The announcement that British Olympic Silver Medalist Ben Proud has joined the Enhanced Games has sent shockwaves through the athletics community. The swimmer has become the first British athlete to join the highly controversial Enhanced Games, and governing bodies will be on high alert in case his defection becomes a stream.
The Enhanced Games is an event organised outside of world governing bodies. The goal is to “champion the transformative power of performance enhancements under rigorous clinical and medical supervision. This is our bold step toward redefining human potential – showcasing what we can truly achieve and inspire the evolution of humanity.” In essence it is sport without drug enhancement boundaries, where the only question is how far the human body can be pushed with the support of science.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, the project is backed by Enhanced, a company that sells testosterone treatments. Customers are encouraged to join the Enhanced Health Program, where they will receive regular supplies of testosterone and have the choice of receiving it as pill, gel or liquid format (for injection). Customers also receive an at-home blood testing kit and a consultation with an online clinician. The program hasn’t actually launched yet (scheduled to open in September 2025), but for $19 customers can reserve their spot to ensure ‘priority onboarding upon launch’.
It has been announced that first Enhanced Games will be held in Las Vegas in May 2026, and Enhanced is busy recruiting athletes to its ranks, in athletics, aquatics and strength. The Games will feature these three core disciplines with the following events: track and field, 100m sprint and 100/110m hurdles; swimming in 50m, 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly; and weightlifting in snatch and clean & jerk. Crucially, none of the events will feature any drug testing.
In a bid to encourage athletes to join up, Enhanced Games has launched its athlete incentive model. As part of the recent launch event, Olympic swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev broke the long-standing 50m freestyle world record with a time of 20.89 seconds, beating the previous record set in 2009. For his achievement Kristian received a $1million prize – not bad for less than 21 seconds of work!
At the Games in Las Vegas, each individual event will carry a total prize purse of $500,000, with $250,000 awarded to the winner. There will also be appearance fees and $1 million for breaking work records in the 100m sprint and 50m freestyle. So, the incentive for athletes like Ben Proud is strong.
Proud becomes the sixth athlete to sign up, all of them swimmers, with one female so far on the books in Megan Romano, a four-time world champion and the first American to join the venture. With the substantial financial incentives in place, there is no doubt that more world-famous athletes will join up.
Proud won Silver at the 2024 Olympics and is a former World Champion, so his joining is seen as a major coup for Enhanced, especially as the organisers can now promote the showdown with Gkolomeev next May.
Does the convergence of athletic excellence and scientific advancement make for the ultimate sporting contest as the organisers suggest? With sports that focus exclusively on times, such as the 100m sprint, World Athletics has always promoted athletes like Usain Bolt as ‘the fastest man in the world’. Bolt’s world record time of 9.58 seconds set in 2009 will undoubtably be beaten sometime soon by an athlete ‘enhanced’ with testosterone and other drugs, but how will that achievement be viewed by the public? Will the athlete be tarnished with the same brush that Ben Johnson was when setting a new record in 1989, but subsequently being disqualified after testing positive for steroids, and branded a cheat?
But in a competition where all participants are ‘cheating’, will the honour of being the fastest man or woman ‘ever’ still bring cachet, regardless of the implications? The CEO of Enhanced Games, Maximillian Martin, a former investment banker, certainly thinks so, and he is banking on human interest in who is the fastest and strongest to outweigh any ethical issues.
The implications for the athletics, swimming and weightlifting communities are significant. Will there be the same excitement when a clean athlete does break Bolt’s record in the future, if an Enhanced athlete has already smashed it? Could this be the tide that finally breaks the dam of controlling drug use in sports, and ushers in a ‘free for all’ in the future? Who knows, but it is certain that the sporting world will be tuning in to the events in Las Vegas next May with a high degree of trepidation.
David Little is a Partner at Bishop & Sewell in our expert Sports Law and Corporate & Commercial teams.
If you would like to contact him, please call on either 07968 027343 or 020 7631 4141 or email: company@bishopandsewell.co.uk.
The above is accurate as at 15 August 2025.
The information above may be subject to change. The content of this note should not be considered legal advice, and each matter should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
