Enhanced games: ‘exploring human potential’ or disturbing spectacle?
5/21/202627 min
At the inaugural Enhanced Games this weekend, something unprecedented is taking place; professional athletes from around the world will be encouraged to swim, lift, and sprint with the aid of performance enhancing drugs.
The competition — nicknamed the 'Doping Olympics' — has provoked enormous controversy in the world of sport. Enhanced runs counter to the many athletic organisations who have spent decades prioritising a crackdown on performance enhancing drugs. Many in the sporting world say that a competition that endorses doping will normalise unfair and possibly dangerous drug use. But supporters argue that the competition will facilitate the safe, open...
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First 90 secondsDan Roan· Guest0:00
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Speaker 10:03
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Asma Khalid· Host0:20
[electronic music] This weekend, elite athletes from around the world are descending on Las Vegas, Nevada, for the first of its kind sporting competition, known as the Enhanced Games. It's kinda like the Olympics, but only for swimming, sprinting, and weightlifting. The aim is to break world records. In fact, some of these competitors are former Olympians, medalists battling it out for money and glory, but there's one big difference.
Speaker 30:49
What might be possible in a sport if performance-enhancing drugs were all allowed? [upbeat music] Well, we might soon find out. The inaugural Enhanced Games, or the Doping Olympics, as it's been dubbed, aims to rival professional athletics with a twist.
Asma Khalid· Host1:03
At the Enhanced Games, athletes openly take drugs that are normally banned in high-level sports. Steroids, growth hormones, various performance-enhancing drugs, they're all okay at these games, so long as they're approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Speaker 31:17
[upbeat music] Why on earth should we, uh, want or have a doping Olympics?
Dan Roan· Guest1:24
Because science is real, Piers. Medicine is real.
Asma Khalid· Host1:27
But this isn't just sports