Venture capitalists are backing a ‘steroid Olympics’ to find out what happens when athletes are doped to the gills

By Catherine Ordway, Aaron CT Smith, University of Canberra

For many, elite sport is the quintessential human endeavour. It drives ferocious competition, captures unconditional tribal loyalty, and rewards the victors with fame and fortune.

As the Olympic motto declares, the limits of human performance are there to be tested – faster, higher, stronger. But what would happen if the boundaries were not just pushed, but abandoned altogether?

That’s what PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel wants to do, putting some cash into lawyer Aron D’Souza’s concept of an “Enhanced Games”, where drug testing is out the window and anything goes.

Will venture capital make the Enhanced Games a reality? Despite rhetoric about making sport safer and “the medical and scientific process of elevating humanity to its full potential”, the games are out to make money.

The case for enhancement

The argument in favour of “enhanced” sport declares the current system dishonest and ineffective, as drug use is supposedly already widespread. It calls for athletes to make their own body-boosting decisions, and for their excellence to be rewarded with a more equitable share of the sport-entertainment loot.

https://twitter.com/enhanced_games/status/1752648761719848975?t=J8nPGWn6Kdvj8lEcLvjgaw&s=19

As drug use in sport is here to stay, the argument goes, athletes should be permitted to use every advantage they can to secure success. In the world of hyper-commercialised, spectacle-driven sport theatre, athletes and fans alike are desperate to find out what can be done when anything is possible.

Costs to participants

As experts in sport management and integrity, we have a few concerns with this proposed venture.

It’s not that we’re averse to “thinking outside the box” to shake up existing systems, which are sometimes inequitable and unfair. And we agree there’s always more that can be done to reduce the harm elite athletes’ bodies endure.

However, any enhanced entertainment value would come at a cost to the participants. There’s no shortage of evidence demonstrating the dangers of pharmaceutical abuse for performance enhancement, let alone what might happen when used in experimental combinations and dosages.

Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/venture-capitalists-are-backing-a-steroid-olympics-to-find-out-what-happens-when-athletes-are-doped-to-the-gills-222869