LAS VEGAS – Hafthor Björnsson, the colossus human better known as Thor, stood barefoot over a barbell loaded with 1,135 pounds, a weight so absurd it seemed more fitting for a forklift.
He wrapped his baseball mitt-size hands around the bar. His face crunched into a grimace, and the bar bowed as he pulled. A crowd of biohackers, tech investors, wellness evangelists and influencers were captivated, eager to see whether a 6-foot-9, 400-plus-pound Icelandic strongman could give the Enhanced Games the exclamation point it had been selling.
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Björnsson, as seen on TV as “the Mountain” from “Game of Thrones,” had come to the Nevada desert to lift more weight than any human had before. The Enhanced Games set out to prove something bigger: that athletes freed from traditional doping rules – and put through supervised regimens of testosterone, human growth hormone, peptides, stimulants and other substances banned across organized sports – could push the limits of human performance.
For a few seconds, it seemed possible. But Björnsson could not quite stand it up, and the bar dropped with a thud.
“Sometimes you’re successful, sometimes you fall short,” he said later.
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That turned out to be a pretty tidy summary of the night. After several weeks of athletes doping and training in Abu Dhabi, months of promotion and $20 million spent building a temporary venue on the Las Vegas Strip, the Enhanced Games debuted Sunday night as one of the strangest sporting events in recent memory.
Funded by Silicon Valley billionaire and biohacker Christian Angermayer, the games were part competition, part longevity conference, part product launch and part fever dream – one that might have stirred memories of the decades-old “Saturday Night Live” sketch about the “All-Drug Olympics.”
Resorts World Las Vegas had transformed into a theme park for the pharmaceutically curious: a four-lane, 50-meter pool beside a blue 100-meter track straightaway, weightlifting platforms nearby, giant video boards overhead and VIP boxes filled with the sort of people who say “human optimization” with a straight face. There were swimmers in banned suits, strongmen built like shipping containers, a DJ, dance troupe, choir, pop singers and a Michael Jackson impersonator wandering the grounds.
Normal sporting events do not typically begin with a science symposium – one Sunday morning session was titled “The Next Generation of Longevity and Enhancement Drugs” – or end with a set by hometown band the Killers. They do not usually feature Bryan Johnson, the live-forever evangelist, appearing on the broadcast beneath an umbrella to protect himself from ultraviolet rays.
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Of the 42 athletes competing, all but four were on some regimen of supplements and drugs. It was a spectacle, though not quite a revolution. What the Enhanced Games did offer was something more complicated: 22 personal bests, suggesting that some athletes – many past their competitive primes – had managed to push their own bodies beyond previous limits.
Megan Romano, a 35-year-old swimmer who had not competed at a high level in more than a decade, placed second in the 50-meter freestyle in 24.55 seconds, a lifetime best that eclipsed the career mark she set in 2013.
“I don’t think there’s a blueprint on how to come back after 10 years,” Romano said. “I think I just made one.”
Organizers said 2,500 invite-only spectators were expected, many arriving on private jets, though the stands appeared about two-thirds full at times. Attendees included Calley Means, an adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and William Finbar “Finn” Kennedy, a son of the secretary. Despite calls for more testing, the elder Kennedy is pushing for the Food and Drug Administration to loosen regulations around peptides and make them more widely accessible.
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Beyond the competition, the games supported Enhanced’s broader ambitions: a telehealth business built around selling testosterone, peptides and other supplements to the masses.
“It’s not just racing, but we’re selling product as well,” an analyst said during the broadcast. “That’s a big part of it.”
So why were these gifted athletes with sparkling resumes risking their reputations?
The answer is not complicated. Several said they had signed multiyear contracts and drawn lucrative salaries, and even had a stake in the business, which went public last month at a $1.2 billion valuation. Winners in some events collected $250,000, and anyone breaking a world record in a marquee event stood to pocket a $1 million bonus.
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Sprinter Fred Kerley, perhaps the most recognizable name on the roster, is serving a two-year ban for failing to keep drug-testers updated on his whereabouts. He was here because there was nowhere else to run.
“If you get fired from your job today, you gotta look for a next job,” Kerley said. “At the end of the day, my kids gotta eat.”
The former 100-meter world champion and two-time Olympic medalist said he was competing naturally – and he beat his enhanced competitors anyway, winning the 100 meters in 9.97 seconds.
“Man, they gotta do better than that,” he said of his doped-up competitors. “They need to train a little harder, get on that s— a little bit more.”
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Kerley and his peers noted that the traditional sports apparatus doesn’t properly support athletes and makes a professional career difficult for all but a few. Enhanced offered something different.
Like Kerley, American swimmer Hunter Armstrong competed Sunday cleanly. He has not given up on the traditional path and still hopes to chase Olympic medals. In fact, he said he intends to use Enhanced money to help fund his training for the 2028 Olympics.
Despite his intentions, he said joining the Enhanced Games had strained relationships inside swimming.
“That is disappointing,” he said, “because I don’t see what I’m doing as wrong.”
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Armstrong competed wearing a race suit that would be illegal in an Olympic-sanctioned race. He won $375,000 Sunday, taking the 50-meter backstroke and then placing second in the 100-meter freestyle.
American swimmer Cody Miller, a 2016 Olympic gold and bronze medalist, meanwhile, took home a half-million dollars Sunday, winning two races years after his Olympic prime. Following the 50-meter breaststroke, the 34-year old popped out of the water, leaped onto the pool deck, pumped his arms and screamed, “Let’s go!” The muscle-bound swimmer had crossed the pool in 26.55 seconds, a personal best that topped a mark he set nine years ago.
A couple of hours later, he won his second $250,000 award in the 100 breaststroke and called it one of the best nights of his life.
“The enhancements work,” he said, “but if you don’t do all the other stuff, too, it doesn’t matter. The drugs don’t make you fast. Showing up every day [to train] makes you fast.”
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Thor began doping when he was 19 years old.
In most Olympic sports, that would be a five-alarm scandal. In the world of powerlifting and strongman competitions, it is simply a résumé line. Strength sports have long lived with a different relationship to performance-enhancing drugs: some competitions simply don’t test, and there’s no stigma about drugs.
Björnsson said he actually had to scale back his drug regimen to conform to Enhanced’s rules, which allow only substances approved by the FDA. He knows there have been costs to the steroids and supplements he has used for nearly half his life. He has had two hair transplants for his thinning scalp. But when asked about side effects, he chuckled.
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“The biggest side effect for me is I’m a lot stronger,” Björnsson said.
For Enhanced supporters, that’s the point. The sports on display Sunday – sprinting, swimming and weightlifting – have all been shaped by doping scandals and years of suspicion over who was clean, who was not and who simply never got caught. Here, organizers argue, the playing field is level.
The debate reveals the gap between the way many Enhanced athletes talk about the event and how much of the sports world views it. Athletes were quick to note this competition was not meant to replicate the Olympics. Organizers wince at the “steroid Olympics” label that has followed the event around in the media. They say the competition was about exploring potential. “How fast can the human body cover 100 meters?” said Rick Adams, the former U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee official who now draws a paycheck from Enhanced.
But others say Sunday’s competition was never going to be able to provide a clean answer to that question.
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Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said in an interview that the appeal of traditional sport is that spectators believe they are watching athletes test recognizable human limits – something that is relatable on some level.
“It’s all of us sitting on our couches or watching on TV or being in the stands saying, ‘Oh gosh, maybe I could have run as fast or swam as fast as Michael Phelps if I would have trained a little bit longer or worked a little harder or had more discipline in my diet,’” Tygart said. “Not, you know, who’s got the best chemist.”
For most of Sunday, the Enhanced Games chased the feat it had promised most loudly – but failed to catch it. Björnsson could not lift the record weight. The sprinters did not threaten Usain Bolt’s mark. The swimmers in banned suits and on medical protocols kept touching the wall short of world record marks. For all the drugs, doctors, money and hype, the night seemed in danger of proving there are no cheat codes.
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But then, shortly before 10 p.m., swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev stepped onto the starting block for the night’s final event, the 50-meter freestyle race. The 32-year-old who competed in four Olympics for Greece, had swum the distance race in 20.89 seconds in a time-trial last year, topping the world record time and giving Enhanced its first proof of concept.
After a flurry of splashing, Gkolomeev was first to the wall, winning in 20.81 seconds, improving the mark he’d set a year ago. It was his second win of the night.
“We needed that one,” said Brett Hawke, the swimming coach for Enhanced.
Whether it was doping or the high-tech suit banned from the Olympics, it made Gkolomeev $1 million richer. Combined with his previous bonus for topping the world record, he has now won $2.5 million from Enhanced.
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After the event, Max Martin, the company’s chief executive, took the microphone and highlighted the personal achievements more than the night’s lone record.
“Breaking a world record is hard, but becoming the best version of yourself is also hard,” he said, before pivoting to the broader pitch.
“And now the people at home can also get enhanced and be the best they’ve ever been,” he said.
Enhanced officials have described the Las Vegas event as more than a one-off experiment. Organizers have said another event is planned for later this year have floated adding other events, such as the marathon and triathlon.
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The athletes pushed back against concerns that the games might encourage young people to chase the same bodies and performances with substances they do not understand. Australian swimmer James Magnussen, for instance, noted that young people shouldn’t mimic everything they see on TikTok.
“Lewis Hamilton drives at 300 kilometers an hour,” Magnussen said of the Formula 1 driver. “That doesn’t mean that you drive at 300 kilometers an hour on our roads.”
As the night wound down, the lights soon dimmed, and the Killers took the stage. The opening riffs of “Mr. Brightside” rolled across a crowd before the band broke into its 2008 hit “Human,” with the familiar question – “Are we human?”
Pay my respects to grace and virtue.
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Send my condolences to good.
The Enhanced Games had some of the best drugs in sports, but not necessarily the best athletes. Records were not smashed. Sport was not reinvented. Under the lights in Las Vegas, it just looked a little less human.
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