The Enhanced Games is a planned international sports event where the athletes will not be subject to drug testing.
“Drug testing is about fairness, not safety.” Is the first line on the official website of the Enhanced Games.
The event is set to take place in 2025, with big-name billionaires like Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, leading it toward the finish line.
The games will be the first-ever sports event that requires the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).
Dr Aron Ping D’Souza, the President of the Enhanced Games, said that it will be “the ultimate demonstration of what the human body is capable of.”
According to the official games website, 44% of world-class athletes admit to using PEDs in their careers and that only one percent get caught.
With this in mind, the Enhanced Games can run on the stance of making sports fairer, completely disregarding the health concerns and dangers that PEDs have on the body. However, that might not matter.
While the athletes will be pushed to their limits and injecting their bodies, they are being paid to do so.
All athletes who participate in the Enhanced Games will earn a salary of six figures.
For athletes who break records with the help of “science,” have the potential to earn $1 million dollars.
To some, this dystopian-style event may be amusing.
To others, like Matt Steinhaus, Director of Athletics, the event sounds like “the Hunger Games.”
Either way, the effect that it will have on aspiring athletes and the sports world is not going unnoticed.
In collegiate sports, the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) tests athletes for substances year-round.
At the high school level, this is not the case.
“Monitoring the use of performance-enhancing drugs at this level is hard,” Steinhaus said when referring to Laguna’s policies on the use of PEDs. We have no process by which we test.”
This issue is has reached the Supreme Court. There have been several back and forths as to whether drug testing student-athletes is a direct violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.
The current legislative opinion is that public schools do not violate the Fourth Amendment when drug testing their student-athletes.
As an independent school, Laguna determines its testing policies.
Steinhaus explained that Laguna currently does not have a testing policy, because the students are underage, making it more of a parental responsibility. When students turn 18, “the consent piece changes.”
If events like the Enhanced Games encourage athletes to use PEDs, it will be interesting to see how that affects mainstream professional sports and sports at Laguna.
