In a case of life imitating Saturday Night time Stay, Peter Thiel has invested in a seed spherical of the Enhanced Video games, which describes itself as “the trendy reinvention of the Olympic Video games that doesn’t have drug testing.”
It does appear to go slightly past simply not testing, although, a minimum of judging by the press launch. The buyers “see the imaginative and prescient of a brand new mannequin of sports activities, that brazenly celebrates scientific innovation and truthfully represents the usage of efficiency enhancements in sports activities at present,” stated Aron D’Souza, president of the Enhanced Video games, within the assertion. Thiel himself actually has no drawback backing medical experiments.
The discharge says some bizarre issues about not burdening taxpayers as a result of it’s a non-public firm, which made me chortle fairly laborious, given the historical past of privately owned groups demanding taxpayer-funded stadiums. In equity to the Enhanced Video games, their preliminary focuses seem like monitor and subject, swimming, gymnastics, weight lifting, and “fight sports activities,” which have much less of a historical past of strong-arming the general public than, let’s say, baseball or soccer. In fact, that will merely be as a result of these sports activities are much less standard!
I’m not going to ask too many questions on the legality of performance-enhancing medication (PEDs); many are authorized with a prescription, anyway. (Legal guidelines and enforcement additionally range by nation.) There are some well being dangers concerned with PEDs, as there are with all medication. The Enhanced Video games makes an attempt to allay this concern by noting it would do intensive medical checks earlier than occasions, which appears clever; having an athlete’s arms fall off throughout competitors can be, at minimal, dangerous press.
Personally, I don’t particularly care what adults do with their our bodies, drug-wise. I do assume, nonetheless, the Enhanced Video games is lacking out on some probabilities to innovate. Listed below are a few of my proposals:
The purpose of testing for PEDs in sports activities is, as I perceive it, to offer an equal taking part in subject for athletes who can’t or received’t use them. (Russia even ran state-sponsored doping packages, which actually appears like an unfair benefit towards smaller opponents.) However detection and enforcement have been decidedly uneven. Who is aware of? Possibly the Enhanced Video games will draw the PED customers away from different sports activities, leaving the athletes preferring to work clear higher in a position to showcase their very own talents.
