Thu, Jul 11, 2024 page7

• ‘Extremely dangerous’: health experts slam doping-friendly Enhanced Games

  • AFP, PARIS
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  Athletes at the Paris Olympics later this month would be tested for performance-enhancing drugs, but at a competition plotting to rival the Games, doping will be the point.

  The Enhanced Games, planned for late next year, would not test competitors for drugs but instead encourage them to take advantage of medical advancements to break world records.

  The organizers say that by freeing athletes from the tyranny of anti-doping agencies and embracing technology, the Enhanced Games aim “to safely evolve mankind into a new superhumanity”.

  

  World Athletics President Sebastian Coe gives a speech in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain on March 1, 2024.

  Photo: Reuters

  However, researchers who have studied the effects of performance-enhancing drugs said that they fear the Games would push athletes to dope at such extreme levels they could risk heart attack, stroke or even death.

  It remains unclear if the Enhanced Games would actually be held. World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has dismissed the whole idea as “bollocks.”

  However, momentum seems to be building after retired Australian Olympic swimmer James Magnussen signed up earlier this year and the competition announced millions of dollars in funding from investors including US libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel.

  Oslo University Hospital researcher Astrid Kristine Bjornebekk said she was shocked to find out there was a even a chance this “extremely dangerous” idea could become reality.

  Bjornebekk, who has studied how anabolic steroids damage the brains of weightlifters, said that the Games would “trigger use with no boundaries.”

  Illustrating how the concept could incentivize such use, Magnussen told a podcast he would “juice to the gills” to get the US$1 million on offer for breaking the 50m freestyle world record.

  As well as swimming, the Games also plan to host track and field events, gymnastics, weightlifting and combat sports.

  Bjornebekk said that mixing steroids and combat sports such as mixed martial arts “significantly escalates” the risk of someone dying during the competition.

  A spokesman for the Enhanced Games said that, to avoid such risks, all athletes would be “continually supervised” once they sign up.

  This would include health checks, psychological screening and monitoring using new tech such as a “real-time portable echocardiogram,” the spokesman said.

  However, University of Bergen researcher Dominic Sagoe, who has led research finding that one in three steroid users become addicted, said the consequences of a successful Enhanced Games “could spill into society.”

  Sagoe said he feared that children inspired by their sporting heroes could seek out steroids, or that roid rage-induced violence by aspiring athletes could be pushed into the streets.

  “We cannot even fathom the consequences,” he said. “It’s not something to laugh at.”

  Anabolic steroids would likely be the most commonly used drug at the Games, the experts said.

  Excessive use of these steroids has been found to cause liver or kidney damage, high blood-pressure and cholesterol, infertility, mental-health problems and a higher risk of cancer.

  However, athletes would likely take a cocktail of drugs potentially including growth hormones, blood doping using erythropoietin, insulin and more, including some treatments to offset the side effects of others, Sagoe said.

  The most “dangerous combinations of drugs likely will land the best performances,” Bjornebekk said.

  The Enhanced Games spokesman said that “side effects and adverse events” from performance-enhancing drugs “could arguably be avoided with proper clinical supervision and expert guidance.”

  A new medical commission and scientific advisory board are still hammering out exactly how the competition would monitor athlete safety, he added.

  John William Devine, an expert in sports ethics at UK’s Swansea University, said that — despite billing itself as increasing athlete freedom — the Games could turn into a “tool for coercion.”

  “If you remove the limit on performance-enhancing drugs, will athletes be pressured by coaches, by teammates, by governments or even by sponsors to take risks that they otherwise wouldn’t have taken?” he asked.

  Matthew Dunn, a steroid researcher at Australia’s Deakin University, was concerned about athletes getting drugs on the black market and using them without supervision.

  However, he acknowledged that despite best efforts, competitions like the Olympics “are not 100 percent clean.”

  “It would also be interesting to see what the human body can achieve when it is ‘enhanced.’” he added.

  So could the Enhanced Games one day overtake the Olympics?

  “I think the general public still likes the idea of achievements occurring through ability, hard work and dedication — and not through a syringe,” Dunn said.
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