Oliver Catlin,
President – Banned Substances Control Group (BSCG)
https://www.bscg.org/

The Enhanced Games are scheduled to take place this weekend in Las Vegas, and I can’t think of a more appropriate location. Las Vegas is built for spectacle, and that is what this appears to be: more show than sport.

According to the Enhanced Games’ own materials, the event will take place in front of “2,500 invite-only spectators.” That raises a fair question. If this is supposed to be the next great evolution of sport, why limit the audience? Were they worried nobody else would show up?

The organizers have also promoted up to $25 million in prize money. Yet only about 42 athletes have reportedly decided to participate. That should tell us something. Money can attract attention, but it does not automatically create legitimacy.

To understand why this matters, we have to remember why drug testing in sport began in the first place. It was not invented to punish athletes. It began because athletes were dying from enhancement. Knud Enemark Jensen died during the 1960 Olympic Games. Tommy Simpson died on the side of Mount Ventoux during the Tour de France. Both deaths were tied to stimulant use.

Those tragedies helped push sport toward a basic principle: athletes should not have to risk their lives to compete.

That principle is now embedded throughout global sport. The World Anti-Doping Agency was created in 1999, and today more than 700 organizations are signatories to the World Anti-Doping Code. That represents a broad international consensus from sport organizations that decided enhancement was not in the best interest of athletes, competition, or the public trust.

This is not limited to Olympic sport. Most major professional leagues and organizations have rejected doping in their own ways, including the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, UFC, MLS, WNBA, PGA, LPGA, ATP and WTA. Even sports and entertainment environments that once had reputations for looking the other way — bodybuilding organizations, World’s Strongest Man and WWE among them — have moved toward testing.

That does not happen by accident. It happens because the consequences are real.

We have seen the damage before. Lyle Alzado, the former NFL player who died in 1992 from brain cancer, attributed his condition to steroid use. In a Sports Illustrated interview, he described starting anabolic steroids in 1969 and never stopping. He called it mentally addicting and said it changed his behavior, his health and his life. His final message was simple: he did not want anyone else to die that way.

Dwain Chambers, an admitted doper, later made a similar point in The Guardian. His words were blunt: “I got worse on drugs. It ruins your life and you will regret it forever.”

Chambers has described using drug cocktails that disrupted his body, damaged his performance consistency, caused cramping, affected his demeanor, brought immense guilt and nearly destroyed his career. That is the part of enhancement that tends to get lost in the marketing. The sales pitch focuses on records, speed, power and money. The reality often includes health consequences, psychological burden, social damage and long-term regret.

Sport has also made clear that enhancement changes how athletes are remembered. None of the Major League Baseball players most publicly associated with doping have been voted into the Hall of Fame. That is not one commissioner making a private decision. That is hundreds of sports writers from around the country deciding that those performances should not be celebrated.

The law has taken a similar position. In 1990, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act made anabolic steroids controlled substances. The same broader crime legislation also restricted human growth hormone for non-medical uses such as bodybuilding, performance enhancement and anti-aging. Congress was making a societal judgment: these drugs are not harmless tools for entertainment.

We have already seen enhanced sport. We have seen it in cycling. We have seen it in baseball. We have seen it in track and field, football, bodybuilding and elsewhere. Every time, the same pattern emerges. There is a period of fascination, then the damage becomes harder to ignore, and eventually sport moves back toward rules, testing and accountability.

The Enhanced Games may generate headlines. It may create a spectacle. But sport is more than a show. It is a shared agreement that competition should mean something, that athletes should not be pressured into dangerous choices, and that performance should not come at the cost of long-term health.

We have seen enhanced sport before. It has been roundly rejected. I believe it will be rejected again.

This Expert Voices contribution reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent the views, position, or editorial opinion of IPSEI.

 

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Please use the suggested citation below when referencing this article in institutional websites, reports, academic materials, newsletters or professional profiles:

Catlin, O. (2026). The Enhanced Games Are Not the Future of Sport. IPSEI Expert Voices.
https://ipsei.org/the-enhanced-games-are-not-the-future-of-sport/