LAS VEGAS — The inaugural Enhanced Games, a one-night sports competition that permits athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs banned in internationally recognized events, will be held Sunday in a custom-built arena at Resorts World Las Vegas. More than 40 athletes from around the world will compete in swimming, track and weightlifting for a total prize pool of $25 million.

The venue includes a four-lane 50-meter pool, a six-lane sprint track and a weightlifting stage. Swimming events will feature 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle and butterfly races, the track program will include the 100-meter sprint and the 100-meter and 110-meter hurdles, and the weightlifting series will feature the clean and jerk and the snatch. A strongman deadlift showdown is also scheduled. Each individual event carries a purse of $500,000, with $250,000 awarded to first place, and an additional $1 million bonus will go to any athlete who breaks a world record in the 100-meter sprint or the 50-meter freestyle. World records set at the games will not be recognized by governing bodies such as World Athletics, which require drug testing.

The competition was founded by Australian entrepreneur and lawyer Aron D'Souza, who announced the project in 2023. The publicly traded Enhanced Group, whose CEO Max Martin took over in November, is using the games as a launch pad for a business selling peptides and other supplements, and is documenting the effects of performance-enhancing drugs on athletes for its own research. Financial backers include Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm 1789 Capitol and tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

According to the company, the drugs used are FDA-approved and prescribed by doctors, with 91% of competing athletes using testosterone or testosterone esters, 79% using human growth hormone, and 62% using stimulants such as Adderall. "The drugs would be administered with fully personalized protocols and constant monitoring to ensure their safety and peak performance," D'Souza said. "The Enhanced Games do not promote the indiscriminate use of restricted substances," he said. "Instead, we advocate for the safe, responsible and clinically supervised use of performance enhancements," he added. In 2024, D'Souza said the competition's approach "aims to reduce the risks associated with unregulated practices and bring them under medical oversight," in response to the International Federation of Sports Medicine's concerns. "I imagined a new kind of competition, one where science and sport and society could evolve together, where we stopped apologizing for progress and started to embrace it," D'Souza said. "Openly, responsibly and ethically," he said, describing his company's approach to exploring athletic enhancement.

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart called the competition a "dangerous clown show that puts profit over principle." Dr. Aaron Baggish, a professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland who said research on high doses of testosterone has shown an increased risk of heart disease, said: "The number of Enhanced athletes using testosterone is very concerning." He added: "I understand that there's a very large commercial opportunity for this company, but it is something I think borders on the lines of ethics." Baggish also said: "That's akin to me saying: If I'm a physician watching you smoke cigarettes, I can make smoking safe for you." "These athletes, I assume many of them, if not all of them, will go through the Enhanced Games without any visible problems whatsoever," Baggish said. "But what happens to them three years from now, five years from now?" he said. "We have to be careful not to confuse short-term success with long term implications," Baggish said.

World Aquatics banned anyone involved with the Enhanced Games from its events, and UK Sport said it might withdraw funding from any athletes who sign up. The Enhanced Games company has also launched a personalized medicine and supplement platform on its website offering hormone replacement therapy, peptides and weight-loss medication.