The Enhanced Games are coming - are we ready?

Well, here's a bizarre idea. A new international sporting event called the Enhanced Games is due to make its debut next December in Australia. It is being billed as the Olympics without the drugs testing.

So, all those athletes that have been banned from the Olympics over the years for testing positive for banned substances are positively (sic) encouraged to attend, along with a bunch of others who would never have qualified for the Olympics because of their predilection for performance-enhancing drugs. Like I say, bizarre. One has to assume that Russia will win, but who knows.

The organizers, however, are convinced that this will be a commercial success, and that lots of people will be willing to pay to see a pumped-up athlete blow away Usain Bolt's 100m sprint record. And who knows, they may be right. They are billing it as "science set free". Others, though, are calling it "a ridiculous PR stunt".

Enhanced Games creator Aron D'Souza, an engaging Oxford-trained lawyer turned entrepreneur, calls the Olympics a horribly-run business that robs athletes of profits, and that is rife with illicit drug use anyway, despite testing. And he does have a point (if you think that athletes should be making profits from their sport). It's certainly true that International Olympics Committee executives are taking home seven- and eight-figure salaries while many athletes are having trouble earning a living (Olympic athletes are generally speaking not paid for attending or winning medals, with some notable exceptions). Mr. D'Souza's solution is a venture capital-funded profit-sharing competition, and there are rumours of million dollar prizes for breaking world records.

Of course, you can see some major problems with this pro-doping ideology, not least the potential health risks associated with unchecked substance use. Apparently, the games do plan on medical exams for athletes to ensure that they have no underlying conditions that might prove life-threatening, and certain particularly dangerous or illegal substances will still be considered beyond the pale and banned anyway. But it's hard to know where that line in the sand should be drawn, and who knows what side effects the drugs might have decades later. 

The Enhanced Games Ethical Advisory Commission boasts a top Harvard professor and geneticist, a NASA systems engineer, a naturopathic doctor, and a top CEO, so some respected people are obviously taking this quite seriously, even if they may also be risking their reputations - I guess it pays well! - and some respected athletes are clearly on board. Pro wrestling, mixed martial arts and some bodybuilding competitions already embrace drug culture (or at least monitor it very loosely). Who's to say that athletics should not join them?

Well, me for one. The modern Olympics may be broken and a much less edifying spectacle than it once was, but giving free reign to performance-enhancing drugs is not the way forward.