The Enhanced Games, slated to commence in May 2026, has sparked outrage across the sporting world. This new competition is the first in history to openly permit performance-enhancing drugs, and sporting bodies arenât happy about it.
World Athletics president called the concept âbollocksâ, while World Anti-Doping Agency president has dismissed it as âdangerousâ and âridiculousâ.
Such criticisms might be justified, but they overlook the fact that the Enhanced Games is making obvious what society has always quietly accepted â that most people are willing to watch athletes risk harm when the entertainment is good enough. And thatâs something that all sporting bodies should spend more time considering.
This bargain between spectacle and safety isnât new to sport. Ancient Romans packed the Colosseum to watch gladiators fight to the death. Itâs certainly been toned down over the last 2,000 years. But the gladiatorial spirit remains alive in modern arenas. How itâs packaged has merely become more sophisticated.
Consider boxing. Society has allowed professional boxing for more than 100 years despite the dangers to fighters. In one group of amateur and professional boxers, 62% were found to have .
Yet arenas still sell out. Fans celebrate knockout victories even though they know they may shorten a boxerâs life. Sporting bodies and fans have decided this trade-off is acceptable. Every time a ticket is bought, a statement is made about acceptable risk.
The multi-sport Enhanced Games simply extends this logic. Held in Las Vegas, athletes will be able to use (approved by the drugs regulator for medical uses) âoff-labelâ under medical supervision. These include testosterone, growth hormone and anabolic steroids.
Long-term use of substances like these can damage the heart and blood vessels, harm the liver, disrupt the bodyâs natural hormone production (potentially causing infertility) and affect a personâs mood and mental health.
The aim to usher in a ânew era of elite competitionâ and with it âthe future of human performanceâ. Founder Aron D'Souza, an Australian businessman, athletes should be free to do whatever they want to their own bodies. The has challenged the Enhanced Games for putting athletes at risk.
But isnât the Enhanced Games simply a more dangerous version of traditional athletics? If brain trauma is the potential price of boxing entertainment, why the outrage about pharmaceutical enhancement risks? The moral panic about chemical enhancement seems inconsistent with societyâs silence about the proven harms in so many of the sports people already love.
The Olympics already celebrates athletes who push their bodies to extremes through punishing training regimens, strict diets and recovery methods that test the limits of human physiology. Research has documented serious physical and psychological harms in many sports, including some like gymnastics and figure skating where even child athletes have faced high risks of and , including eating disorders, anxiety and depression.
The Enhanced Games just moves the risk threshold further along a spectrum society has already accepted.
Every time a new enhanced athlete is announced, their national sporting bodies issue condemnations. stated that they were âdeeply disappointedâ about swimmer decision to join the Enhanced Games. When fellow swimmer announced his intention to participate, governing body said it âcondemns everything the Enhanced Games stands forâ and that they were âincredibly disappointedâ with his decision.
But these same bodies preside over sports where athletes routinely suffer serious injuries. When will they acknowledge the risks theyâre already asking athletes to accept?
The question isnât whether the Enhanced Games introduces something morally unprecedented. It doesnât. What it does is forces sports fans to confront the bargain theyâve always accepted but rarely discuss. Fans want extraordinary athletic performances, and theyâre willing to let athletes pay extraordinary prices to deliver them.
Being honest about risk
If sporting bodies are serious about athlete welfare rather than just moral posturing, they need to be honest about risk across all of sport. In research ethics, institutional review boards conduct formal risk-benefit analyses before approving human studies. They document potential harms and assess whether benefits justify risks.
Sporting bodies should do the same. This includes the Enhanced Games. So far, theyâre failing just as badly as traditional sports, hiding behind claims of medical supervision rather than stating the trade-offs.
Informed consent is central to medical ethics and argue it isnât talked about enough in sport. Athletes should understand the specific risks of their sport based on robust data, not vague warnings.
For example, all boxers should be aware of the dangers they face each time they take a punch to the head. Similarly, all enhanced athletes should understand what prolonged testosterone and growth hormone do to the body. Informed consent requires real information, not liability waivers.
As a philosopher of science, I suggest we need to be consistent about our judgments across different sports. The sporting establishment denouncing the Enhanced Games should look in the mirror. Boxing, rugby and motorsports organisations as well as bodies representing a host of other sports preside over activities with documented long-term harms.
The selective outrage is telling. It suggests this is more about maintaining comfortable fictions than protecting athletes. We prefer our sports wrapped in the language of safety and personal freedom. The Enhanced Games threatens to make that fiction harder to maintain.