Enhanced Games——硅谷对"公平体育"的一次正面挑战

On May 24, 2026,

in Las Vegas, USA, in

a resort hotel,

a competition

destined to be debated worldwide

was held for the first time.

This competition

has an English name,

"Enhanced Games."

In Chinese,

we can call it

"增强奥运会."

It lasted just one day in all.

But its real meaning

isn't in that single day —

it lies in

its head-on challenge to

one that has continued for over a hundred years —

a piece of sporting common sense:

sports competition

must be "clean";

it cannot rely on PEDs.

Today,

starting from this competition,

we'll talk about several bigger questions:

what

is sport actually competing in?

Is "fairness"

absolute,

or can it be redefined?

When capital

begins treating the human body itself

as an "upgradable" product,

should we be glad,

or wary?

Let's first lay out the facts.

The competition's founder

is named Aron D'Souza,

a person —

an Australian lawyer

and businessman.

His long-held view is:

the current international sports rules

are hypocritical —

top athletes, more or less,

all use PEDs,

they just don't get caught.

Rather than have everyone use them in secret,

better to,

in plain view,

use them under doctors' supervision,

and see where humans' true limits

really lie.

This idea

attracted

a group of very rich investors.

The biggest of them

is the German biotech billionaire,

Christian Angermayer —

he alone

invested twenty million US dollars.

On top of that

there are some Silicon Valley big names.

The "Enhanced Games" also announced

that, by merging with an investment firm,

it would list on the New York Stock Exchange,

at a company valuation

as high as 1.2 billion US dollars.

That is to say,

this is not only

a sports experiment,

but also a business

clearly aimed

at the capital markets.

The competition itself

was divided into three major categories of events:

athletics,

swimming,

weightlifting —

23 events in total.

42 athletes

from 24 countries.

The prize money was also generous:

each event's winner

got a base prize of 250,000 US dollars;

anyone who broke

a current world record

got an extra one-million-dollar bonus.

In the competition,

the most talked-about moment

came from the swimming pool.

The Greek athlete

Kristian Gkolomeev,

in the men's 50-meter freestyle,

swam 20.81 seconds.

The official world record

is 20.88 seconds.

He was, compared with that record,

0.07 seconds faster.

He took home

that one-million-dollar bonus.

But

this "record,"

the real international swimming federation,

will not recognize.

Why?

Two reasons:

First,

he used PEDs.

Second,

the high-tech swimsuit he wore

had itself already been banned by World Aquatics.

In the other events,

American sprint star

Fred Kerley

ran 9.97

to win the 100 meters —

without breaking Bolt's world record.

Iceland's "Mountain," Björnsson,

won the deadlift,

but he and his Canadian opponent

both failed to lift 515 kg.

On the surface,

this was a competition

that didn't break many records

and didn't make too big a wave.

But its real impact

must be seen from a wider angle.

Those opposing this competition

have three layers of reasons.

The first layer

is health.

Long-term,

high-dose use of

testosterone,

growth hormone,

anabolic steroids —

the effects on the body

have, in medical terms, hardly

been studied thoroughly.

The organizers emphasize

that all athletes

took drugs under doctors' supervision —

but medical experts point out

that the "clinical trial" they published

has too small a control group

and too few samples

to prove "safety" at all.

The second layer

is the spirit of sport.

Famous sports ethicists say

sport

has never been only

"who is the fastest."

A more important layer

is "watching humans, within limits,

strive to push past themselves."

Setting rules,

setting boundaries —

these limits

are themselves part of sport.

Remove the PED line

and it's like dismantling

that layer of meaning.

The third layer

is the impact on young people.

Around the world there are countless

youth athletes.

They grow up watching athletes.

If the highest goal they see

is "breaking records by drugs,"

then this message

will quickly seep down into

lower-level competition —

schools,

provincial teams,

even amateur circles.

And adolescents'

tolerance for testosterone

and growth hormone

is much lower than adults'.

But

the supporting side

also has their reasons.

First,

they say,

today's "clean sport"

was always a myth.

Top athletes,

almost all of them have used some gray-zone drug,

they just don't get caught.

Rather than hypocritically ban,

it's better to manage openly.

Second,

adults

should have autonomy over their own bodies.

What I take,

whether I bear the risk —

is my business.

Third,

humans need new experiences.

Watching a

fully-rules-broken limit

isn't necessarily less meaningful

than watching a

not-entirely-trusted "clean record."

The two voices

are both real.

At this point,

I want to pull the view

even further out.

The "Enhanced Games,"

in essence,

isn't just a sports project;

it's Silicon Valley thinking's

frontal challenge

to traditional sport.

Silicon Valley has always believed

any rule taken as "self-evident"

can be "disrupted."

Taxis need licenses?

Disrupt that,

make Uber.

Hotels need regulation?

Disrupt that,

make Airbnb.

Well, PEDs are banned —

why can't that be disrupted?

Make

a sports league that allows drugs,

list it,

scale it,

turn it into an industry.

This "disrupt everything" mindset

sometimes brings efficiency,

sometimes brings disaster.

Which one the Enhanced Games is,

it's still hard to say.

But the question it raises

is, in fact, real:

how long can our attachment to the "natural human body"

hold?

In the next fifty years,

gene editing,

neurotechnology,

brain-computer interfaces —

our ability to modify the body

will only grow stronger.

At that point,

what counts as a "human" achievement?

What counts as "cheating"?

The "Enhanced Games,"

of this future,

is an early signal.

It may be the wrong direction,

but the questions it asks,

we'll have to answer sooner or later.

Finally,

let me leave you with two questions.

The first:

if one day

"clean athletes"

cannot beat

"enhanced athletes,"

which kind of competition would you want to watch?

The second,

and perhaps harder —

when a person says,

"This is my body,

"I have the right to decide

"how I use it" —

do you think

society

should respect that autonomy,

or should it

set a boundary for them?

These two questions

have no standard answer.

But they

are worth thinking about slowly.

Okay.

That's all for today.

See you in the next story.