Doped-up athletes and million dollar prizes: The Enhanced Games is here

Summary

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7am Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: Doped-up Athletes and Million Dollar Prizes: The Enhanced Games is Here
Date: May 18, 2026
Host: Ruby Jones
Guest: Tom Decent, Chief Sports Writer, Sydney Morning Herald

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Overview

This episode explores the arrival of the Enhanced Games, a new and controversial sporting event in Las Vegas where doping is openly permitted. Created by Australian entrepreneur Aaron d’Souza and backed financially by figures like Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., the Enhanced Games offers massive cash prizes and markets performance-enhancing drugs directly to athletes and fans. Tom Decent discusses the spectacle, business model, ethical concerns, and the potential impact on sport.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are the Enhanced Games?

• A global sporting event where athletes can legally use performance-enhancing drugs, except for “hard drugs” (heroin, cocaine, etc.).
• Attracts a mix of current Olympians and lesser-known athletes, incentivized by large prizes.
  • Prize Example: $1 million USD (~$1.4 million AUD) for breaking world records in popular events like 50m freestyle swimming or 100m sprint.
  • Standard event win: $250,000 USD (~$360,000 AUD).
  • (01:04–01:56) Tom Decent explains prize breakdown and global interest.
• Financial backing from high-profile investors (Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr.), who see the Games as a potential disruptor of traditional “clean sport.”
  • “They believe that an event like this is going to take off... and basically be disruptive to clean sport.” — Tom Decent [02:03]

2. Doping Policies and Athlete Transparency

• Drugs allowed include anabolic steroids, testosterone, peptides, growth hormones, and some stimulants/metabolic modulators.
  • Medically supervised, but lack of full transparency, raising questions about dosage and health implications.
  • “Not really your kind of backyard steroids that we're talking about... But clearly the amount that people are taking, the dosages... is up for debate as well.” — Tom Decent [03:21]
• No requirement for every athlete to dope; “clean” athletes also invited.
  • Swimmer Hunter Armstrong plans to compete clean, raising potential for future precedent regarding Olympic eligibility [05:46–06:44].

3. Athlete Motivations and Famous Faces

• James Magnussen: High-profile Australian swimmer, initially joked he’d “juice to the gills” for a $1M prize and was subsequently recruited to headline the Games.
  • “I'll juice to the gills and I'll break it within six months.” — James Magnussen [04:03]
  • Even without winning, can pocket substantial prize money for participating.
• Some athletes (e.g., Christian Gollumieve) have already walked away with $1M for record-breaking performances.
• Genuine tension for Olympians considering future eligibility if they participate.

4. Institutional Backlash and Health Concerns

• Major sporting bodies (AOC, WADA) and elite athletes condemn the Games.
  • Olympian Kieren Perkins: “Someone will die if we allow that sort of environment to continue to prosper and flourish...” [07:20]
• Health risks include unknown long-term effects, cardiovascular issues, and infertility.
  • “Some of the athletes have decided to freeze eggs and sperm as a result of this to try and ensure that trying to have a baby won't be jeopardised later on.” — Tom Decent [10:25]

5. Business Model and Ethical Controversies

• The Games are not just a spectacle but serve as a platform to sell performance-enhancing drugs and supplements direct to consumers.
  • “If you go on the NHANCE website, there are ways and avenues to buy their products...effectively this is an ad...a shop front window for...the stuff they're trying to sell.” — Tom Decent [09:13]
• No major broadcast deals; streaming via Roku (US) and YouTube (Australia).
• Debate over targeting adults vs. the inevitability of youth exposure and influence.

6. The “Everyone’s Already Doping” Argument

• Some justify the Games by suggesting doping is already rampant but unspoken in elite sports.
  • “In some ways, this does throw open the floodgates and say, hey, let's just all run as quick as we can and take whatever you want.” — Tom Decent [12:29]

7. Will It Change Sport?

• Unlikely to fundamentally shift Olympics/world championship models, but enormous prize money may lure athletes.
  • “I don't think swimmers, athletic stars, weightlifters, will go away from the traditional means. But…the prize money on offer is something definitely being spoken about...” — Tom Decent [13:24]
• Potentially disruptive as more athletes chase big paydays.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• James Magnussen: “I'll juice to the gills and I'll break it within six months.” [04:03]
• Kieren Perkins: “Someone will die if we allow that sort of environment to continue to prosper and flourish...” [07:20]
• Tom Decent: “Some of the athletes have decided to freeze eggs and sperm as a result of this to try and ensure that trying to have a baby won't be jeopardised later on.” [10:25]
• On Business Model: “Effectively it is to sell drugs to the masses to your average punster...if you go on the NHANCE website, there are ways and avenues to buy their products.” — Tom Decent [09:13]
• Institutional concern: “I’ve yet to find a medical expert who speaks glowingly of what they’re doing and the way that they’re going about it.” — Tom Decent [10:20]

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Key Timestamps

• [01:04] — What are the Enhanced Games?
• [01:36] — Prize money and investor backing
• [02:35] — What drugs are allowed?
• [03:59 & 04:03] — James Magnussen’s recruitment and motivations
• [05:46] — “Clean” athletes and Olympic eligibility debate
• [06:55] — Reaction from sporting institutions
• [08:39] — The business model: drugs for sale
• [10:25] — Health risks and ethical concerns
• [12:07] — “Everyone’s doping” justification
• [13:24] — Will this change elite sport?

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Tone & Flow

The episode maintains a skeptical, investigative tone, frequently questioning the motives and potential repercussions of the Enhanced Games. The speakers balance reporting on the spectacle and seediness of the event, with pointed ethical and health concerns, engaging listeners in a nuanced debate about the direction of global sport.

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For those who haven’t listened:
This episode is a thorough, accessible deconstruction of the Enhanced Games controversy—covering the event’s audacious premise, money trails, recruitment of star athletes, backlash from sports authorities, health risks, and ethical implications. It’s essential listening for anyone curious about the future of sport and the commercialization of performance enhancement.

Transcript

[Ruby Jones]

I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am. This weekend in Vegas. Athletes including Australian swimmer James Magnussen will take part in the Enhanced Games, a competition that freely allows doping. It's the creation of controversial Australian entrepreneur Aaron d' Souza and it's bankrolled by Peter Thiel and one of Donald Trump's sons. The competition has enticed athletes with huge cash flow prizes and is in turn selling the performance enhancing drugs those athletes will experiment with. Today, chief sports writer at the Sydney Morning Herald, Tom Decent on the spectacle and the seediness of the Enhanced Games. It's Tuesday, may 19th. So, Tom, the Enhanced Games, to begin

[Sam]

with, tell me about the event.

[Tom Decent]

So effectively the Enhanced Games is a sporting meet for athletes to compete against each other where they can take performance enhancing substances. They've got athletes from all over the world, some of them are Olympians, some of them are not super amazing in their fields as well, but they'll all sort of combine in Las Vegas and compete for massive prize money.

[Unknown Male Commentator 1]

Quality of competition that will be shown

[Unknown Male Commentator 2]

at the Enhanced Games is going to

[Unknown Male Commentator 1]

be like in no other sporting competition globally.

[Unknown Male Commentator 2]

And that's the thing that excites me about the Enhanced Games is that human potential. What is that potential? Where is the max? Where's the limit?

[Tom Decent]

The prize money on offer is pretty life changing for some of these athletes. If they break a world record in the 50 metres freestyle swimming events or the 100 metres on the track, they'll win a million dollars USD, which is about 1.4 million Australian. If they win their events, they'll win $250,000 USD, which is about 360,000 Australian.

[Unknown Male Commentator 2]

By raising our expectations, we can achieve MIRAC and over and over again.

[Tom Decent]

And the prize money on offer is from effectively investors. So you've got like a Peter Thiel who started out PayPal, you've got Donald Trump Jr. Obviously, relation to Donald Trump, and a number of investors who've been on this campaign for a couple of years as well and believe that an event like this is going to take off, appeal to the masses and basically be disrupted to clean sport.

[Sam]

So the premise of these Games is that you are allowed to dope. But tell me a bit more about that. What kind of doping are we talking about? Is there anything that is off limits? Is there testing the Enhanced Games?

[Tom Decent]

People are encouraging transparency, but there won't necessarily be a lot of it as well. So we're only going on what they're saying. They're saying that anything illegal as such, like your hard drugs if you want to call it that, you know, cocaine, heroin, et cetera will be banned. And you've got to keep in mind these athletes who are competing in the first Enhanced Games have been looked at by doctors over the last few months. So it's not really your kind of backyard steroids that we're talking about. We're talking about your testosterone, your peptides,

[Unknown Male Commentator 2]

categories of anabolic agents, anabolic steroids, as you might typically hear of them. Examples of that might include testosterone. Other categories include peptides and growth factors. They can be things like epo, growth hormone, and then there's a category of stimulants and metabolic modulators.

[Tom Decent]

These are things that you can get from a doctor currently and that are FDA approved as well. But clearly the amount that people are taking, the dosages, the age at which people who might be watching this on the weekend will want to take them is up for debate as well. So most of the athletes at the Enhanced Games will be taking these. Not everyone has to take them. Yeah, we would like a little bit more transparency, I would imagine, around that. But we're only going off what they're telling us as well, when people like James Magnuson are, you know, explaining what drugs they're taking. Ahead of this, mate.

[Sam]

Yeah. So James Magnussen, he is the biggest name associated with the Games. Tell me a bit about what he said about why he's competing.

[Tom Decent]

Well, he said he was going to juice to the gills, which was probably a quote that he retracts.

[James Magnussen]

They've said they've got a billion dollar person backing them. If they put up a million dollars for the 50 freestyle world record, I'll come on board as their first athlete. I'll juice to the gills and I'll break it within six months.

[Tom Decent]

Aaron d' Souza gave him a call the next morning and that's effectively how the Enhanced Games kick started. They were hoping to make this a reality in the background, but I think James escalated as well.

[James Magnussen]

Did I think that they would come to the party with that million dollars US at the time? No, but. But I thought there was a potential for it. And upon having time to think about it, to think about the repercussions, to think about the opportunities, that's one thing most people, all they'll talk about is the negatives, what could happen, what could go wrong.

[Tom Decent]

There was a documentary they released last year, which James was a part of, trying to break that world record and failed to do that. But a great guy, Christian Gollumy, managed to do so and won a million bucks USD.

[Unknown Male Commentator 1]

I just wait for James to finish his trial and I was thinking of what I need to do, how I need to swim it, and I just put my suit on and wasn't thinking of anything. I wasn't stressed. Yeah, the plan was just to swim faster.

[Tom Decent]

Effectively all these forces are combining into what is going to be the first Enhanced Games in the weekend. James will be there competing in the 50 metre freestyle, 100 meter freestyle. Do I think he's going to break the world record? No. But if it comes last in both of those races, he'll pocket about 140,000 Australian dollars in prize money, which is not bad for a little bit of work over there.

[Sam]

Right, so they're the Enhanced Games, but at least one athlete has indicated that they might compete without doping to see if they can beat someone who is

[Ruby Jones]

doping for that prize money. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

[Tom Decent]

Yeah. So the Enhanced organizers have been really clear that they don't necessarily need athletes to dope for these Games. They're happy to let clean athletes come into it. And I think that is actually a more interesting story when you're talking about sports that don't have a lot of prize money itself. Zahanta Armstrong is an American swimmer. He's staying in the testing pool, in the wider testing pool, so he's subjected to daily drug tests or whenever they want to come over and do that. And his belief is that, why can't I go and compete for prize money in the Enhanced Games and then go back and compete at the World Championships or the Olympics In LA in 2028, World Aquatics have come out and inferred that he won't be able to do that. There hasn't been a clear hard rul ruling on that. But he's going to compete at the Games as well. And I think it is more interesting around whether some Australian athletes who are Olympians would go and compete at the Enhanced Games if they knew they could come back to the Olympics as well. I know for a fact there's some Australian athletes looking at this case and going, well, if Hunter Armstrong is allowed to come back and compete, maybe we could as well. So all eyes on how that plays out.

[Sam]

And obviously, Tom, this is something that goes directly against what sporting competitions have been fighting for decades. So tell me a bit more about the reaction that we're seeing from these institutions.

[Tom Decent]

Oh, rightly so. I mean, there's been a huge backlash.

[Kieran Perkins]

The reason why drugs in sport was outlawed and banned is because a cyclist fell off a bike and died not because we were embarrassed that someone looked too big or performed too fast.

[Tom Decent]

This has been going on for a couple of years too. This isn't an idea that's born out of nothing. So I would expect there to be some fierce criticism. Someone like a Kieran Perkins who represented Australian swimming basically said a few years ago that he thinks someone will die as a result of this.

[Kieran Perkins]

Someone will die if we allow that sort of environment to continue to prosper and flourish. We don't want people to be taking those performance enhancing drugs because of the significant health impact it has on them and their future families.

[Tom Decent]

Now enhance would argue that these athletes are being highly medically supervised and this isn't a case of people taking an unregulated amount of performance enhancing substances. But again, medical professionals who you speak to as well would argue that we don't know a lot about these substances, the long term effects on their body as well. So the AOC have been quoted, WADA have been quoted condemning what is going to take place on the weekend. It will be a bit of a circus and it will be pretty grand and wild and we will see. I don't know where it lands, I don't know how much legs it's got, but I think most people will probably watch and be curious as to how it all plays out.

[Ruby Jones]

Coming up, how the Enhanced Games is really making its money

[James Magnussen]

foreign.

[Sam]

So Tom, you're heading to Vegas for the Enhanced Games. It's just a one day event though on the weekend. So tell me a bit about how it's expected to make money and what the business model is here.

[Tom Decent]

Yeah, it was going to be a four day meet. There was hopes that it would be an Olympic style sort of program with as many sports as possible, but it's just going to be swimming, weightlifting and running on the track, limited events. It'll probably run for about three or four hours on Monday morning Australian time. So yeah, not as big and grand as they probably hoped for, but the venue that they are building in Las Vegas is pretty impressive, I've got to say. They don't have a massive broadcast deal. They've got Roku, which is an American streaming site that are going to show the American side of it. Australians will be able to watch it on YouTube so they're not making any coin off that. But effectively it is to sell drugs to the masses to your average punster on the street who looks at these athletes and thinks, oh, I want to be like them. If you go on the NHANCE website, there are ways and avenues to buy their products. So effectively peptides and testosterone and a range of other supplements which they believe will enhance performance. So effectively this is an ad, it's a shop front window for effectively the stuff they're trying to sell. So I think it's important to note that it's not just an athletic mate.

[Sam]

And given the kind of explicit agenda of the games, athletes who compete, are they effectively advertising peptides and supplements to people watching?

[Tom Decent]

Yeah, it's a good question. I think by association they definitely are. You could argue that the people like your Hunter Armstrongs and the handful of other athletes who are taking performance enhancing substances aren't, but I guess that'll be up for them to explain when we go over there and talk to them. Someone like a James Magnuson has been on the record a lot about this not being an event for kids. What the, what they're trying to do is target and sell these drugs to older people. But clearly the lines will be blurred when kids on Monday watch this event and think, oh, hey, this is what James Magnussen looks like with this. So there are probably some hard questions to be asked when we get over there of organizers and how it's come to be and the moral and ethical debate around this. I've yet to find a medical expert who speaks glowingly of what they're doing and the way that they're going about it. But clearly, like heart issues are being discussed as well. Infertility. I know some of the athletes have decided to freeze eggs and sperm as a result of this to try and ensure that trying to have a baby won't be jeopardised later on. So clearly there are a lot of peptides coming onto the market that haven't been tested. Whether these athletes are taking them or not, we're not 100% sure. But the side thing to this is there is more prize money on offer at the Enhanced Games than there have been before in any other sporting event. So everyone's got a price at some point.

[Sam]

I think there's something a little disturbing about that idea that people being enticed to take substances to compete if there's

[Ruby Jones]

enough money on offer, 100%.

[Tom Decent]

You would talk to the enhanced people, though, and they would argue that the longevity space and anti aging space is enormous and they believe that with medically supervised taking of these substances that it can enhance people's lives in different ways. Now, it's no secret that many Australians are taking peptides and testosterone, which are prescribed by their doctors. So these aren't necessarily substances we've never heard of or things that are going to turn you into a bodybuilder necessarily straight off the bat.

[Sam]

And the other argument that I've heard made is that, you know, when it comes to these international sporting competitions, everyone is doping anyway. So at least this competition is, I guess, putting it out in the open, because if, if everyone's cheating, then, then no one's cheating. So what do you make of that?

[Tom Decent]

Yeah, I think, as Ken McAvoy Strand said the other day, he has to have faith in world entity doping agencies that they're going to continue to monitor and make where technology keeps up with the speed of change. And there are so many new things on the market as well that people can take. So hopefully drug testers are picking those up. But, yeah, it's a really, really interesting space. I think that there are people probably in clean sport who are doping and we haven't. We don't know about them. There are suspicions long held by athletes that that is the case. In some ways, this does throw open the floodgates and say, hey, let's just all run as quick as we can and take whatever you want. But the enhanced guys would argue that there are like some parameters at the moment, but until we know exactly what they're taking, how will we ever know?

[Sam]

Okay, so these athletes, they are going to the games to compete for themselves, not for their country. Unlike the Olympics, they're doing it for these huge cash prizes, also very different to the Olympics. And they are, it seems, being given a pretty kind of free hand to take performance enhancing drugs to see how far they can push their bodies. So it is a total kind of reimagining of what competitive sport is like. So for you as a sports reporter, I mean, do you think that it's going to change the nature of elite sport?

[Tom Decent]

No, I don't. I don't think swimmers, athletic stars, weightlifters, will go away from the traditional means. But I do think that the prize money on offer is something that is definitely being spoken about in those circles. There are Australian swimmers and athletic stars who aren't getting paid significant amounts of money. The Olympics, you don't get any money from the IOC for winning a gold medal. And this is the whole enhanced games organisers, the argument is that prize money should be better, and I completely believe that. So I don't think it's going to change that. I think, as I said, there'll be clean athletes who are more likely to want to go and compete in enhanced because there is great prize money. Seeing someone like Christian Gollumieve, the swimmer win a million bucks USD for breaking the world record when he came fourth at the recent Olympics in Paris behind Ken McAvoy. You'd have to think Ken McAvoy is looking at that going well. Hang on a sec. I didn't get a single dollar in world record prize money when I beat the world record earlier this year, so I think it will disrupt the landscape in that respect as well. But the overwhelming majority of athletes would never consider and are pretty appalled by the whole meet.

[Ruby Jones]

Well Tom, thank you so much for your time and enjoy the enhanced Games. Sounds like it's going to be interesting.

[Tom Decent]

It will. Stay tuned.

[Ruby Jones]

Also in the news, the World Health Organization has declared an international health emergency over an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with more than 80 deaths and over 300 suspected cases reported so far. There is currently no vaccine for the strain, which has spread to the major DRC city of Goma. The WHO is also warning the true scale is likely far larger than reported and is urging robust global efforts to limit the spread of the virus. And Treasurer Jim Chalmers has reacted to a news poll showing Labor's budget is the least popular since 1993, with 52% of voters saying they'll be worse off as a result. The treasurer said he understands concerns around changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, but said his job is to get more Australians owning their own homes. The news poll shows Anthony Albanese ahead of opposition leader Angus Taylor as preferred prime minister, 46% compared to 38. But it comes just a day after a Resolve poll had Albanese trailing Taylor by three points as preferred prime minister. I'm Ruby Jones. This is 7am thanks for listening,

[Sam]

Sam.