Trump Jr backs doping games: A grotesque venture into the world of performance enhancement

Daily Maverick

27-05-2025

The Enhanced Games, an organisation for athletes using banned substances, has set its inaugural competition for May 2026 in Las Vegas.
In a world where facts become increasingly optional and the lines between reality TV and real life are blurred, the idea of a sporting event celebrating doping isn't as far-fetched as it might have sounded two years ago.
It should be, of course, but in the world we live in, the abnormal is becoming mainstream.
The Enhanced Games, introduced to the world in 2023 as a concept to disrupt sport by pushing the limits of human feats with the aid of outlawed performance-enhancing drugs, is closer to reality.
And in a world where the Trump family seems to be involved in everything, Donald Trump Jr is an investor in the controversial upstart.
'The Enhanced Games represent the future – real competition, real freedom and real records being smashed,' Trump Jr says on the Enhanced Games website, which features a video with clips of President Trump.
'This is about excellence, innovation and American dominance on the world stage – something the Maga movement is all about. The Enhanced Games are going to be huge, and I couldn't be prouder to support this movement that is changing sports forever.'
Trump Jr is an investor through his 1789 capital company joining the likes of PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who is listed as co-founder.
'World record'?
In February, according to the Enhanced Games, Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev set a 'world record' in the 50m freestyle – swimming's shortest sprint.
The 31-year-old Gkolomeev, who never won a medal in four appearances at the Olympic Games, joined the Enhanced Games organisation as a guinea pig in their plan to remove all performance-enhancing drugs from sport.
Naturally, Gkolomeev didn't come on board for altruistic reasons. He was paid $1m to take performance-enhancing drugs and set his 'world record' of 20.89 seconds.
It should also be noted that he wore an outlawed skinsuit in the attempt that shaved two-hundredths of a second off the official world record, done while swimming alone in a pool.
🏆 FASTEST SWIMMER IN HISTORY
🇬🇷🇧🇬 Kristian Gkolomeev breaks:
🏊‍♂️ 50m Freestyle World Record
⏱️ 20.89 seconds
💰 $1,000,000 Prize
🇧🇷 Breaks Cesar Cielo's 2009 record (20.91) pic.twitter.com/u0p3139TdG
— Enhanced Games (@enhanced_games) May 21, 2025
Enhanced Games co-founder Aron D'Souza proclaimed this as a breakthrough and immediately encouraged more athletes to join the organisation. Its stated mission is to: 'redefine superhumanity through science, innovation, and sports'.
'He (Gkolomeev) should be retired, but in fact, he's swimming faster than any human being has ever done so. Why? Because he used technology and science to enhance his performance,' D'Souza said at a launch for the Enhanced Games in Las Vegas last week.
'Once the world realises that, I think everyone is going to want it. Every middle-aged guy who once played competitive sport and is now suffering from back pain is going to say, 'What is he on and how do I get it?''
Uncomfortable reality
As much as the temptation is to dismiss the Enhanced Games out of hand as some sort of grotesque lab experiment, it appears to be well-funded and determined to make an impact.
For the past two years, the concept has been scoffed at by many, including World Athletics president Sebastian Coe. He dismissed the Enhanced Games as 'bullshit', but it won't go away.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) doesn't talk about it, while World Aquatics was, at least, scathing: 'Like clowns juggling knives, sadly, these athletes will get hurt performing in this circus,' the watersport body said.
'History has shown us time and time again the grave dangers of doping to human health. This is a sideshow to those who compete honestly, fairly, and respect the true spirit of sport.'
Travis Tygart, who heads the US Anti-Doping Agency (Usada), was also sceptical.
In an interview with Daily Maverick last year, he expressed optimism that the Enhanced Games would not succeed.
'I don't think the answer is the Enhanced Games,' Tygart said. 'While it might be tempting and it might be easy to say and convenient for business people to say, 'we're going to create this', it's not.
'The answer is we (anti-doping bodies) have to win for clean athletes. 'We must make the rules and let everyone have an equal opportunity to play by those rules, and then let's enforce those rules with all the vigour that they deserve.
'I think it (Enhanced Games) is a profit scheme, and maybe it's gotten headlines. They've been on an incredible media tour.
'I don't believe any real athlete will want to go and compete. What they're proposing is illegal in many US states anyway.
'What they fail to recognise is that the cheating mentality is used a little bit more to get ahead. And so, they may have shifted the arms race where that line is, but the arms race will still exist.'
Setting boundaries
Enhanced Games claims that anti-doping is outdated and not working anyway, so let's do away with it. That's a simplistic view, because the policing of performance-enhancing drugs is about athlete safety as much as it is about enhancing performance.
It undermines fair play and integrity, which is the most central criticism. Traditional sports are built on the ideal of fair competition, where victory is earned through natural talent, hard work and skill, not external chemical advantages.
The Enhanced Games would completely discard this principle, creating an uneven playing field where success is determined by access to and tolerance for potent substances.
Cycling has a long history of athletes dying as a result of doping. While the Enhanced Games claims to want to inject athletes with various chemicals in a controlled manner, that's also a wildly optimistic view. Budgets for doping and tolerance for drugs will vary massively from athlete to athlete.
When you start without any apparent limits, where does it end?
While Usada and the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), among others, don't catch every cheat, they at least set out parameters and boundaries and try to police them.
The goal of 'normal' sport is to achieve greatness by pushing the human body to its limits without performance-enhancing drugs. Enhanced Games wants the opposite through normalising doping and even exploiting athletes, particularly those who may be struggling financially or feeling alienated by the traditional anti-doping system.
The promise of large prize money might entice athletes to take excessive risks with their health for short-term gain.
Nonetheless, Enhanced Games has set its inaugural competition for May 2026 in Las Vegas.
Participants could earn prize money totalling up to $500,000 per event, plus bonuses for surpassing a world record mark.
For swimming, the 50m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 50m butterfly and 100m butterfly are on the agenda. Athletics has the 100m sprint along with the 110m and 100m hurdles, while weightlifting will feature the snatch and clean and jerk.
The IOC and Wada cannot ignore the upstart much longer, though, because they appear to be here to stay, endorsed by a sitting US President's son and slowly gaining traction through financial reward.
The IOC doesn't want to pay athletes at the Olympics and Wada's track record on dealing with doping issues, like the one that involved 23 Chinese swimmers in 2021, has weakened its position.
Enhanced Games are nothing if not opportunistic, and they have seized the moment.
A weakened Wada, a complacent IOC and a US government that seems, at the very least, unopposed to Enhanced Games, is a heady concoction for an organisation in the business of enhancing performance through any means. DM