With the over, it is not out of the realm of possibility that some dirty work went on behind the scenes â there were rumors about male ski jumpers potentially inflating their private parts for better hang time. In the Enhanced Games, though, as counterintuitive as it may sound, there is no such thing.
The Enhanced Games have long been labeled the . The event doesn’t have its name by accident, as performance-enhancements will be allowed.
However, CEO Max Martin believes that such an event actually champions fairness, honesty and, most importantly, safety.
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“I would say the biggest [misconception] is that athletes are putting their health at risk with what they’re doing, and they’re just doing it for the money. It’s actually quite the opposite,” Martin said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.
“Saying that enhancements are dangerous, in some circumstances, is true, yes. It can be completely abusive â too high of dosing, bad drug-on-drug interaction, because it’s unsupervised and unmonitored, that can be very dangerous, yes. But that is exactly what we stand against and exactly what we’ll be able to circumvent by being transparent and allowing it in a regulated environment.”
So, how do they do that?
Well, Enhanced doctors have gone, and will continue to go, through every athlete’s data and let the athlete know what they should and can, and what they should not and cannot, take. That means, yes, it’s not as easy as someone getting more enhancements simply if they want it. Some athletes, Martin said, even had to stop taking specific substances because they were not approved by Enhanceds doctors.
“And why is it unapproved? Because we haven’t found out yet in research, whether it is safe or not,” Martin said.
That’s part of why Martin believes his event may actually be safer than the Olympics.
“[They] take substances that are not well-researched, that we don’t know well, that are newly developed. We have no data on how these substances actually do in your system. And then, secondly, by taking additional drugs like a masking agent to hide what you’re taking in the first place, that’s super dangerous,” Martin said. “If you take it out into the open and you allow athletes to utilize regulated and improved substances, where you know very, very well the safety profiles, the benefit profiles, and you monitor them constantly and over time, then you know if something went sideways. Because we monitor the athletes so well, we notice immediately.”
“What current testing systems are focused on is punitive drug testing. They are only focused on whether an athlete is cheating or not. What they’re not focused on is whether an athlete is healthy and safe to compete,” he continued. “Some of our guys didn’t even have , and they’re competing on the highest international level, winning medals for their countries. They’re not even health-insured. And so that’s really the problem.”
“Athletes are willing to do whatever it is to win. What we need to do, and are obsessed with, is making sure that every athlete that goes into competition is healthy and safe to compete.”
Part of the protocol is also making sure athletes are taking what makes sense for them and their sport. Australian swimmer James Magnussen won’t be taking the same enhancements as, say, a powerlifter.
“The enhancements, what they’re doing is they’re not pumping (Magnussen) up to be a bodybuilder. What they’re doing is they’re very, very targeted to who he is as an individual and to what he specifically is training for. And that allows him to just become better,” Martin said, adding that the enhancements are more so “icing on the cake and fine-tuning,” rather than the main product.
Enhanced is also paying its athletes quite the prize money â $250,000 for winners, $250,000 for the rest of the pack, and $1 million to anyone who breaks a world record. Perhaps not coincidentally, World Aquat
