win to mean, he simply responded, “I’m rich and can support my family.” American sprinter Shania Collins, who earned $75,000 for her third-place finish in the 100-meter sprint, believes this is proof that a better financial outlook is possible for people in her sport.

“Track and field, we’re used to not being acknowledged, not getting financially paid, not getting the shine — definitely in the States,” she told reporters after her race. “... It makes me think, why is this not the new norm, why isn’t it the standard? We want athletes to perform their absolute best, put on a show every time they step to the line, but they don’t have the support to help them get there.”

Athletes that left with six figures include American swimmer Cody Miller ($500,000), Kerley ($250,000), Evelyn ($250,000), Thompson ($250,000), as well as all the other swimmers.

Still, there’s a significant trade-off, as those who participated in the enhanced program have made themselves pariahs in sports they’ve dedicated their whole lives to, at the very least limiting their options. Russian-born Oakland resident Evgenii Somov said after his two swims that he’s not sure what his Bay Area future will be as far as swimming goes, but he at least has some non-swimming plans.

“I love California, Bay Area — shout out Oakland,” he told SFGATE, flashing a smile after earning $200,000 on the night. “Hopefully I can come back. As you know, we’re all enhanced and there’s not a lot of coaches allowed to work with us, so we’ve got to be real specific, and got to see what the training looks like in the next season — where we’re going for the training camp, stuff like that. I’m always excited to be back. Hopefully I’m going to be back there this summer because I have a lot of friends there and, yeah, going to party.”

And for as much as the organizers want to proclaim this a win, it’s hard not to see how this came up short in almost every meaningful way in terms of athletic achievement. Gkolomeev’s win was certainly an example of what the Enhanced Games so desperately wanted, with one of the top athletes in the world using a carefully supervised regimen of performance-enhancing drugs. But while there exists a singular data point that showcases how regulations against PEDs may be stifling sporting evolution — a conservative perspective that attracted support from the likes of a Donald Trump Jr. investment firm, and an appearance from podcaster Tim Pool — the previous six hours of competition were a pretty large set of counterpoints. At the very least, the goal that served as the initial basis for these games fell well short. The argument that Martin made after the event that “this is live sport, and this is always something you can never plan for,” falls flat when they pumped so much money and resources into planning for a particular outcome.

The clearest sign of failure came first thing Tuesday morning, when Enhanced’s stock price crashed to half of starting value and was down nearly 80% from its initial opening. But when the revelry of the world record was still shining on Sunday, there was a concert to cap off the night. And whether he meant it or not, Killers lead singer Brandon Flowers summed up the whole endeavor best with his closing goodbye.

“Congratulations to … whoever deserved it,” he said, throwing up his arms.