The British swimmer Ben Proudworld champion in 2023, silver in Paris 2024 and world silver in Singapore last month in the 50 style will take part from the Enhanced Games, the doping Olympics that allows athletes to use doping substances without being subjected to anti -doping tests and will be held in May next year in Las Vegas. And where if not? A decision that comes like an electroshock in the world of sport that looked with just disinterest at this event to which they had given the ok athletes to date no longer in activity and in any case of rearguard. But the adhesion of Proud reopens the debate because it is a first -rate sample and far from on the way to sunset: “For 15 years, swimming defined me, has shaped my decisions, my sacrifices and the direction of my life- explained the English swimmer- he indicated to me where to live, how to train, to give up. Every choice of mine was motivated by the desire to be the best version of myself in the pool, to demonstrate that he is up to the world scene”. “I have reached a point where I feel deeply satisfied with everything I have made in my career- concludes Proud- my heart is full of satisfaction and I know I am ready to go on and embrace something new. That’s why I will retire from traditional sport to compete in the Enhanced Games. This is not the end of my trip: it is the beginning of a new chapter”,
Point and chief. But it is not a decision that passes in silence. The “Doping Olympics” organized by Aron d’Ouza, A rich lawyer from Melbourne who has been working on this event for some time and who will see the challenge on five disciplines (athletics, swimming, gymnastics, weight lifting and combat sports) have always discussed. “I want to see forty, fifty-year-olds, sixty-year-olds beating the world records- had said of Souza some time ago- and as soon as we fight the world record of 100 meters, the world record of the mile, as soon as we go down under the two hours in the marathon and pulverize the primates of the swimming who wants to look at the old, Olympiad lens? Will the NBC pay billions of dollars to transmit a slow sporting event? Will the cities have invested billions of dollars to host a slow sporting event? They will not do it … »
Welcome to the “improved” Olympics where each drug is granted, where every technology is granted, where there are neither limits nor checks. The scenario is disturbing, outlined for some years now in a scenario is surreal and a little science fiction: in the race there will be athletes who will try to beat the speed record of Usain Bolt, who has been resisting for over 15 years or dropping, and not a few seconds, the two -hour wall on the 42.195 km of the marathon. There will be jumpers with shoes in titanium capable of making them “take them”, gymnasts that will be helped in their choreography from the IA, there will be everything that will serve to amaze for a free sport in Libero doping in which anabolic, stimulants, and steroids, diuretics, beta-blockers and growth hormones will be admitted (indeed recommended).
For those who love sport, this is the worst of the nightmares, but in the visionary mind of D’Ouza the challenge is high: “This is the way for eternal life -said the Independent a few months ago -. It will be the way we will create performance medicine technologies that will give us better athletes but also better men who will remain young and performing for more time. And who wouldn’t want to be younger for more time? ». They say that Enhanced Games will be the platform to make anti-aging technology a reality but if the aim justifies the means in this case the aim does not seem to be so noble: “If there is a magic pill that makes us younger-a short souza size-there will be infinite income …”. Business is business … and in fact for these “improved” Olympics Souza has already signed an agreement with Ridley Scott For a series of 10 episodes that will tell records and businesses and has already collected the participation of six former world champions including two Olympians: the Australian swimmer James Magnussen Several times worldst style and South African Roland Schoeman Gold in the 4 × 100 at Athens games in 2004. Not only.
Many are financing and betting on the Enahanced Games starting with Peter Thiel, the American entrepreneur of German origin co -founder of Paypal that Forbes indicated as one of the richest people in the world and who Souza met years ago in Oxford during an event of the University. He told him what he had in his head and he doesn’t want to convince him also because Thiel is obsessed with the idea of remaining young and has long investing millions alongside the Methuselah Foundation, which aims to extend the duration of healthy human life making the new years the new 50 by 2030. “The model of the Olympics has broken, the athletes are adults and have the right to do with their own body … He preaches Souza who obviously has become the number number for those who imagine the sport on the rightly distant planets and think that it is all a maneuver of doubtful taste to make people talk about themselves and make money. “Nobody in Atletica takes the Enhanced Games seriously …” Lord for some time explains Sebastian Coe, Head of World Athletics Mantre Teevis Tygart, The head of the US anti -doping agency (Usada) defines them as “an illegal farce and a dangerous clown show …”. It looks like a joke, the weather will say if it is not. The fact remains that doping has always divided sport into “dirty” and “clean”, two clear adjectives that instantly give the idea of what the right part is to stay, compete, participate. Doping is defeated even when it is Vittoria and doping is also a crime. So, just to understand each other. And maybe to explain it also to Ben Proud.