The Enhanced Games, a controversial sporting competition that openly permits the use of performance-enhancing drugs, has been held in Las Vegas, with Australian Olympic swimmer James Magnussen among the headline names. The event and its fallout were examined by the ABC programme Media Watch.
Magnussen was the first athlete to publicly sign up to the venture, and he competed after going through a programme of supervised doping. He joined a group of competitors who were given access to a menu of 37 different drugs as part of the event's central premise.
According to the report, those substances ranged from Adderall, an amphetamine, to five different types of testosterone. The athletes said the drugs gave them increased power and faster recovery, but they also reported side effects, including mood swings and the growth of facial hair.
For Magnussen, the result in the pool did not match the build-up around his transformation. The swimmer finished last in the 100-metre freestyle and was beaten by every other competitor in the race, including athletes who said they had taken no drugs at all and had simply trained hard and eaten well.
Despite finishing at the back of the field, Magnussen still collected a consolation prize reported to be worth 100,000 US dollars. The outcome highlighted the distance between the event's lofty promises about redefining human potential and what actually played out on the day.
There was, however, one standout performance. A chemically enhanced competitor shaved 0.07 seconds off the men's 50-metre freestyle world record, clocking 20.81 seconds, and walked away with a cheque worth 1.25 million US dollars for the swim.
Media Watch noted that the company behind the spectacle, Enhanced Group Incorporated, is not only a sports events business but also a drug company. It sells copper peptides, which are not approved for human use in Australia, along with testosterone, which is available locally only by prescription, and Tadalafil.