The Steroid Olympics

It's Friday, June fifth. Quick note before we get into today's topic: the May jobs report dropped this morning. A hundred and seventy two thousand jobs added, double what economists expected. April was revised up to a hundred and seventy nine thousand. March was revised up to two hundred and fourteen thousand. If you listened to Wednesday's episode about the stock market looking fragile underneath the surface, the labor market just pushed back on that narrative pretty hard. Worth watching. We'll probably revisit this. OK. Two weeks ago in Las Vegas, a group of Olympic-caliber athletes competed in a one-day sporting event where performance-enhancing drugs were not only allowed but encouraged. It was called the Enhanced Games. Peter Thiel funded it. Donald Trump Jr.'s fund backed it. The organizers promised that world records would be "destroyed." A million-dollar bonus was on the table for any athlete who broke one. They had swimmers on testosterone, sprinters on stimulants, and a strongman from Game of Thrones deadlifting under medical supervision. And when it was over, the clean athletes won three of the events, only one world record was broken, and the guy who predicted he'd shatter Usain Bolt's 100-meter record ran four tenths of a second slower than it. The steroid Olympics happened, and the steroids mostly lost. The Enhanced Games were held on Sunday, May 24th at a venue in Las Vegas. The format included swimming, sprinting, and weightlifting, and the rules were straightforward: athletes could use any FDA-approved performance-enhancing substance under medical supervision. Testosterone, human growth hormone, EPO, stimulants, all fair game. The organizers positioned it as the future of sports, a place where athletes could push human limits without the "hypocrisy" of anti-doping rules that, they argued, most elite athletes circumvent anyway. Fred Kerley, a two-time Olympic 100-meter medalist, was the biggest name on the track. He predicted Bolt's world record of 9.58 seconds would get "destroyed." He ran 9.97. Clean. He didn't take any enhancements because he wanted to protect his eligibility for the 2028 Olympics. He won anyway. The doped sprinters couldn't beat him. In the pool, Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev (kris-tee-AHN goh-loh-MEH-ev) was the only athlete to break a world record, clocking 20.81 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle against the official mark of 20.88. He collected $1.25 million for it. But the record won't be ratified by any international swimming body because the event doesn't follow anti-doping protocols or standard timing certification. Barbadian sprinter Tristan Evelyn won the women's 100 meters clean at 11.25. American swimmer Hunter Armstrong won the 50-meter backstroke clean at 24.21. Hafthor Bjornsson (HAF-thor BYORN-son), the Icelandic strongman known as "The Mountain" from Game of Thrones, deadlifted 475 kilograms. The world record is 510. He's open about using testosterone and growth hormone and has been for years. The organizers had promised multiple world records would fall across every discipline. Instead, most competitors posted times and lifts that would have been competitive at a well-run national championship but wouldn't have turned heads at the Olympics. The enhancement, for most athletes, didn't produce enhanced results. So if the athletic results were underwhelming, what was the point? The point was the business model, and once you see it, the entire event makes a lot more sense. Enhanced Group, the company behind the Games, went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May under the ticker ENHA. The company doesn't just host sporting events. It sells performance-enhancement products directly to consumers: testosterone injections, peptides, supplements, and telehealth consultations for hormone therapy. One company executive compared the model to Red Bull, which uses extreme sports events to market energy drinks. The athletes were the commercial. The competition existed to generate attention, controversy, and media coverage that would drive consumers to Enhanced Group's online store, where they could buy the same substances the athletes used. The million-dollar prize bounties ensured headlines. The Peter Thiel and Trump Jr. backing ensured political coverage. The controversy over doping in sports ensured moral outrage, which on the internet is the most reliable form of free advertising. This is the same pattern we've seen all month on HigherIQ. Shrek wasn't a movie, it was a merchandise engine. McDonald's isn't a burger company, it's a real estate company. GTA V isn't a game, it's a platform for selling virtual currency. The Enhanced Games aren't a sporting event. They're a customer acquisition funnel for a publicly traded hormone therapy company. The sprint times don't matter. The stock price does. The timing wasn't accidental either. RFK Jr.'s FDA loosened restrictions on testosterone prescribing and certain peptides earlier this year, making it easier for companies like Enhanced Group to sell these products legally. The regulatory environment shifted, and the Enhanced Games launched into the gap. Strip away the business model and there's still a genuine philosophical question underneath that doesn't have a clean answer. The anti-doping establishment, led by the World Anti-Doping Agency, calls the Enhanced Games "dangerous and irresponsible." The International Olympic Committee said the event is "a betrayal of everything we stand for." Fair enough. But the anti-doping system has its own credibility problem. Russian state-sponsored doping went undetected for years. China's swimming team had twenty three positive tests for a banned heart medication ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, and the cases were quietly closed. Athletes who test positive for recreational marijuana still face suspensions. Sha'Carri Richardson missed the 2021 Olympics because she smoked weed after learning her biological mother had died. The system that claims to protect clean sport has repeatedly failed to catch the biggest cheaters while punishing athletes for things that have nothing to do with competitive advantage. The Enhanced Games' founder, Aron D'Souza (duh-SOO-zuh), argues that adults should be free to do whatever they want with their own bodies, and that medically supervised enhancement is safer than the black-market doping that already happens at every level of elite sport. There's a logic to that argument, even if you don't agree with it. The counterargument is that normalizing PED use creates pressure on younger athletes who feel they can't compete without drugs, and that the long-term health effects of testosterone and growth hormone use are serious and not fully understood, regardless of medical supervision. One sports medicine professor called the Enhanced Games "a natural history experiment to see what happens," which is not exactly reassuring. The results from Las Vegas accidentally made the strongest argument against the event's own premise. If the drugs don't produce dramatically better results, if clean athletes can win events against doped competitors, then the case for allowing enhancement is weaker than the organizers claimed. The whole pitch was "remove the limits and watch what happens." What happened was 9.97 in the 100 meters, a time Kerley has beaten while competing clean at sanctioned events. The future of sports looked a lot like the present. So if this comes up in conversation, here's how to think about it. The Enhanced Games happened two weeks ago in Las Vegas. Athletes were allowed to use testosterone, HGH, EPO, and stimulants under medical supervision. The organizers predicted world records would be shattered. One was broken, in the 50-meter freestyle. Three clean athletes won their events, including Fred Kerley in the 100 meters, who ran 9.97 without any enhancement. The company behind the Games is publicly traded on the NYSE and its real business is selling testosterone and supplements to consumers, using the athletic competition as a marketing event. The anti-doping system the Enhanced Games claims to be replacing has its own serious credibility problems. And the results from Las Vegas accidentally undermined the event's central argument: the drugs didn't produce dramatically better performance. The steroid Olympics happened. The steroids mostly lost. Have a good weekend. Stay informed, stay curious, and we'll see you Monday.