Latest news with #Gkolomeev
IOL News
17 hours ago
- Business
- IOL News
Pro-doping enhanced games are the Olympics' fault
Adam Minter Performance-enhancing drugs destroy the bodies, minds and reputations of athletes. Nonetheless, a group of investors, including Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., see a business opportunity. They recently announced the first edition of the Enhanced Games - a kind of doping Olympics in which athletes are allowed and even encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs - will be held in Las Vegas next May. It's a perverse concept, but that hasn't stopped four Olympians from already signing on. Other athletes will likely follow, lured by millions of dollars in prize money and appearance fees. The actual Olympics have nothing to do with this, but the world's most popular sporting event isn't blameless. Its business model, under which athletes are paid little - if anything - creates the opportunity for something as warped as a sporting event that encourages doping to emerge. Consider the dilemma faced by Kristian Gkolomeev, an accomplished 31-year-old swimmer who has competed in the last four Summer Olympics for Greece. By his own admission, it hasn't exactly been a financially lucrative existence. In 2016, for example, the Greek government supported some of its top Olympians with stipends of less than $1 000 a month. Then and now medal winners receive lucrative bonuses, but Gkolomeev - like most Olympians - has never won one. Enter the Enhanced Games. Last year, in hopes of drumming up interest in the event, organizers offered a $1 million bounty for breaking the men's 100-meter freestyle swim. Gkolomeev signed up, juiced himself, and sure enough, 'broke' - a term that should be used loosely when it involves steroid usage - the record in February. In late May, at the Enhanced Games announcement, he was unapologetic when he told reporters: 'A successful year at the Enhanced Games for me is more than I could make in 10 careers.' That's a sorry commentary on the current state of Olympic sports such as swimming. After all, it's not as if the International Olympic Committee is hurting. Lucrative media rights contracts and sponsorships allowed the organization to earn $7.6 billion between 2021 and 2024. What happens to that cash? The IOC says 90% of it is distributed to organizations throughout the Olympic movement, from National Olympic Committees to host cities. Unfortunately, most of that money doesn't reach competitors. Instead, it's devoted to things like training facilities, host city stadiums and executive salaries. According to a 2020 report by Global Athlete, an athlete welfare organization, between 2013 and 2016, only 4.1% of IOC and NOC funds went to contestants. The situation doesn't appear to have improved over the last decade. Last year, a congressionally mandated report found that around 26% of American participants in the Olympic and Paralympic pipelines earn less than $15 000 per year. Athletes in developing countries often have it worse. In Kenya, for example, some who trained for the 2024 Olympics received allowances of roughly $7.50 a day. Bonuses for winning medals can make up some financial ground. In Kenya, a 2024 gold medal was worth around $23 000; in the US, it earned $37 500. That's a nice check, but once an athlete spreads it out over four years (or more) and accounts for intensive, often full-time training, it's far less impressive. US Olympians, for example, report spending an average of $21 700 annually on just competition fees and memberships. That compensation and expense structure isn't an accident or oversight. The modern Olympic games were launched by a European aristocrat who expected athletes to compete for the joy of sport, not money. That sentiment has remained stubbornly intact even as the games have evolved into a multi-billion-dollar advertising platform for the world's biggest brands. Last year, for example, the IOC reacted furiously when World Athletics, the governing body for sports such as track and field, announced plans to pay $50 000 to gold medalists in its events. From the IOC's perspective, compensation only serves to widen the gaps between more and less privileged countries and competitors. It's a tone-deaf response that highlights how out of touch - and perhaps ambivalent - the Olympics are with the lived reality of the athletes who generate its revenue. The Enhanced Games are built to exploit the oversight. 'One of our core principles is we want to make our athletes as rich as possible,' explained Aron D'Souza, president of the sporting event, in a May interview with Men's Health. There will be ample opportunities to do that in Las Vegas. The Enhanced Games plan to host competitions in three categories: swimming, track and field, and weightlifting. Each event will feature a $500 000 purse, with the winner earning $250 000. In addition, everyone competing will receive an appearance fee and is eligible to win bonuses for 'breaking' world records (as Gkolomeev did). That's potentially a lot of money, though it's not likely to be enough for the world's top Olympians - those who might win Olympic gold. They'd be forfeiting their reputations and chances at sponsorship deals. But the Enhanced Games doesn't need that kind of competitor. After all, enhancement is all about taking someone who can't win a race or set a record and turning them into an athlete who can. There are many people who will never touch a medal podium who will be eligible for that role. For anyone who cares about the integrity of sports, this is a tragic outcome. And it won't be the last of its kind. As long as the Olympics and other elite sporting competitions remain tethered to outdated beliefs of compensation, there will be opportunities for exploitation. Over time, each instance will only serve to erode the public's confidence in the fairness of competition. | Bloomberg Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of sports. He is the author, most recently, of 'Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."
Straits Times
a day ago
- Health
- Straits Times
World Aquatics adopts bylaw to stop doping enablers amid Enhanced Games furore
FILE PHOTO: Swimming - European Aquatics Championships - Sports and Recreational Center Milan Gale Muskatirovic, Belgrade, Serbia - June 23, 2024 Gold medallist, Greece's Kristian Gkolomeev poses with his medal on the podium after winning the men's 50m freestyle final REUTERS/Novak Djurovic/File Photo World Aquatics introduced a new bylaw on Tuesday that will prevent any athlete or official who supports or endorses doping from competing or holding any positions after a Greek swimmer supported by the Enhanced Games 'broke' the world record. With the help of the controversial programme, Greece's Kristian Gkolomeev swam the men's 50 metres freestyle in 20.89 seconds to shave 0.02 seconds off the long-standing record set by Brazil's Cesar Cielo in 2009. Gkolomeev, who has competed at four Olympics and came fifth in the event at the Paris Games last year with a time of 21.59 seconds, said he had gained "an extra 10 pounds of muscle" before the attempt. Enhanced Games had declined to disclose which "performance enhancements" the 31-year-old used. "Individuals who support, endorse, or participate in sporting events that embrace the use of scientific advancements or other practices ... will not be eligible to hold positions with World Aquatics or to participate in any World Aquatics competitions, events, or other activities," World Aquatics said. The practices can include either prohibited substances or prohibited methods. "This ineligibility would apply to roles such as athlete, coach, team official, administrator, medical support staff, or government representative," the governing body added. The Enhanced Games operate under the principle that banning performance-enhancing drugs in major competitions does not protect athletes but rather stifles their performance, and called on athletes to join the competition. The World Anti-Doping Agency had condemned the Enhanced Games as "dangerous and irresponsible", while Olympic 50 metres freestyle champion Cam McEvoy said Gkolomeev's time was 'irrelevant' to the sport. "Those who enable doped sport are not welcome at World Aquatics or our events," World Aquatics president Husain Al Musallam said. "This new bylaw ensures that we can continue to protect the integrity of our competitions, the health and safety of our athletes, and the credibility of the global aquatics community." The Enhanced Games have set their inaugural competition for May 2026 in Las Vegas, with swimming, athletics and weightlifting on the agenda. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
The Star
2 days ago
- Health
- The Star
Swimming-World Aquatics adopts bylaw to stop doping enablers amid Enhanced Games furore
FILE PHOTO: Swimming - European Aquatics Championships - Sports and Recreational Center Milan Gale Muskatirovic, Belgrade, Serbia - June 23, 2024 Gold medallist, Greece's Kristian Gkolomeev poses with his medal on the podium after winning the men's 50m freestyle final REUTERS/Novak Djurovic/File Photo (Reuters) -World Aquatics introduced a new bylaw on Tuesday that will prevent any athlete or official who supports or endorses doping from competing or holding any positions after a Greek swimmer supported by the Enhanced Games 'broke' the world record. With the help of the controversial programme, Greece's Kristian Gkolomeev swam the men's 50 metres freestyle in 20.89 seconds to shave 0.02 seconds off the long-standing record set by Brazil's Cesar Cielo in 2009. Gkolomeev, who has competed at four Olympics and came fifth in the event at the Paris Games last year with a time of 21.59 seconds, said he had gained "an extra 10 pounds of muscle" before the attempt. Enhanced Games had declined to disclose which "performance enhancements" the 31-year-old used. "Individuals who support, endorse, or participate in sporting events that embrace the use of scientific advancements or other practices ... will not be eligible to hold positions with World Aquatics or to participate in any World Aquatics competitions, events, or other activities," World Aquatics said. The practices can include either prohibited substances or prohibited methods. "This ineligibility would apply to roles such as athlete, coach, team official, administrator, medical support staff, or government representative," the governing body added. The Enhanced Games operate under the principle that banning performance-enhancing drugs in major competitions does not protect athletes but rather stifles their performance, and called on athletes to join the competition. The World Anti-Doping Agency had condemned the Enhanced Games as "dangerous and irresponsible", while Olympic 50 metres freestyle champion Cam McEvoy said Gkolomeev's time was 'irrelevant' to the sport. "Those who enable doped sport are not welcome at World Aquatics or our events," World Aquatics president Husain Al Musallam said. "This new bylaw ensures that we can continue to protect the integrity of our competitions, the health and safety of our athletes, and the credibility of the global aquatics community." The Enhanced Games have set their inaugural competition for May 2026 in Las Vegas, with swimming, athletics and weightlifting on the agenda. (Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken Ferris)
Daily Maverick
27-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Maverick
Trump Jr backs doping games: A grotesque venture into the world of performance enhancement
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) — 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
The Herald Scotland
25-05-2025
- Sport
- The Herald Scotland
The Enhanced Games may be the best advert possible for clean sport
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Kristian Gkolomeev from Greece swam the 50m freestyle faster than anyone in history. His time of 20.89 seconds, set in a time trial in the US in February, is 0.02 seconds quicker than the current official world record, which was set by Brazil's Cesar Cielo in 2009. In normal circumstances, Gkolomeev swim would be the cause for much celebration. It is, after all, impossible not to be impressive by an individual going faster than has ever been seen before. Yet Gkolomeev's record, or should I say 'record', was set in entirely atypical circumstances. Since January, the Greek, who has competed at four Olympic Games, is a World Championship medallist and reigning European champion, has been doping. He's not been doping in the usual covert way that athletes dope but rbather, as someone who's involved in the Enhanced Games, he's been openly doping, and he's happy to admit it. Gkolomeev's 'record-breaking' swim was revealed at the glitzy launch of the Enhanced Games on Wednesday, at which the organisers announced that the inaugural event will take place next May, in LA. Founded by Australian businessman, Aron D'Souza, the Enhanced Games will include short-distance swimming, sprinting and weightlifting in its programme and participants are permitted to use drugs banned in elite sport. This extraordinary sporting event has attracted financial backing from heavyweights such as Donald Trump Jr and billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel. Unsurprisingly, though, the Enhanced Games has also attracted considerable derision. From claiming that any 'records' that will be set, including Gkolomeev's, are meaningless to calling the event "boring" to branding the entire concept as "a danger to athletes' health", the criticism has been widespread. Donald Trump Jr is backing the Enhanced Games (Image: Getty Images for amfAR) It's hard to disagree with any of these claims. Yes, the records mean little given the athletes have been aided by performance-enhancing drugs, as well as equipment which is banned within official competition. Yes, there will be many who are entirely disinterested in watching athletes compete when they know their performances are drug-fuelled. And, most significantly, yes, it's hard to disagree that there's considerable health risks. The Enhanced Games organisers have implemented some rules regarding what substances their athletes can and cannot take; only drugs which are FDA-approved are permitted and cocaine and heroin are rules, however, only mitigate a proportion of the health risks. Many of the drugs that are permitted have not been tested on humans, nor have the long-term risks been assessed. And given the whole point of the Enhanced Games is to push the boundaries as far as possible, it's not much of a jump to think the athletes involved may be willing to take untested and unregulated despite all of these obvious drawbacks to the Enhanced Games, I am, I'm ashamed to admit, fascinated by it. I'm not fascinated by it in the same way I'm fascinated by the Olympic Games or the Wimbledon final or the World Cup. These sporting events are fascinating because I'm watching athletes compete for something that has, for so long, been their dream to win. They're the best in the world at their respective sport and they have, in the main, done it by fair means. The Enhanced Games are not fascinating in the same way - clearly, the Enhanced Games has been a dream of no one, the very best on the planet are staying well clear and they are, by definition, not competing clean. So, given I'm someone who is very much a proponent of clean sport, I, and everyone who has the same mindset as me, should, on paper, have zero interest in the Enhanced Games, zero interest in the performances of the doped-up athletes and consequently, zero interest in the results. But despite all of this, I'm intrigued. I'm interested in what substances the athletes are taking, and I'm extremely interested in how exactly, these substances affect their performance. Olympic sport, as things stand, is purported to be clean. Everyone knows Olympic sport isn't entirely clean; drug testing is behind the dopers, but Olympic sport is sold as clean sport and I believe most athletes are clean. This, though, is why the Enhanced Games is piquing my interest because what remains unclear with Olympic sport is quite how significantly performance-enhancing drugs benefit athletes. Each individual athlete will respond differently to each particular performance-enhancing substance so there's no definitive answer as to quite what percentage difference doping will make. Olympic sport may well benefit from the Enhanced Games (Image: Kirby Lee, Kirby Lee-Imagn Images) Equally, doping, alone, does not automatically make an individual world-class. I still laugh at the people who say they could, too, have won seven Tour de France titles if only they'd taken the same drugs as Lance Armstrong. Spoiler, they couldn't have. Doping or not, an athlete still needs to train insanely hard and commit their life to sport if they're going to produce world-class performances. Injecting, for example, EPO and sitting waiting for the benefits to kick-in is not how it works. And this is why the Enhanced Games is quite so interesting, to me anyway. The athletes taking part in the Enhanced Games may not be the very best in the world, but there's certainly a few who can be considered world class. Gkolomeev, the Greek swimmer who swan faster than the official 50m freestyle world record has, for a decade, been mixing with the world's very best, without ever being at the very top of the tree. But, with only a couple of months of doping, it appears that he's now faster than any swimmer who's ever lived. There's something quite scary about seeing how quickly and how significantly even a short-term doping programme can benefit an individual. But rather than the Enhanced Games becoming an advert for doping, I believe there's every chance it does the exact opposite. Yes, it will highlight the positive effects on performance that taking banned substances can have but it also is likely to prove that in the bigger picture, there's far greater benefits to competing clean both in terms of health and in terms of approval from the public and society. After all, is there any point in breaking a world record if no one applauds it, or even acknowledges it? Surely, it's far better to compete legitimately and take any genuine plaudits that may come as a result of a good, clean performance. We're yet to see just how far ahead of clean athletes the doped-up athletes end up; we'll find out more come the inaugural Enhanced Games next year. But rather than act as an advert for doping, my guess is it'll do more to promote clean sport than any anti-doping programme has ever managed.
