Enhanced Games co-founder Christian Angermayer believes the future of sport lies in radical transparency – and pharmaceutical enhancement. Aron D’Souza, the Oxford-educated lawyer and entrepreneur turned mastermind behind the Games, sees openness as something closer to a moral obligation. Together, they’ve become the architects of a sporting revolution: a new global competition where performance-enhancing drugs aren’t banned, but openly embraced.
This is the idea, the disruption, at the centre of the Enhanced Games, a project billed by critics as the “steroid Olympics,” but described by its creators as sport without hypocrisy. For D’Souza, the current anti-doping system is little more than institutionalised denial. “It’s not scary. It’s not cheating. It’s just inventing a new set of rules,” he says.
Now backed by a powerful coalition of tech investors and ideological allies, from biotech mogul Angermayer and Peter Thiel to Donald Trump Jr and crypto king Balaji Srinivasan, the Games aim to reposition elite sport as a platform for biomedical innovation and human enhancement.
At its core is a bet: that the public is ready to watch records fall, not in spite of scientific intervention, but because of it. It’s fitting, then, that the host city reveal took place today at the home of gambling; Las Vegas. Even more fitting – the host city will indeed be Sin City itself. Here’s what you need to know about the world’s most controversial sporting event.
What are the Enhanced Games?
A new international sports competition where athletes are allowed to use performance-enhancing drugs under medical supervision.
Who’s behind it?
The Games were founded by Dr Aron D’Souza and backed by influential figures including Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr, Balaji Srinivasan, and biotech investor Christian Angermayer.
What sports will be included?
The first Games will focus on athletics, swimming and strength events, with plans to expand into combat sports.
Isn’t this dangerous?
Organisers argue it’s safer than the status quo. Athletes will be monitored by doctors and the substances used will be openly declared, unlike in traditional sport, where enhancement happens in the shadows.
When and where will the first event take place?
The host city is being announced today at a live event in Las Vegas.
5 Misconceptions about the Enhanced Games and why they’re wrong
When the Enhanced Games were first announced, the backlash was immediate and loud. Critics denounced the idea as reckless, unethical, even dystopian; a pharma-fuelled assault on the integrity of sport. But beneath the moral panic lies a more complicated truth. Many of the loudest objections rely on assumptions that don’t hold up under scrutiny. Here are five of the most common misconceptions and the reality behind them.
1. “It’s unethical.”
That’s the standard line. That allowing performance-enhancing drugs destroys fairness, sportsmanship and the spirit of competition.
But the Enhanced Games don’t reject ethics. They reject hypocrisy. The current Olympic system is riddled with contradictions: anti-doping protocols that miss most offenders, abuse-prone therapeutic use exemptions, and testing regimes that punish the unlucky while letting others slide. Studies suggest that up to 44% of elite athletes dope. They just do it in secret.
The Enhanced Games make enhancement explicit, monitored and transparent. In doing so, they shine a light on the uncomfortable reality: that “fairness” in sport was never evenly distributed. Genetic advantages, unequal access to facilities, cutting-edge tech and high-end nutrition already shape outcomes. The Enhanced Games claim they don’t abandon ethics. Instead, they force us to define what ethics actually mean in an era of radical human optimisation.
2. “It exploits athletes.”
One of the most persistent criticisms is that the Enhanced Games will coerce athletes into dangerous decisions and push them to sacrifice their health for spectacle.
But that pressure already exists. In many elite sports, athletes quietly risk their bodies and careers to stay competitive in a system that punishes transparency and rewards denial. The difference with the Enhanced Games is that the trade-offs are explicit and the choice belongs to the athlete.
Here, enhancement isn’t imposed. It’s informed, medically supervised, and voluntary. The Games focus on athlete autonomy, not exploitation.
3. “It’s a health risk free-for-all.”
From the outside, the Enhanced Games are often framed as a lawless experiment; a steroid circus with no safety net. But that image owes more to fear than fact.
In reality, the Games are being built from the ground up with rigorous medical oversight and harm-reduction protocols at their core. A panel of domain experts is shaping the safeguards, with transparency baked into every layer of participation. The goal is to remove the hidden dangers that come with the current regime of underground doping.
In elite sport today, the real health risks often flourish in secrecy. By contrast, the Enhanced Games offer a framework for medically supervised enhancement – one that many in the medical and academic communities argue is not only safer, but overdue.
4. “It’s trying to replace the Olympics.”
Critics often frame the Enhanced Games as an attack on traditional sport and present it as a hostile attempt to dismantle the Olympic ideal. But they founders say their ambition isn’t to replace. It’s to coexist.
Just as powerlifting and bodybuilding maintain separate natural and enhanced categories, the Enhanced Games envision a parallel system – one that expands the sporting landscape rather than erasing it. This isn’t a zero-sum proposition. It’s a complementary model that gives athletes more freedom, not less.
That model also carries legal weight. In a world where elite competition is increasingly consolidated under a handful of governing bodies, the Enhanced Games challenge monopolistic control, offering athletes a genuine alternative. And crucially, they’ll be paid for their efforts. A majority of US Olympians earn less than $25,000 a year, even in Olympic seasons. The Enhanced Games want to change that by attaching value to elite performance.
5. “It’s just a reckless science experiment.”
To some, the Enhanced Games conjure dystopian visions: billionaire-backed gladiators juiced to the eyeballs for public spectacle. But that caricature obscures the project’s more serious, and arguably more valuable, potential.
Far from endorsing chaos, the Games propose a tightly controlled environment where enhancement is medically guided, ethically framed and transparently monitored. Like Formula One for human performance, the idea is to push boundaries in a way that yields broader social and medical gains. Many of the compounds used to enhance athletic output, from peptides to hormone therapies, are the same tools being explored to treat chronic illness, injury, and age-related decline.
By creating a platform where enhancement is visible and data-rich, the Games could accelerate progress in areas far beyond sport. This is about shifting from punitive regulation to proactive understanding. You could say that’s not reckless. It’s strategic.
For all the media frenzy, one thing is clear: whether you agree with them or not, they’re asking interesting questions about fairness, autonomy and what comes next.
