The inaugural Enhanced Games concluded with a complicated scorecard: a record-breaking swim, dominant performances in weightlifting, and a string of surprising victories by athletes who said they competed without performance-enhancing drugs.
Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev delivered the event's standout moment, clocking 20.89 seconds in the men's 50-meter freestyle — faster than the current official world record — and earning a $1 million prize from organizers.
"The [Enhanced Games] last Saturday were not only a spectacular event — they were also a major business success," said Christian Angermayer, an investor and co-founder of the Enhanced Games, in a post on X.
Yet several results directly challenged the event's core premise. In multiple marquee competitions, athletes who declared themselves non-enhanced defeated rivals who were openly using performance-enhancing substances.
American sprinter Fred Kerley, competing as a non-enhanced athlete, won the men's 100-meter final in 9.97 seconds — well short of the 9.58 world record set by Usain Bolt in 2009, despite pre-event claims that Bolt's mark would "be destroyed." Kerley was reportedly dismissive of the enhanced competitors he raced against.
"They gotta do better than that," Kerley said in a post-race interview. "They need to train a little harder, get on that shit a little bit more, and go a little harder some more."
In the women's 100-meter final, non-enhanced sprinter Tristan Evelyn defeated five enhanced runners to take the top spot. Swimmer Hunter Armstrong similarly beat two enhanced competitors to claim victory in the men's 50-meter backstroke.
The Enhanced Games were founded in 2024 by Aron D'Souza, an Australian lawyer previously known for helping lead Peter Thiel's legal campaign against Gawker Media. The event is backed by Donald Trump Jr., Peter Thiel, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.
D'Souza has long argued that modern anti-doping regulations are outdated. "They're about this natural sports ethos, and they're stuck in the past," he has said. "We're about the future, science, and progress. We're about acceleration."
Organizers have positioned the Enhanced Games as part of a broader movement encompassing biohacking, longevity research, and human performance optimization. Prominent biohacker Bryan Johnson served as a co-host for the event.
"I'm cohosting the Enhanced Games this Sunday, first time as a broadcaster," Johnson wrote on X. "I spent the week with the athletes and doctors. So many moving stories of courage and triumph."
The competition underscores a growing intersection between Silicon Valley's optimization culture and elite sport. While organizers frame the Games as a science-forward alternative to Olympic-style rules, critics contend it normalizes dangerous drug use for entertainment and financial gain.
"Everything about the enhanced games seems so deeply unserious and stupid," author Brad Stulberg wrote on X. Sports scientist Steve Magness was equally critical, writing that organizers "somehow took near world-class sprinters, doped them, and made them slower... not just from their PRs, but from last season... and in most cases, slower than a good HS runner."
Both the World Anti-Doping Agency and World Aquatics have rejected the legitimacy of the competition, stating that performances recorded at the Enhanced Games will not be recognized as official world records.
Despite the criticism and mixed results, organizers remained bullish on the event's future. "Now that we have broken the ice and proven the Games can be done at the highest level, I expect many more partnerships to be signed in the months ahead," Angermayer wrote. "We are just getting started!"
Why it matters
World Anti-Doping Agency and World Aquatics have both declined to recognize performances from the event, meaning Gkolomeev's sub-world-record swim carries no official standing despite the $1 million prize attached to it — a structural tension between financial incentives and governing-body legitimacy that the Enhanced Games has not resolved.
The pattern of non-enhanced athletes outperforming openly doped competitors in sprint events raises questions about the event's ability to demonstrate its core scientific premise, independent of whether performance-enhancing substances carry long-term health risks.
The event's Silicon Valley backing and framing around biohacking and longevity research signals an attempt to build a distinct audience and sponsorship base outside traditional sports governance structures, rather than seeking recognition within them.
