The Steroid Olympics Are Coming

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6 days ago

Good morning and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Don't forget to organize a Fight Club with your friendly neighborhood geopolitical rivals this week.
We're talking about the Olympics today—not the real ones, the new Enhanced Games that allow athletes to use steroids (or not). Then we'll move on to a new Netflix documentary on Brett Favre, followed by Formula 1's Monaco dilemma and a wild story of a journalist getting banned in England.
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Olympians, But Enhanced
Some world records might soon fall.*
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*But don't expect to see them in the actual record books, not even with an asterisk. The first Enhanced Games are coming in May 2026, an Olympics-style event where athletes who are using performance-enhancing drugs are allowed to compete.
"Enhanced Games athletes will be allowed to take substances that are legal in the United States and prescribed by a licensed doctor," reports ESPN's Dan Murphy. "Examples may include testosterone, growth hormone and some types of anabolic steroids. Illicit drugs—cocaine, for example—will not be allowed." (One wonders where the legally murky status of marijuana comes in.)
Athletes who aren't taking performance-enhancing drugs are also allowed to compete, which could create an interesting contrast. So far there are only plans in place for short-distance swimming, track, and weightlifting events.
I'm sure the public is generally against professional athletes using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, hence the web of rules and testing in major sports leagues. But, as my Reason colleague Ronald Bailey has written, it's still good for the Enhanced Games to show what athletes are capable of when science boosts them beyond the fullest of their natural abilities. Science is already changing athletic competitions in other ways, from faster running shoes to quicker swimsuits and analytics-inspired tactics.
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Let enhanced competitions bloom, and let them compete for the public's attention against nonenhanced events too. Doping is probably more common than we already think anyway. Complicated antidoping rules often punish athletes for accidentally taking a drug they didn't know was banned, or reward athletes who have done better than everyone else at cheating the system.
One world record has already fallen: Greek swimmer and former Olympian Kristian Gkolomeev, who started taking performance-enhancing drugs in January, beat the world record in the 50 meter freestyle by 0.02 seconds in a February time trial.
By the way, don't expect the Trump administration to express "deep concerns" over all of this like the Biden administration did—Donald Trump Jr. is a partner at a venture capital firm that has invested in the Enhanced Games.
Don't Blame Me, Blame Brett
A new Netflix documentary, Untold: The Fall of Favre, looks at the complicated legacy of Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre. It's an engaging watch, although viewers probably won't learn anything important they didn't already know about Favre, his sexually inappropriate text messages, and his welfare-related scandal in Mississippi. For me, the documentary raised two questions that I wish had been explored.
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The narrative at the beginning of the movie is clear: Favre was so popular in Green Bay that local fans and the media treated him like a god. But the media knew Favre, despite his family man image, was gallivanting around. None of the journalists interviewed in the documentary seemed surprised at Favre's behavior in the explicit text messages. Why didn't any of them report on Favre's indiscretions sooner? It would have been unpopular and difficult, but it would have been the right thing to do, morally and journalistically.
One reporter who did the right thing and followed through on unpopular journalism is Anna Wolfe, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for reporting on the Mississippi welfare funds scandal. Mississippi officials used federal welfare funds on a new volleyball building at the University of Southern Mississippi (where Favre's daughter was on the team) and on Prevacus, a concussion-treatment company that Favre invested in. What surprised me is that government officials spend money on stadiums and politically well-connected companies all the time, just not through welfare funds. All Mississippi had to do was claim the money spent was going to create jobs, and hardly anyone would have batted an eye at it coming out of some state "economic development" fund. Why were they so incompetent in their crimes?
Monaco Monotony
The Monaco Grand Prix is famously the crown jewel of the Formula 1 calendar, the most historic race with the most glitz and glamor. Yet the actual racing often sucks. Modern F1 cars got bigger, but Monaco's narrow streets stayed the same, with the race turning into a fast, noisy parade without any passing. This year officials tried to fix the quality of the action by mandating that every driver make two pit stops—a good attempt that ultimately failed to make much difference because the problem with Monaco isn't pit strategy, it's that no one can pass on the track.
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F1 regulations are set to change next year, and the new generation of cars will be lighter and smaller with more electric power for temporary speed boosts. Hopefully that solves part of the problem. If not, F1 might have to research any possible adjustments that could be made to the circuit to create longer straights for overtaking (though the Monégasque government may resist anything involving permanent construction). The other option is to just leave it as is and tell critics to get over it: F1 has different kinds of circuits with different kinds of challenges, and Monaco is just going to be what it is.
Fencing Off Forest
Imagine the Philadelphia Eagles denying Tony Romo press credentials and keeping him from commentating on one of their games, just because he was one of many people who called out the Eagles owner for doing something crazy.
That's basically what happened in England this week.
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Earlier this month, Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis went onto the field immediately after a match to angrily confront the team's manager. (When something similar happened on Ted Lasso it felt overwrought and unrealistic, but Marinakis showed me wrong.) Pretty much everyone agreed it was a crazy thing to do, and Gary Neville had the gall to join the chorus, calling it "scandalous." This weekend, Neville was supposed to commentate on the final Nottingham Forest match of the season, the most important match of the Premier League's final day. But as Neville detailed on Instagram, calling it an "unprecedented action," Forest "would not give me an accreditation or access to the stadium as a co-commentator."
Marinakis is going to have to grow some thicker skin or no one will be left to commentate on his team's matches. (Forest lost the match, 1–0).
Replay of the Week
The Indianapolis 500 was chaotic, with drivers struggling to adapt to low temperatures (apparently temperatures in the 60s are too cold for them). Marco Andretti crashed out on the very first turn. Multiple cars crashed trying to slow down or stop on pit road. Josef Newgarden's bid for a three-peat ended with a fuel system failure. NASCAR driver Kyle Larson spun himself out, ending his attempt to finish both the 500 and the 600-mile NASCAR race on the same day.
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But the most shocking thing was that the chaos actually started before the race even began, when series mainstay Scott McLaughlin crashed during the pace laps.
That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, Southern Miss against Columbia in the NCAA Baseball Tournament.
The post The Steroid Olympics Are Coming appeared first on Reason.com.