Marion Jones, Ben Johnson, and Tim Montgomery are among the famous athletes who were forced to return medals they won in the Olympic Games after being found guilty of abusing banned performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), better known as doping.
Two years ago, the Enhanced Games were announced to allow doped athletes to compete against each other. The first Enhanced Games event took place today and only one world record was broken.
The world record broken was the 50m freestyle with Kristian Gkolomeev taking 20.81s, faster than the original record of 20.88 seconds. Gkolomeev received a $1.25 million prize money ($250,000) and broke the world record ($1 million). However, his record will not be recognized by the international swimming body World Aquatics.
Embarrassingly, the organizers saw several athletes who did not dope win the events they participated in. For example, Hunter Armstrong won the 50m backstroke, Fred Kerley (men's 100m, 9.97s) and Tristan Evelyn (women's 100m, 11.25s) also won but did not come close to the world record.
The Enhanced Games received heavy criticism from WADA, USADA, IOC and World Athletics due to issues of safety and sports fairness. The first edition of the Enhanced Games only had 42 athletes compared to thousands in the Olympic Games.
The Enhanced Games received the support of billionaires Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and Christian Angermayer. It was organized to see to what extent science could be used to improve athletes' abilities. Only track, aquatic, combat, gymnastics and strength events were held. Team events were not offered in the first edition.
