Fear and self-doping in Las Vegas: My trip to the first-ever Enhanced Games

Somewhere between taking a Zoox self-driving taxi down Las Vegas Boulevard, watching steroid-engorged swimmers in bodysuits shred through a pool at a Zoop-sponsored tournament, and partying with them and their billionaire handlers at the nightclub Zouk, it dawned on me that I had slipped into a parallel universe.

I was at the inaugural Enhanced Games, a three-sport event founded by a group of Silicon Valley techno-libertarians that asks one question: How far can you push athletic performance if you give athletes access to some of the most powerful performance-enhancing drugs known to humankind?

The competition, held in Sin City's Resorts World on May 24, had all the trappings of a traditional sporting event: referees, Olympic-regulation tracks, swimming pools, and weights. The one crucial difference was that the 42 athletes — most of them retired Olympians — were juiced with a suite of anabolic steroids, stimulants, human-growth-hormone, testosterone, and a slew of other drugs banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee. Enhanced — which is also a purveyor of many of these supplements — claims that while its athletes don't have to take performance-enhancing drugs, 90% are on at least one. When I asked eight athletes what they're on, though, each said a minor variation of I'm sorry, I'd prefer not to share my stack, it was personalized for me.

In the press stands, the German pharmaceutical billionaire and psychedelic research financier, Christian Angermayer, one of the event's cofounders, said he anticipated at least three to five world records would be broken before the end of the night. Angermayer, who at 48 still passes for late 30s, tells me he's on tesamorelin, GLP-1s, and TRT. He is the majority investor in Enhanced alongside Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr.

Enhanced's other founders include Aron D'Souza, a close associate of Thiel, and Maximilian Martin, an investment banker turned bitcoin entrepreneur. Together, they make up a close-knit clique that espouses the gospel of longevity, which can at times veer close to eugenics. D'Souza once told The New York Times that he hoped the company would usher in an era of "superhumans among us."

The games, which took an estimated $20 million to produce, predominantly served as a choreographed exhibition for Enhanced's supplements and drugs business. If a retired Olympian can get on a regimen of peptides, anabolic steroids, testosterone, and human-growth-hormone and look tighter, more ripped, and move faster than ever, what's stopping you?

The event was also perfectly targeted for millennials. What's more encouraging to a generation coming to terms with their own evaporating youth than watching the bygone athletes of their cohort perform rejuvenated feats of derring-do? Between games, a DJ blasted millennial jockjams like "Seven Nation Army," "Harlem Shake," and "Party Rock Anthem." And the entire evening seemed designed to remind spectators that it's never been easier — and more compulsory — to deny the ravages of aging.

Unlike the rest of us, the athletes who take part in a performance-enhancing protocol do so under the supervision of Dr. Guido Pieles, a sports cardiologist. I asked Dr. Pieles if he would take the drugs that he gives the athletes. While there were "inherent risks," he said, "I think yes. Once we have a large enough trial, I would take it."

At the far end of the pale blue track was a billboard that encouraged people to "Live Enhanced — Because You Know There's More." Bryan Johnson, the nocturnal erection and vaginal-microbiome-measuring longevity influencer, was among the commentators for the program's main events. Thor Björnsson, best known for his role as The Mountain in "Game of Thrones" (in which he crushes Pedro Pascal's character with his bare hands), and a competitor in the men's deadlift challenge, walked around the arena in a black "I am Enhanced" T-shirt. Dylan Cooper, a retired two-time junior national champion, who scored a new personal best in the Men's snatch tournament praised Enhanced. "It's given me a second chance," he told the crowd.

The games have drawn some heavy criticism. Travis Tygart, CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency, called the event a "dangerous clown show." The International Olympic Committee (IOC) called it "utterly irresponsible and immoral." World Aquatics, the governing body of professional swimming, banned its athletes and coaches from participating in the event. (In a post-game press conference, Brett Hawke, Enhanced Games' swim coach, boasted that his phone was "blowing up with all the best swimmers in the world," who now want to participate in the event.)

To hear the company's executives talk about it, it's the Olympics that are acting in bad faith by giving competitors a moral shield to cheat. Angermayer derides the IOC as "corrupt" and "driving athletes into the shadows," forcing them to take performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) without doctor supervision while ordering their drugs from China. In contrast, the company argues, Enhanced is not only fairer than the Olympics but also, as Angermayer put it, the company's products make athletes healthier by "repairing the damage the sport is doing" to their bodies.

Throughout the games, Enhanced repeated the message that performance-enhancing drugs and supplements can be the key to longevity. This breakthrough, Martin argued, is "not just relevant for elite athletes," but also for younger athletes "preparing for their first marathon" or "the 65-year-old who needs more energy" to play with their grandkids.

"No matter who you are, there's a personalized protocol that can take you from who you are to who you want to be," the Enhanced CEO added.

Many in the sports-science community contest these claims. "There is no solid evidence that such protocols can reliably repair the damage associated with elite sports," Dr. Øyvind Sandbakk, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, tells me. Combining the drugs on offer — testosterone, human-growth-hormone, erythropoietin (EPOs), or stimulants — can create a "highly complex pharmacological environment with significant and often unpredictable health risks."

For the Enhanced athletes, the decision to take performance-enhancing drugs can come with its own moral quandaries. "I was terrified," said Ben Proud, a silver medalist in the 50-meter freestyle at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Like the other athletes, he started his performance-enhancing regimen in March at the ERTH hotel in Abu Dhabi, an elite wellness center that was once a resort for the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates. Under Iranian rocket fire and the supervision of Dr. Pieles, Proud received his first dose. "The first injection to me was very emotionally tricky to navigate," he said. "That was the day I went from the Ben Proud I knew to become a new person."

The money on offer is life-changing for athletes who make only $36,000 to $50,000 a year playing the officially sanctioned version of their sport. While Enhanced doesn't disclose what it pays its athletes annually, each said it was significantly more than what they were paid when they were clean, and prizes at the Games ranged from $250,000 for winning a competition to $1 million for breaking a world record.

"In theory, you'd have to win 23 championships to earn what you can in one night at the Enhanced Games," Proud told me, adding that "having financial security at the end of this ten-year journey is really important." When I asked Proud if he would have competed at Enhanced had the Olympics paid more, he answered candidly, "very possibly not."

Wes Kitts, a two-time Olympic weightlifter, told me that, besides competitions, he made ends meet by running a small gym in Knoxville, Tennessee, and doing personal training. Joining Enhanced "made it possible for me to own my home," he said.

If the games' crowds are any indication, those worried about the moral hazard behind the tournament have little to fret about. As I scanned the stands throughout the event, I saw hundreds of empty seats in a stadium built for more than 2,000 invitees. The announcers' attempts to rile the crowd (a typical line went something like "Don't stop making noise until this lift is complete!") were met with only the most tepid of yowls.

The lackluster visual didn't deter Martin's enthusiasm. To hear him describe it, IRL attendees are beside the point. The company invited 181 influencers to document the tournament, and their posts, Enhanced boasts, collectively reach more than 375 million people across various social media platforms. The events themselves, Martin said, are purpose-built for modern online consumption: "Shorter than a minute, they all fit into an Instagram reel, TikTok post, etc."

At the after-party, multiple attendees muttered forgivingly. "It's their first year," one said, while others suggested there would have been a bigger draw if Enhanced had lured in more household-name athletes. Responses on social media were similarly muted. The company's page has about 390,000 followers — far fewer than the 16 million that follow the official Olympics handle or the 2.2 million that follow streetbeefs_official, the official handle of an underground streetfighting competition in Virginia. That doesn't stop Martin from proclaiming after the tournament, "We've dominated the internet."

In the end, only one world record was unofficially smashed. Kristian Gkolomeev, a 32-year-old Greek athlete, swam the 50-meter freestyle in 20.81 seconds, wearing a banned polyurethane swimsuit while on PEDs. Though Gkolomeev has since changed his Instagram bio to "the fastest swimmer in history," Cameron McEvoy, who swam the event in 20.88 seconds in March, will remain the holder in official record books. Gkolomeev, however, is $1 million richer.

As the sun set behind the Spring Mountains and the night's closing act The Killers took the stage, I felt myself giving in to Enhanced's advertising. Firmly in my mid-thirties, I am squarely in their demographic. My once-luscious hair, slowly slipping with every shower, is glued on only by the grace of Kirkland minoxidil. If you believe my Instagram feed, every year after 30, you lose 10% of your muscle mass. I am, apparently, the perfect candidate for TRT, sermorelin, and Viagra. If these shredded beasts could come out of retirement and beat 21 personal records, why shouldn't I become the homunculan he-man I'd always wanted to be? Of course, Enhanced's athletes also had an army of doctors, a litany of ultrasounds, x-rays, and blood tests to monitor every vital organ. More sobering to think about is how the company can possibly scale through a telehealth service and safely deliver similar care to the general public.

As Bryan Johnson walked off stage, changed into a baby blue pinstripe pajama, matching nightcap, and sunglasses, I found myself unconvinced. The night ended with a boyish-looking Brandon Flowers belting the chorus to "When You Were Young." At 44, the doesn't-drink-coffee Mormon strained to hit the high F-sharp. Though to his credit, he's probably unenhanced.

Tekendra Parmar is a former features editor at Business Insider. He has also worked at Rest of World, Time, Fortune, Harper's Magazine, and The Nation.

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