The closest thing we are getting to a modern dystopia that past generations imagined took place this weekend in Las Vegas with the first-ever Enhanced Games.
The Enhanced Games promised to rewrite the rules of what was possible for human beings by injecting athletes with as many performance-enhancing drugs as possible to see how many world records would fall. The answer? Just one.
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Over the course of several hours of weightlifting, running, and sprinting, only one non-enhanced world record was broken in the final event. Swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev completed the 50-meter freestyle in a time of 20.81 seconds, besting the real world record held by Cameron McEvoy by seven one-hundredths of a second. For that “athletic feat,” he was awarded a $1 million prize by the Enhanced Games.
Alas, that was the only record that was actually reached. In what was supposed to be the highlight of the event, the men’s 100-meter sprint saw Fred Kerley win in a time of 9.97 seconds, far below the record time of Usain Bolt at 9.58 seconds. This was in spite of Kerley saying that Bolt’s record would be “destroyed” before the competition.
The Enhanced Games could not find a traditional television partner for the controversial event. Instead, it streamed on several platforms for free, including Roku, YouTube, and Twitch. There was very little real star power heading into the competition (unless you count The Mountain from Game of Thrones), so the only actual draw was the morbid curiosity of just how far athletes on performance-enhancing drugs could defy the laws of physics. The livestream had over 800,000 views on YouTube, suggesting at least some interest in what would happen.
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As it turns out, the answer was not that much, at least with athletes who are not at the top of their sports. The icing on this steroid-infested cake is that events were even won by athletes who weren’t even using performance-enhancing drugs, competing against those who were, begging the question of what the entire point of this thing actually is.
Given that the juiced-up athletes failed to produce anything truly remarkable across the board, let alone the ethical questions surrounding its existence, it’s hard to see any legitimate sports network wanting to televise this failed spectacle, even if there is a future edition.
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