Games on steroids? Inside an Indian-origin man’s plan to organise Enhanced Games

Aron D’Souza, the Indian-origin man whose brainchild the Enhanced Games are, is marketing the event scheduled for December 2024 as a disruptor to what he calls the “old fossilised bureaucracy that are the Olympics”.

He is the fastest man in the world. He has broken Usain Bolt’s 100m record.

But the world isn’t ready for him. The Olympics hate him.

He has been vilified. He will be vindicated.

Come watch him compete at the 2024 Enhanced Games. pic.twitter.com/iop3IUptGz

— Enhanced Games (@enhanced_games) June 19, 2023

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“The Enhanced Games will be a competitor to the corrupt and dysfunctional Olympics Games and the first international sports event without drug testing. The Olympics are about the past. They’re all about Greek Gods from Mount Olympus and history. The Enhanced Games are about the future. They’re about building superheroes,” he tells The Indian Express.

D’Souza claims that 356 individuals have “expressed interest” in participating in the Games, but offers only four names. He deflects a question about any Indian athletes being part of those 356 individuals.

South African Olympic gold medallist Roland Schoeman, Canadian bobsledder Christina Smith and David Karasek, who represented Switzerland at London 2012, and swimmer Brett Fraser, who competed at the Olympics for the Cayman Islands, are four of the names revealed.

Of these, Schoeman, a swimmer, tested positive for GW501516 (a black-market doping product) in 2019. He denied doping and claimed that contamination of the supplements he was taking had resulted in his positive test. While he could not compete at Tokyo 2020, he had already competed at four Olympics, and won three medals at Athens 2004. Smith, Karasek and Fraser have not faced doping bans, at least publically.

“Much of the interest we have had from athletes are from those who are at the tail-end of their careers, who see that science can extend the lifespan of an athlete… These are athletes from all sports, from Olympians to weekend warriors,” he says, before clarifying that by weekend warriors he means ‘casual athletes’.

Question marks

But aren’t the Enhanced Games essentially encouraging athletes to dope?

“I don’t think that’s a correct assumption. The use of performance enhancement in sport is rife. We’re just taking what’s now done in private and underground and making it public so it can be done much safely,” says D’Souza, who says he used to be a cyclist in his younger days in Australia.

Despite those claims, the fear remains that if a competition announces that it will not dope-test athletes, competitors are likely to go overboard with the substances they take to get faster, go higher and be stronger, thereby endangering their lives.

“The current biggest risk medically is particularly to young athletes and those from poor countries, who don’t have access to high-quality products and good medical supervision. What currently happens is that young athletes, in particular, read stuff online and order generic drugs and inject themselves without medical supervision. But by bringing everything out in the light, we can have the entire process supervised by very good doctors and the world’s top scientists. One of the problems with current doping regimes is that there’s no sharing of data. It’s quite hard to assess the health implications because very few athletes are willing to admit to doping,” he says before adding that the Enhanced Games already have a Scientific and Ethical Advisory Commission, which includes people like Dr George Church, a geneticist who works at Harvard University and is renowned for his contributions to genomic science, chemistry and biomedicine.

The Indian Express sent emails to both the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency requesting their responses. While the IOC said that the “idea does not merit any comment”, a response from WADA is awaited.

Despite getting some members of the medical fraternity in their corner, there remain obvious questions about the Enhanced Games. Should an athlete competing at the Games experience health complications due to performance-enhancing drugs, will the Enhanced Games organisers assume liability?

“I won’t give an answer to that. That’s more of a question for the lawyers and will depend on which jurisdiction we will ultimately host the Games in,” he says. “The reality is that there’s still some work to be done in terms of designing the exact clinical and supervisory protocols. That’s a discussion we are continuing to have with our insurers: The risk thresholds. But I can assure you that we are advised by the world’s best scientists.”

India connection

D’Souza, whose father was from Mumbai, quotes a Pew Research Centre report from 2020 on gene editing in babies to imply that the concept of the Enhanced Games might actually be acceptable to Indians. The number he quotes here is that 64 percent of Indians, when asked during the Pew Research survey if it would be “appropriate or misusing technology to change a baby’s genetic characteristics to make it more intelligent”, responded that it would be appropriate. The median for the survey, where people from 20 nations were asked, is just 14 percent.

“India’s number is the highest in the world. That’s a really interesting insight. Indians support the use of technology and science to improve the intelligence of children. That’s just on the same continuum as using science to improve other forms of human performance,” he says.

He points out that events like X-Games and bodybuilding competitions don’t have drug testing, but athletes there don’t die in competition due to substance overdose. He brushes aside a query about athletes possibly dying due to PED use as “hysteria from journalists”.

On a query about attracting sponsors considering that there are obvious negative perceptions about taking performance-enhancement substances, he claims that they have signed a term sheet with a prominent investor and that many venture capital funds, particularly in Silicon Valley, have shown “strong interest”. However, once again, the claims are not backed by details.

“In many ways, the Olympics are Blockbuster video or taxi cabs. We’re like an OTT platform or a ride-hailing app. We’re bringing a new model of business and we’re going to disrupt the whole co-operations.”

D’Souza doesn’t stop at those analogies. The wording of the promo on social media — which says, “I’m a proud, enhanced athlete… I need your help to come out” — reminds one of phrases one would find in LQBTQIA+ campaigns. D’Souza says that’s by design.

“I always say the journey of coming out as enhanced is one that takes time. It’s extremely difficult for an athlete to even be associated with performance enhancement,” he says before adding: “As a gay man myself, I see very strong analogies between the struggle of coming out and the struggle of acceptance in the LGBT community and the enhanced athlete community. Being an enhanced athlete today is like being gay 50 years ago. It’s illegal, stigmatised and underground but a lot of people are doing it.”