Las Vegas plays host to sporting competition where doping is allowed

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This weekend 43 athletes, many of them former Olympians, compete at the inaugural Enhanced Games in Las Vegas while taking performance-enhancing drugs, or PEDs.

So what? They will be free to do so. It’s the first time in history that elite athletes will compete while openly using PEDs. Critics say this normalises doping. But the Enhanced Group, which is behind the games, says it is building the future of sport with competitors who include

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  Fred Kerley, the sixth fastest man in history over 100m;

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  Ben Proud, a British swimmer who won a silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics; and

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  Kristian Gkolomeev, a Greek swimmer who last year unofficially broke the 50m freestyle world record while taking PEDs.

How it works. Athletes will compete across three sports: swimming, sprinting and weightlifting. Payouts for those who break world records are as high as $1m. Cardiologist Guido Pieles, who oversees medical safety for the games, told The Observer that the PEDs the athletes are taking are legal in the US and the UK and banned only in sporting competition. They include drugs for

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  oxygen efficiency;

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  alertness and focus; and

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  muscle growth and recovery.

Tune in. The event is invite-only, but will be broadcast around the world on YouTube. The Observer looked at the games in more detail for this week’s episode of the Slow Newscast. It found that, beyond the bright lights, something else is happening too.

Guinea pigs. Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City, a hospital based in Abu Dhabi, is leading a clinical trial featuring the athletes. The hospital has been prescribing a bespoke programme of medication for each of them as they go through a four-month training regime in the UAE.

View from the expert. Pieles, who was previously the team cardiologist at Manchester United and is employed by SSMC, said he convinced the founders to make the event part of a formal clinical trial in order to give it credibility and ensure safety. The study, which is the first of its kind, has been approved by an institutional review board and aims to

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  collect data on the risks of PEDs;

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  measure and understand optimal doses for performance; and

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  advance preventative medicine to help people live healthier and longer lives.

Is there a conflict of interest? Pieles says no. Although he says the Enhanced Group has paid SSMC “big money” to conduct the study, he insists the company has no control over the results.

Show me the money. On its website, the Enhanced Group has a telehealth service which allows US-based customers to complete a short questionnaire and be recommended drugs from its “personalised medicine and supplement platform”. A four-week supply of supplements and prescription medication sets the customer back $750.

Where is the money? Enhanced Group investors include Peter Thiel, the billionaire Republican donor, who has backed a venture firm invested in reversing age-related diseases, and Donald Trump Jr, the son of the US president. Last month the company praised the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to remove certain peptides from the grey market and allow patients to access them through licensed professionals.

Everyone wants a go. It is illegal to sell peptides in the UK for human consumption, but according to experts the use of these drugs is still on the rise. Adam Taylor, professor of anatomy at Lancaster University, told the BBC that the people who are taking these products are “becoming lab rats”. He said that they had been tested on animals but not on humans.

What’s more… The World Anti-Doping Agency has suggested the games could make doping worse by tempting young people into it. If records fall, it will be hard to disagree.

Photograph by Adam Pretty/Getty Images