FSOM: The Enhanced Games trumpets ‘the future of human endurance’ but what about the long-term health effects on its athletes?

The men’s 100metres final in the 1988 Seoul Olympics has been described as ‘the dirtiest race in history’.

Original winner Ben Johnson was ignominiously stripped of the gold medal like a French cavalry officer having his epaulettes ripped off his shoulders, his buttons torn off and sabre blade snapped in half, or like Mr Banks in Mary Poppins, having his brolly thrust inside out and a hole punched in his bowler hat.

Johnson’s world record winning time was wiped from the books and Carl Lewis awarded the gold, Britain’s Linford Christie upgraded to silver and Calvin Smith bronze.

It was the first race in history where the first five all clocked times below 10 seconds.

And there was a reason for that.

They were possibly pumped up to the gills with drugs.

Defamation laws mean FSOM has to be careful at whom he points a withering finger of accusation, but at some point in their careers five – six if you include Johnson – of the other seven athletes in that race had either tested positive or were involved in the use or supply of performance-enhancing rugs.

Of the top five finishers, only Smith never failed a drugs test.

An aghast world held its hands up and flapped them about like an old aunt with a touch of the vapours as it finally hit home the lengths sportsmen and women would go to capture the golden ring.

Whether it’s athletics, swimming, football or skiing (remember Brit Alain Baxter who was stripped of his Bronze slalom medal?) or even snooker, sports rules and regulations dictate that you cannot put, place or pop anything in your body which might give you an unfair advantage over an opponent.

Well, the good news is that that premise will be flung out of the window in May when the Enhanced Games take place in Nevada.

Created by Australian businessman Aron D’Souza, and backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, under the mantra ‘My Body, My Choice’ the Enhanced Games will allow athletes to use performance enhancing drugs and substances without being bothered by pesky drug testing.

The Enhanced Games trumpets ‘a new era of elite competition’ and ‘the future of human endurance’ and sounding like something from a scary sci-fi novel involving beings which will destroy the planet: ‘a sporting movement that will evolve mankind into a new super-humanity’.

No longer will athletes have to come up with defence pleas such as Christie’s Ginseng Tea (which FSOM’s old mum was partial to) containing banned substances which earned him a two-year ban, or the aforementioned Baxter who claimed the Vick’s Sinex Nasal spray he had bought across the counter in Salt Lake City’s Walgreens pharmacy was a different formula to that he bought in Boots at home and contained naughty chemicals.

In the Enhanced Games, athletes will be free to pump and pop whatever they damn well choose into their bodies, knowing that nobody will grass them up for it.

Certainly, Australian Olympic medallist swimmer James Magnussen is looking forward to it and has already reached up to the top shelf of his bookcase and blown the dust off his pharmacopoeia to see what goodies he can swallow or shove up his fundament.

Magnussen has said he will ‘juice up to the eyeballs’ to come out of retirement to take part, and there is good reason.

He sniffed the carrot of $1million to break the long course 50m record currently held by Brazilian Cesar Cielo

Yes, there’s big money involved in this and it’s the spondulicks on offer that is attracting British sprinter Reece Prescod to take part.

Prescod is the fifth-fastest British sprinter and his career lists a place at the Tokyo Olympics and a European silver and World Championship bronze medals.

But a series of nagging and niggling injuries which dulled the edge of his speed led sponsors to drift away and he was forced to retire from athletics to take on menial jobs to make ends meet.

He’s quite unrepentant about taking part in the Enhanced Games as a chance to earn money and although he insists he will not take any performance enhancing drugs beforehand, it is hard to criticise his motive for wanting to take part.

Sporting organisations like the IOC and WADA (the World Anti Doping Agency) have claimed sound reasons for wanting to ban drugs in sport.

Athlete welfare is high on that list. While drugs might help an athlete with his citius, altius, fortius, who knows what future health problems they might be storing up, with kidney, liver and heart issues all on the menu in later life?

There is also the integrity of sport to be protected and to prevent it becoming a situation where those countries with the best scientists and chemists will dominate and prevail over natural talent.

Don’t forget, a large push towards the ‘clean’ sports of today resulted from the East German sporting prowess of the 1970s and 80s. 

East Germany punched way above its weight in most Olympic sports thanks to a state-sponsored programme of doping its athletes to bolster the communist state’s image and prestige of how a country with a population of just 17million could laud it over western nations thanks to hard work and dedication.

Much of the East German state labs’ time was committed to their athletes avoiding detection and such was their success that no DDR athlete tested positive throughout their period of dominance although there were clues they might have been taking steroids as shown by pictures of the time where long-jumper Heike Drechsler appeared to be hiding Tina Turner under her armpits,

There has long been an argument that athletes should be able to compete under their own terms and doing what the like to their bodies and are D’Souza and Thiel wrong in their claim the Enhanced Games are the first step to creating a race of superhumans?

American poet Robinson Jeffries in his poem The Beak of Eagles says; ‘It is good for man to try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish and not to go down the dinosaurs way until all his capacities have been explored.’

So can we look forward to some extraordinary and spectacular performances in the Enhanced Games?

Will Usain Bolt’s 100m record be slashed by a sprinter with thighs with the girth of wine barrels?

Pole vaulters will require oxygen tanks to combat the thin air of the upper atmosphere while the US national air defence system will be re-deployed from tracking possible hostile Russian rockets to spotting javelins hurled into the ionosphere.

The decathlon, usually spread over two days, will be shortened to one afternoon and the ends of swimming pools will be reinforced to stop the likes of Magnussen smashing through. and causing the water to flood out of the pool.

But as we know, there is nothing new under the sun and doping in sport is nothing new.

Even in 700bc it was known that increased testosterone increased performance and in ancient Greece athletes gulped down all sorts of iffy substances to give themselves a better shot and Al Topper.

To boost that testosterone count, the ideal snack was bull’s testicles while wine laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms was popular for would-be cheaters and goats innards with honey was thought to aid stamina, all of which can be found on the menu of your local Greek restaurant today.

Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track, in the Victor comic, trained almost exclusively on fish and chips which he tended to wolf down just before his middle-distance race. Goodness knows how he kept that down to avoid what would have been a very dirty race!