Enhanced Games CEO defends controversial event

With the Olympics over, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that some dirty work was going on behind the scenes – there were rumors of male ski jumpers potentially inflating their private parts for better hang time. However, in the enhanced games there is no such thing, as counterintuitive as it sounds.

The Enhanced Games have long been called the “Steroid Olympics” by critics. The event does not have its name by chance, as performance enhancements will be allowed.

However, CEO Max Martin believes that such an event actually promotes fairness, honesty and, most importantly, safety.

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“I would say the biggest [misconception] is that athletes put their health on the line with what they do, and they do it just for the money. It’s actually quite the opposite,” Martin said in a recent interview with Pakinomist Digital.

“To say that enhancements are dangerous, in some circumstances, is true, yes. It can be completely abusive — too high a dosage, bad drug-drug interactions because it’s unmonitored and unsupervised, it can be very dangerous, yes. But that’s exactly what we’re up against and exactly what we’ll be able to circumvent by circumventing it in a transparent and regulated environment.”

So how do they do it?

Well, enhanced doctors have gone and will continue to review each athlete’s data and let the athlete know what they should and can and what they should and shouldn’t take. That means, well, it’s not as easy as someone getting more enhancements just because they want it. Some athletes, Martin said, even had to stop taking specific drugs because they weren’t approved by Enhanced’s doctors.

“And why isn’t it approved? Because we haven’t found out in the research yet whether it’s safe or not,” Martin said.

That’s part of the reason Martin believes his event may actually be safer than the Olympics.

“[They] take substances that are not well researched, that we do not know well, that are newly developed. We have no data on how these drugs actually feel in your system. And then, secondly, by taking additional drugs as a masking agent to hide what you’re taking in the first place, that’s super dangerous,” Martin said. “If you take it out into the open and you allow athletes to use regulated and enhanced drugs where you know very, very well the safety profiles, the benefit profiles, and you monitor them constantly and over time, you know if something went sideways. Because we monitor the athletes so well, we feel it right away.”

“What the current testing systems are focused on is punitive drug testing. They’re only focused on whether or not an athlete is cheating. What they’re not focused on is whether an athlete is healthy and safe to compete,” he continued. “Some of our guys didn’t even have health coverage and they compete at the highest international level and win medals for their countries. They don’t even have health insurance. And so that’s really the problem.”

In this photo illustration, the Enhanced Games logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen. (Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

“Athletes are willing to do whatever it takes to win. What we need to do and are obsessed with is making sure every athlete that goes into competition is healthy and safe to compete.”

Part of the protocol is also to ensure that athletes take what makes sense for them and their sport. The Australian swimmer James Magnussen will not take the same improvements as e.g. a powerlifter.

“The improvements, what they’re doing is they’re not pumping (Magnussen up) to be a bodybuilder. What they’re doing is they’re very, very targeted at who he is as an individual and what he’s specifically training for. And that allows him to just get better,” Martin said, adding that the improvements are more “the icing on the cake and the fine-tuning.”

Enhanced also pays its athletes quite a bit of prize money – $250,000 for winners, $250,000 for the rest of the pack and $1 million for anyone who breaks a world record. Perhaps not coincidentally, World Aquatics said it would begin paying Olympic winners $50,000 in 2024.

“I think they did it because they know we’re going to start paying athletes well and the athletes are going to evaluate it. They’re scared. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s the positive impact we already have, and I think there will be more in terms of positive impact that we can inspire other sports institutions to do in the future,” Martin said.

One athlete who will be competing at Enhanced is Hafþor Juius Bjornsson, better known as “The Mountain” from “Game of Thrones”, or more simply, “Thor”. With 32 international Strongman titles, the 6-foot-9, 400-plus-pound behemoth will attempt to break his own deadlift world record of 1,124 pounds for a top prize himself.

Thor is in lockstep with Martin about the security of the event.

“What I like about what the improvement does is they check athletes first. They make us do a massive heart check, they take results, we get blood drawn and we do all these tests and we check our body to see if we’re healthy enough to participate. Once that’s done we get the green light. During our training we see doctors and it was really much better that it was in my own position, now I feel like it was in my own Fox position,” says Björn. Digital. “Like, I feel like I’m in good hands with Enhanced. They’re really caring and they really want to make sure I’m healthy first and foremost, you know? So that’s good. I’m really excited and excited about the opportunity to be with Enhanced and have the opportunity to break the record with Enhanced.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger presents the trophy to Hafthor Bjornsson of Iceland as Bjornsson won the Arnold Strongman Classic title for the third consecutive year as part of the Arnold Sports Festival on March 7, 2020 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. (Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

During the entire event, there will be nothing to hide. As Martin said, “It’s fair game,” even for the small number of athletes who choose not to be enhanced because it’s completely “transparent.”

“These athletes, they know what they’re up against, you know? They have the same opportunities to use the same access to the medical program…” Martin said. “So many athletes have explained to me that they came in second and they thought, ‘You know what, the first guy cheated, but they didn’t catch him.’ And that’s the worst feeling you can have because you stay within the rules, you do everything you can to be the best, someone else takes a cheating approach to it, wins, doesn’t get caught, that’s the worst feeling in the world.

“If you come second at the Enhanced Games and you’re not improved, you’re very proud of your performance because you’re like, ‘OK, this guy chose to do something that I didn’t want to do myself, but I know that in what I chose to do, I’m the freaking best.’ And that’s what gives so many athletes like this excitement to be in the Games, because it’s an open competition, a transparent competition.”

And yes, Martin “absolutely” believes that any world records set would be legitimate, even if they are not officially recognized.

“There are studies that show 43% of Olympians take banned substances, but 1% get caught. It calls into question every record there is, every achievement there is, because on average one in two athletes cheats,” Martin said.

Last year, Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev swam a 50m freestyle in 20.89 seconds, the fastest ever, with the benefit of performance-enhancing drugs (an enhanced Magnussen failed). While most might consider it illegitimate, Martin takes pride in knowing that Gkolomeev doesn’t have to hide how he got there — unlike athletes like Marion Jones, Ben Johnson, Tim Montgomery and numerous others.

“Kristian Gkolomeev is the only human being who was ever able to cover the distance of 50 meters in water in 20.89 seconds. It’s just a fact, whether you treat this as an official word record under the World Aquatics rules or whether you treat it as an official word record under the Enhanced Games rules, the fact is that no other human was ever able to do that.”

Kristian Gkolomeev of Greece competes during the men’s 50m freestyle swimming semi-finals at the Paris La Defense Arena during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on August 1, 2024 in Nanterre, France. (Oscar J. Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images)

Is he OK if people think that Gkolomeev’s performance is not legitimate?

“Of course.”

Unorthodox? Certainly. Finally the norm? Possibly.

“People can make up their mind whether they like it or not, but the notion that this is a steroid Olympics where everybody’s just going to be shot up with some random drug, that’s just completely wrong,” Martin said.

“After May 24, I think the world will have a very different perspective.”

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