The Enhanced Games flattered to deceive, but that's probably the point

Was the Enhanced Games a success? Probably depends on who you ask. (Getty Images: Enhanced/Bryan Steffy) Link copiedShareShare articleThe inaugural Enhanced Games has delivered its promise. Though what that promise actually entailed is harder to quantify. At a purpose-built venue in Las Vegas in front a curated crowd of around 2,500 — tickets were not on sale to the general public — The Killers performed at the afterparty and DJ Alan Walker held a mid-competition set as 42 athletes competed in swimming, running and weight lifting. As a no-expense spared advertising festival to advertise a brand whose goal is to sell performance enhancing drugs to wannabe biohackers, it worked. And on one level, it delivered on the sporting side as Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev swam the fastest 50m free in history, taking 0.07 seconds off Cam McEvoy's legitimate world record. Sure, he did it while doped to the eyeballs and while wearing a super suit of the like that has been banned by World Aquatics for a decade-and-a-half, but that was the whole point. Kristian Gkolomeev swam a faster 50m freestyle than anyone in history, but it's not a world record. (Getty Images: Enhanced: Greg Doherty) And yet, outside of that one world record there was little more than an underwhelming conclusion to an over-hyped mess of mixed messages and false claims. Make no mistake, we are not peering through the looking glass into a world of distorted reality where down is up and wrong is right — this was far from the sporting Wonderland organisers would have us believe it would be. But it is clearly opening a path towards a perversion of the sporting world we have accepted as correct and true for generations. Enhanced Games organisers bombarded viewers with proclamations of a brand new era in sport, where "elite athletes push the limits of human performance". Yet of the 22 personal best performances produced across 79 individual efforts on the day, three were produced by swimmers that were not on the juice: Egyptian Sohib Khaled and American Hunter Armstrong. Hunter Armstrong competed without being "enhanced", but he might want to lose the t-shirt before his next comp. (Getty Images: Enhanced/Bryan Steffy) With that, they claimed $175,000 (Australian) and $522,000 respectively in prize money and, in theory at least, can continue their competitive careers with reputations tarnished only by association. The other two non-enhanced athletes competing on the day — Tristan Evelyn and Fred Kerley — ran off with the two blue ribband prizes in the 100m sprint — albeit miles off the world record marks they were chasing. "They gotta do better than that," Kerley said of his doped up competitors after beating them to the $350,000 prize that came with winning his event. "They need to train a little harder, get on that s*** a little bit more." Kerley ran 9.93 seconds in the heat and was the only runner to go under 10 seconds in the final, running a pedestrian 9.97. Despite the fact that he was Olympic bronze medallist in one of the greatest 100 metres in Games history in Paris, Kerley has been issued a two-year competition ban by the United States Anti-Doping Agency for whereabouts failures, i.e. missing three doping tests, fans of the status quo may not have picked him to be the poster boy for clean sport. Fred Kerley (centre) was dismissive of the doped athletes he ran against. (Getty Images: Enhanced/Leon Bennett) But within these desperately turbulent, muddied waters, perhaps he's the one we deserve. Back to the results of this ethically dubious, drug-fuelled experiment. Of the 71 individual performances by "enhanced" athletes across running, swimming and weightlifting events, just 19 personal bests were set. That disappointing return does make one wonder whether signing up for this event and being "enhanced" was a fair trade-off for destroying their credibility as legitimate athletes. And yet, every one of them came away from this Vegas farce with more money than they are ever likely to win via regular competition. For winning both the 100m and 50m freestyle, as well as claiming the fastest time ever in the later, Gkolomeev came away with a staggering $2.8m in prize money. Saying something is a world record doesn't make it a world record. (Getty Images: Enhanced/Greg Doherty) Presenters and supporters hailed Gkolomeev's "new world record" as something remarkable and, in many ways it was. But it will rightly never be ratified as such and, being so widely lauded by the Enhanced Games as a world record says as much about the bread and circuses approach to this event as anything else. Because, at its heart, this was an event about money. None of the competitors at these games truly believed that anyone outside of their bubble would praise them for any personal bests or records they set. British swimmer Ben Proud said the money on offer made him feel that "someone knocked on the door and left a lottery ticket on the floor" and

The Enhanced Games flattered to deceive, but that's probably the point

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The Enhanced Games flattered to deceive, but that's probably the point

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