I’m sure Enhanced Games is not going to give me a high

Are you buzzing for the inaugural Enhanced Games in Las Vegas this weekend? Are you stoked for the sight of 50 athletes from around the world competing in swimming, track and weightlifting in an environment where performance enhancement is not just tolerated but actively encouraged – an Olympics for people who like their sport on drugs?

I’ve got to admit, I’ve been feeling pretty flat at the prospect, despite the plentiful assurances coming from the people at Enhanced that everything we’re about to see here will be “safe”, “responsible” and “clinically supervised”. Or, I don’t know, maybe because of that.

Or perhaps it’s because the declared ambition of Enhanced’s ­significantly male leadership team “to ­create the definitive scientific, cultural and sporting movement that safely evolves mankind into a new superhumanity”, while no doubt admirably forward-looking, seems to me to ­contain, even in his absence, unignorable traces of Elon Musk.

One thing I can say for sure, though, is that I could definitely be going into this one better prepped. Enhanced themselves offer, via their website, a course of “clinician guided” testosterone injections, currently available at 28% off if you sign up for a six-month supply (about £750 all told). So obviously that was an option in the build-up. Or, with a bit of foresight, I could have put myself on the organisation’s “low-dose Tadalafil energy supplement” (more commonly known as a treatment for erectile dysfunction), also on special offer.

However, in the absence of all that, I did try sniffing a felt tip pen and jumping up and down on the spot for a while to see if I felt any more eager for a few hours of slightly steroid-y sport in a purpose-built arena in the grounds of Resorts World. Again, though: flat as a pancake.

Come the time, and assuming I’ve stayed awake long enough to tune in, I may need to see if I’ve got ­anything to hand that’s stronger – though always under the very tightest of medical protocols, obviously, with comprehensive health profiling and ongoing monitoring, and with my personal safety overwhelmingly the priority.

And there’s a reward posted if we go the distance: a closing pop concert. Some great synergy available there, of course. Pop music is a realm of human activity where the possibilities of artificial enhancement of all descriptions have always been keenly embraced. Indeed, if you really want to see people pushing their chances, look no further than the Billboard Hot 100 on any given week.

Given all that, the choice of local band The Killers – fronted by the famously grounded Brandon Flowers, a practising member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – as the big act on the night seems slightly counter-intuitive, and has left some of us asking: where is Heather Small when you need her?

Not that the former lead singer with M People is associated with bold experimentation in her field, exactly. But there was at least a decade in recent history when no major sporting occasion, and certainly no ceremony for home-coming athletes, could consider itself fit for purpose if Heather didn’t appear at some stage during it to ask, “What have you done today to make you feel proud?” And though I don’t think the verb “done” in that line was ever meant in the drug-taking sense, it could have been seamlessly repurposed, without question, for this Enhanced event.

Still, I guess everyone likes The Killers. The organisers of sports events certainly think so, because the band has also been booked to perform in Budapest next weekend at the Champions League final. Whatever we end up learning from the Enhanced Games about the future of humanity, the big revolutionary message coming from Las Vegas, surely, is that The Killers – 28 million records sold, seven No 1 albums, three billion streams for MrBrightside – are about to burst another career boundary and become the new Heather Small.

And if events in Las Vegas leave you low? Well, you can always head back to the Enhanced website and order up the injectable Sermorelin (£140 for a month’s worth) which, we are assured, “supports recovery” and “works with your body’s natural growth hormone pathway, not around it”. Here’s hoping.

Photograph courtesy of Enhanced Games