There’s good news for steroid fans: juicers will finally get their day on the field. A who’s who of extremely online investors pitched in to fund a series of events called the Enhanced Games, which describes itself as “the 21st Century Olympics without drug testing.” The list includes Christian Angermayer, venture capitalist, Balaji Srinivasan, former Coinbase CTO, and Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and frenemy of Elon Musk.
“Unlike the Olympic Games, Enhanced believes that excellence deserves to be rewarded,” said Aron D’Souza, President of the Enhanced Games, in a press release. “Support from the world’s leading venture capitalists enables us to create the structures that pay athletes fairly.” (D’Souza previously led Thiel’s litigation against Gawker, Gizmodo’s former parent company.)
D’Souza said Enhanced will focus on world records—world records that won’t count.
Steroids, the Enhanced Games insists, are good for athletes and the world. Unlike the real Olympics, which refuses to let go of its boring obsession with health and fairness, Enhanced promises its upcoming show will be a “world-class sporting event” that’s fit for the modern era. The organization even paid a doctor to say the whole thing is healthy, smart, and cool.
“Contemporary drug testing practiced in sports today is not necessarily about athlete safety; it often skews the public perception of fairness and health in competitive sports,” said Michael Sagner, MD, a member of the Enhanced Games’ Scientific and Medical Advisory Commission, in the press release. “Enhanced will be adopting a sophisticated safety protocol which puts the athlete’s health first—including comprehensive health checks before and after competitions.”
Sanger promises that Enhanced will screen for preexisting conditions before essentially encouraging people to take drugs.
The Enhanced Games will include many of the same sports you enjoy at the non-weirdo Olympics, such as track and field, swimming, gymnastics, weight lifting, and combat sports. There’s no word on when the first Enhanced Games will take place.
Thanks to Enhanced’s wealthy backers, D’Souza promises, the events won’t waste taxpayer money, which, one has to admit, does sound good when you compare it to the real Olympics, which dumps billions of taxpayer dollars into poorly considered infrastructure that’s typically used once and left to rot.
“Just as the ancient Olympics were revived and renovated in 1896 for the Victorian world, the Enhanced Games is once again renovating the Olympic model for the twenty-first century,” D’Souza said. “In the era of accelerating technological and scientific change, the world needs a sporting event that embraces the future, particularly advances in medical science.”
Thomas Germain is a senior reporter for Gizmodo.com, which, like Deadspin, is owned by G/O Media.
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