Roids were all the rage at the Enhanced Games

In Las Vegas, the blazing sun beats down on a makeshift Olympic-length pool. Cody Miller stands on the starting block of lane one. His arms are raised in victory. MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” thumps over the loudspeakers as he rips off his swimming cap, throwing it to the ground. Miller lets out a guttural scream, muscles and veins bulging. He’s just won the men’s 50m breaststroke at the inaugural Enhanced Games. Miller’s wallet is $250,000 fatter than it was 26.55 seconds ago — a new personal best time for the two-time Olympic medalist.

Is Miller’s win thanks to his polyurethane swimsuit, which was banned after the 2008 Olympics as a form of technological doping? Or was it his personalized protocol of performance-enhancing drugs, which are verboten in almost every other competition? One thing is certain: Miller isn’t ashamed of his decision to dope. He’s been talking about it for months and has the enthusiastic endorsement of his doctors, coaches, and family.

“I just shaved seven-tenths off my best at 34,” he says, when asked how “enhancing” has affected his performance.

A Vegas hometown hero, Miller left professional swimming in December 2024 after setting a personal record at his final clean meet. “The last lap, my body shut down, stopped working,” he said in a vlog explaining his retirement. The video ends with Miller plugging his availability for Cameo, local swim meets, speaking engagements, and his YouTube channel.

The Enhanced Games are Miller’s chance to show he’s still able to set records and still able to compete. With the support of performance-enhancing drugs, Miller will end the day by winning another $250,000. When he does, he’ll leap out of the pool like it was nothing. He’ll spend the rest of the Games pumping his arms, cheering on his fellow “enhanced” athletes.

At no point will he ever look tired.

“Steroid Olympics” is a blunt moniker, but it’s one that’s stuck since the Enhanced Games were first announced by tech entrepreneur Aaron D’Souza in 2023. The venture, which biotech entrepreneur Christian Angermayer also cofounded, counts Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. among its backers. The elevator pitch: a live sporting event where performance-enhancing drugs are not only allowed, but encouraged. These are athletes willing to push their bodies to the absolute limits — at least, the limits approved by the Food and Drug Administration and administered under close medical supervision.

For this inaugural Enhanced Games, 42 athletes in swimming, weightlifting, and track and field were incentivized to break world records with the chance to earn up to $1 million in prize money. For several weeks leading up to the Games, the athletes were sequestered at a facility in Abu Dhabi, undergoing a barrage of medical tests, metabolic panels, MRIs, and CT scans. Athletes who wanted enhancements had to be medically cleared to use them and were then required to work with doctors to develop a personalized protocol based on their sport and individual goals.

Enhanced’s CEO, the 29-year old Maximilian Martin, is the type of figure you’d imagine looksmaxxers studying thanks to his chiseled jaw and earnest passion for personal optimization. “Traditional medicine is all about [fixing] what’s wrong with you. It’s about getting you back to your baseline,” Martin says. But with the help of performance enhancers, “you can get into that space beyond. I think it’s really scientific evolution.”

Martin calls the practice of self-optimizing through substances “enhancing,” but the concept is more commonly known as biohacking. It revolves around using science and tech to achieve perceived optimal personal health. The trend invites self-experimentation with biological testing, wearable devices, and in extreme cases, dubiously sourced substances. It’s not limited to elite athletes, either. Silicon Valley bros injecting themselves with gray-market peptides, wellness influencers hawking the latest supplements on TikTok, and whatever it is longevity influencer (and Enhanced Games commentator) Bryan Johnson is doing now — these are all forms of biohacking.

Researchers, clean athletes, and sporting organizations are largely unconvinced. The World Anti-Doping Agency, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the International Olympic Committee, and several other professional athletic associations have heavily criticized Enhanced as setting a dangerous precedent. Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA, has called the Enhanced Games a “dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle.” Critics have also questioned whether performance-enhancing drugs could ever be used safely, raising concerns over the athletes’ long-term health.

But the Games are only one portion of Enhanced’s business. There’s also a direct-to-consumer telehealth service that offers people the option to buy monthly subscriptions to supplements, (legal) peptides, and hormone replacement therapies. In other words, Look at what these athletes can do with transparent, medically supervised enhancement. If that interests you, hop on over to the website and perhaps try enhancing yourself. More than a few critics have accused Enhanced of science-washing in a bid to drive sales toward its telehealth services. Oddly enough, some of the enhancements available to consumers were not available for the athletes. For example: prescription GLP-1 agonists and GHK-Cu copper peptides.

It’s hard to look at the spectacle of the Enhanced Games and not dub it another wellness grift, especially when you look at Enhanced’s bombastic social media channels. Retired Australian swimmer James Magnussen has been particularly vocal, posting explainers and comparisons of his physique when he won three Olympic medals versus shots taken after his enhancement protocol. In his heyday, Magnussen had the typical lithe swimmer’s body. After starting enhancements, his upper body could barely fit into his swimsuit. Magnussen put on so much muscle, Johnson noted in the livestream, that Magnussen started sinking in the pool and had to dial back his protocol.

Given the health concerns, Enhanced’s executives, scientists, and athletes are relentless in emphasizing the company’s commitment to science and transparency.

“We’re the protector, not only of the Enhanced brand, but also of the movement. If we’re sloppy, even if a [substance] is legal, I think people would be disappointed. We’d do a lot of harm,” says Angermayer, one of the cofounders. “I want us to be the stewards of enhancement.”

Asked if he uses enhancements, Angermayer enthusiastically says yes. (Angermayer says he takes Enhanced’s supplements, plus testosterone, tesamorelin, modafinil, and DHEA.) Martin also confirmed that he began “enhancing” two years ago because he would never want to be in a position to speak about an athlete going on enhancements without understanding what it did to his own body. Martin wouldn’t specify his protocol to The Verge, but he did tell GQ that he uses testosterone.

“I’m only doing stuff and only selling stuff that I believe in. That means, obviously, I’m my best customer,” says Angermayer. “I’m living what we preach, and I’m preaching what I’m doing.”

Angermayer and Martin argue that critics discount the intelligence of the average person. The latter has frequently likened the Enhanced Games to Formula One — cool technological advancements that maximize speed happen at the elite level, and eventually trickle down to the cars the rest of us drive. People, Martin says, have enough common sense that they don’t expect Toyota Camrys and Corollas to perform like a Ferrari. Then again, just because a person knows they’re not an Olympian, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t emulate the behaviors of one. Enhanced’s telehealth business model is counting on that.

For a roughly $50 million event, there were a number of technical issues.

A pregame conference, for instance, was beset by screeching speakers that left Martin visibly flustered and the press murmuring. Shortly after the Games started, the live feed sat frozen for several minutes. The jumbotron occasionally glitched throughout the night.

During a press tour of the venue, we were told that just one month prior, the land the stadium sits on used to be a barren lot. It’s believable — the venue is somehow bigger and smaller than you’d think. There are roughly 2,500 seats, though the oppressive 94-degree-Fahrenheit heat meant many seats in the grandstands remained empty for the first half of the Games. Speaking of which, you couldn’t buy tickets. The event was invite-only. Some attendees were family and friends of the athletes. According to Enhanced, another 250 were credentialed media spanning 75 publications worldwide. The rest, as far as I can tell, were influencers. (Media were told not to interview attendees. Those who were caught were chastised and threatened with ejection.)

On the livestream, Bryan Johnson cut a bizarre figure, clad in sunglasses and a special UV umbrella to protect him from the aging effects of direct sunlight. The opening ceremony featured an electronica version of “O Fortuna” while dancers in black leotards gyrated in the sweltering heat. Before each race, each athlete was introduced like a WWE wrestler entering the ring. The crowd was repeatedly encouraged to get loud, and at one point, for some reason, “Dragostea din tei” — aka the Numa Numa song — blared before fading into an obscure Eminem remix. Between events, the jumbotron ran slick Olympic-esque sizzle reels showcasing the athletes and the world records they were trying to break. It also peppered in the Games’ talking points about performance-enhancing drugs, medical supervision, and the philosophy of adequately compensating athletes. A QR code periodically flashed, encouraging spectators to send in selfies that were then turned into AI-generated portraits of what they’d look like “enhanced.” At other times, the traditional kiss cam was replaced with a “flex cam.” A disproportionate amount of the audience was, suffice to say, hella jacked.

But as the night progressed, the oddities increased. The weightlifting events took place earlier in the day, during peak temperatures, with several athletes unable to finish their events. James Magnussen — the swimmer who got too big — finished last in all his events despite wearing a gold custom-made suit. Multiple personal bests were recorded, but nearly every attempt by enhanced athletes to break the world record failed. The men’s 100m sprint was plagued by three false starts. While most of the 42 athletes are using performance-enhancing drugs, four have kept clean. Three of the clean athletes — Hunter Armstrong, Tristan Evelyn, and Fred Kerley — won their races with ease. After winning his, Kerley clowned on his competitors, teasing that perhaps they should’ve doped a bit more.

Not a single world record fell until the last event of the evening: the men’s 50m freestyle. Martin ran along the length of the pool, cheering and clapping furiously. So did the other Enhanced athletes. At the last possible second, quite literally, Kristian Gkolomeev touched the wall, and the arena erupted into flashing red light. WORLD RECORD was plastered on the jumbotron. Gkolomeev had broken Cam McEvoy’s record by 0.07 second. Everyone screamed — probably because, thank god, something happened.

Enhanced’s definition of “optimization” is more specific than headlines would imply.

People generally think of steroids as a path to looking ripped, says Dr. Guido Pieles, a sports cardiologist and chair of Enhanced’s independent medical commission. “They’re used for visual effects, and this is clearly wrong,” Pieles says. “I think it’s really about finding an optimization, not a maximization of health.”

Pieles is well known in the elite sports community, having worked for years with Manchester United FC and FIFA. He says his work with the Enhanced Games is about ending research stigma to learn how these drugs affect athletic performance, and what can then be inferred for preventive health.

Several times in our conversation, Pieles was adamant that no person needs to enhance. For many people, genetics and taking care of nutrition, sleep, and exercise are more than enough to become one’s “optimal” self. Unlike Martin and Angermayer, Pieles says he’s unenhanced, and primarily sticks to sleep tracking.

Pieles is emphatic that the lack of data around performance-enhancing drugs is a major problem. Not only does it encourage gym enthusiasts to self-administer drugs in secret, but it also prevents researchers from understanding what safe dosages are. One objective of this whole experiment, he says, is to change that. The results will be published as part of a five-year, institutional review board-approved clinical study.

Another goal is to understand how these substances actually affect performance. For instance, he notes that most experts don’t believe erythropoietin has any purpose in swimming shorter distances, as its primary function is regulating red blood cells. Typically, it’s a drug illegally used by cyclists and marathon runners. However, Pieles says they’ve found it may have beneficial effects in promoting shorter recovery times for swimmers. He also emphasized that the athletes were taking minimal doses of each substance and monitored for side effects. If at any point the athlete experienced a “suboptimal” performance, their protocol would be adjusted. If they didn’t pass screening tests, they wouldn’t be allowed to dope. According to Wired, strongman Thor Björnsson had to reduce the number of performance-enhancing drugs he had been previously taking to adhere to the Games’ rules.

“For me, as a scientist, it’s actually quite embarrassing that as late as 2026, we need to sit here and do a small, statistically insignificant study with 36 athletes to find out what the right dose, the right medical supervision, the right protocol, the right enhancements do for athletes. It’s crazy,” a heated Pieles says at a pregame press conference after one journalist suggests that Enhanced is treating its athletes as lab rats.

“I say with this study, we’re not solving all the problems. It’s a start for our scientists to say, ‘Let’s break the stigma.’”

Bearing the brunt of the controversy are the athletes. Many have faced ridicule online; critics, peers, and fans alike are primarily concerned with their long-term health and well-being.

That said, the Enhanced athletes were more than happy to speak for themselves at a media scrum before the games.

“It’s about the money,” says Ben Proud, who won a silver medal in swimming at the Paris Olympics. Proud’s decision to join the Enhanced Games sent shockwaves through the swimming community.

“I don’t think I’ve got anything to prove. The world record itself brings about a huge amount of money. What does it change from my past career? It changes nothing.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by nearly all of Enhanced’s athletes who spoke with The Verge and other news outlets — many of them have been retired for years and say they struggled to make a living after dedicating their lives to a sport. Financially, they say they view the Enhanced Games as a second chance at an athletic career, a way to support their families once the spotlight fades. Enhanced is already looking at future clinical trials and recruitment.

Each athlete is paid a base salary, as well as appearance fees for promotional opportunities. Their training and medical testing are also covered. And lastly, there’s little financial downside to finishing last in a race. (The reputational downside, however, means enhanced athletes are effectively required to give up their previous careers to participate.) While the top prize is $1 million for breaking world records, athletes can win anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 for finishing dead last. Comparatively, a US athlete who wins a gold medal at the Olympics gets paid $37,500 and receives no bonus for setting a new world best.

“I’ve actually lost faith in sports as a whole. I think there are more people cheating than I used to think. Before I turned a blind eye because it was too painful to think about, and I just hoped that everyone was racing clean,” says Proud. “I think now, there’s more of a drive to say, ‘Look, there are people who fully believe that everyone runs clean, and those are the ones who should be protected.’”

Not all of Enhanced’s athletes feel that doping is necessary. The four clean athletes chose to participate unenhanced and are counted in the study as a control group. (Though two of them, Armstrong and Sohib Khaled, did wear polyurethane swimsuits.) During a pre-event press conference, Enhanced also claimed it supported USADA officials who arrived to ensure unenhanced athletes remained clean.

“It’s nothing against the protocol,” Armstrong tells The Verge, saying he wants to remain eligible for the 2028 Olympics. “I don’t know what the study has come up with, but I personally have always taken pride in getting as far as I can on natural, god-given talent. So I don’t care if whatever product [Enhanced] is selling is going to make me live until I’m 200 years old. That could be for some people, but it’s not for me.”

Every enhanced athlete The Verge spoke with said they felt no side effects to their health from the drug protocol. Most said doping primarily helped with recovery, enabling them to take on harder workouts more often. Every single one was also emphatic that Enhanced had treated them well.

“I was one of the most elite athletes in the world, but I had no idea where my health was actually at,” says Magnussen. “Having gone through the process, myself and everyone on the blocks next to me, we are the healthiest athletes in the world because we’ve gone through a process that does not exist for Olympic athletes.”

As the first athlete to sign up for the Enhanced Games, Magnussen is one of the more controversial figures associated with the venture. In addition to being featured prominently in Enhanced’s marketing, he claimed prior to the Games that he would “juice to the gills.” During the scrum, he was also particularly defensive of Enhanced’s mission, going so far as to call the Olympics the “most unfair event [he] has ever been a part of.” (Despite the perceived unfairness, he has won three Olympic medals.) Magnussen also challenged the press’s scrutiny of Enhanced, asking why no journalist was questioning the long-term effects of the covid-19 vaccine. (Research is still ongoing, but the existing evidence shows serious, long-term side effects are rare.)

“I have to convince my friends back in Australia to dial down the amount of peptides or enhancements they’re taking. In Australia, if you are a man aged between 20 and 50, and you don’t know someone who’s using peptides, has used peptides, or is currently on peptides, then you’re lying,” says Magnussen. “I think all of us want to wake up, feel younger, sharper, and do better at whatever it is that we’ve chosen with our lives.”

The spectacle of the Enhanced Games is distracting. But, in the quiet moments, everyone is asking the same question: Is this a grift?

Sure enough, the Games are barely over before internet sleuths begin questioning the validity of Gkolomeev’s record. In the livestream, it appeared that the record was declared broken before Gkolomeev ever touched the wall. Enhanced’s spokespeople call the assertion “internet drivel.” Multiple times during the event, Enhanced’s executives and spokespeople told skeptical press that all timekeeping tech was certified and verified by the same entities used by the Olympics and other international sporting organizations. (One of Enhanced’s staffers held up an official regulation tape measure during the venue tour, challenging the press to verify the lengths of the track and pool for themselves.) The Guardian suggested the clock on the jumbotron was not synced properly, which is believable given how often it glitched during the event.

In many respects, it hardly matters whether Gkolomeev broke the record. His effort won’t be acknowledged in the official record books recognized by other sporting organizations. What this underscores is the dissonance between Enhanced’s official line and how it’s perceived by the public. Some experts argue that Enhanced’s narratives around science, harm reduction, and the future of medicine don’t hold up under closer scrutiny.

“For a clinical trial, you want everyone in your control group or experimental group to be doing the same thing,” explains Martin Chandler, a research fellow at the University of Birmingham’s School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences, specializing in image and performance-enhancing drugs. “It clearly says that every athlete will be using a different protocol. That’s not a clinical study. That’s a collection of case studies.”

“You can’t generalize any of those findings,” says Ian Boardley, a professor at the University of Birmingham’s School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences. “We also can’t separate any of the effects from possible placebo effects because obviously there’s a lot of [athletes] who know what they’re taking.”

Boardley and Chandler, who coauthored a paper about potential harm reduction at the Enhanced Games, also said it’ll be difficult for third-party researchers to isolate what — if any — substances are responsible for certain improvements or adverse effects because each athlete is mixing drugs with performance-enhancing equipment (e.g., the polyurethane swimsuits). Both also raised concerns about long-term health effects for the athletes involved.

“If we look at exercise populations, they don’t just take substances for 25 weeks and then stop. A five-year follow-up would be fine if it is just the 25 weeks, but what’s the likelihood that all of these athletes are going to stop using enhancement products after that [time period]?” says Boardley.

At a press conference, Enhanced’s Pieles addressed and acknowledged that the clinical trial had received criticism, while emphasizing it was developed with institutional review board approval. He also noted he was confident that scientific peers would have some concerns assuaged now that the clinical trial is available for peer review.

“I really meet a lot of fantastic people who work legally in enhancement medicine — though really, on the fringes of what medicine is. These guys tell me our study is very boring,” Pieles tells The Verge. He went on to reiterate that the independent medical commission deliberately chose to only use FDA-approved substances because they were well studied and the side effects were known — even when used off-label. Experimental peptides, he says, were disallowed from the events precisely because there wasn’t robust evidence regarding their efficacy. He also says Enhanced has refused to publish individual athlete protocols to prevent copycats.

“For me, the whole enhancement thing is that in 10 years, we can move away from steroids. Yes, steroids have side effects. Yes, they make you look good. But I say there are many more drugs coming — particularly if we do the research with the aim of preventing disease, increasing activity span and longevity. We will also shift our drug research profile more this way. For me, it’s really a paradigm shift in medicine.”

As the Games came to a close, Martin fell to his knees, kowtowing to Gkolomeev during the awards ceremony before the other athletes hoisted him up into the air. Streamers exploded over the pool. The Killers were introduced for a 30-minute concert to close out the event. They opened with “Mr. Brightside” as the athletes bopped around in the front row.

“We have arrived at mainstream culture!” Martin yelled into a mic. “We are here to stay!”

Now that the inaugural Enhanced Games are done, there’s the question of whether this is a one-time stunt or a genuine biohacking movement. Martin says Enhanced doesn’t expect to turn a profit in year one. Haters are gleefully characterizing the fact that only one world record was broken — and that the few unenhanced athletes triumphed over their doped-up peers — as proof that the event was an unmitigated disaster. Martin says the real victory is that 12 athletes were able to set 14 personal bests. (That night, I set a personal best for most instances of “What just happened?” uttered.)

But will anyone tune in to another Enhanced Games? I checked the YouTube stream throughout the night. At its peak, the Games hit 57,000 concurrent viewers. Many athletes say they will return to do it again. Enhanced says the current plan is to hold the Games once a year going forward, and to eventually explore other sports, like cycling. In future Enhanced clinical trials, Pieles says he hopes to introduce genetic testing to better consider whether an athlete may be prone to side effects or other adverse effects.

Outside of these Games, biohacking isn’t going anywhere, either. For the most devoted self-optimizers, the quest to reach their personal “best” by any means possible is just getting started.