29/05/2026
After their results on Sunday, the Enhanced Games (EG) just announced a 10 million bonus for anyone who can break Usain Bolt's 100m record at their 2027 event.
The richest incentive in the sport's history, and the target is a 17-year-old record. Because their fastest sprinter ran 9.97, which is nearly half a second slower than Bolt's 9.58, a time that would've finished last in the Paris 2024 Olympic final.
Of the 4 athletes who competed naturally, 3 won their events. Only 1 WR was "broken" across the entire EG, beaten by only 0.07 seconds, with the swimmer wearing a banned swimsuit on top of the drugs.
EG wanted to show the world the potential of athletes "living enhanced", but instead just mostly showed that drugs, isn't really all that.
And yet this is the direction fitness culture has been heading for years. Pre-workouts loaded with 200-300mg of caffeine. TRT for energy. Ozempic for appetite. Carbon-plated insoles that feels like running on trampolines. Each one sold as an upgrade. None of them asking what they cost.
There's a distinction worth making. Some tools prompt your body to adapt. They expose you to a stress, and your system responds by getting stronger. Other tools substitute for that adaptation. They hand you the outcome without building the capacity. The capacity is the part that's actually yours. The substitute, by definition, depends on itself.
The clearest everyday example is our feet. Modern running shoes are engineered to absorb impact, support the arch, and correct your stride, which sounds helpful, until you realise the foot is supposed to do all of those things.
Take over it's job long enough, and it stops doing the job. A huge proportion of injuries trace back to a foot that was never allowed to develop. The shoe didn't fail, the shoe worked, and that was the problem.
The Enhanced Games is the logical endpoint of this direction. A pharmaceutical company advertising to "Live Enhanced", hosting a sports event that barely moved the needle. If that's what progress looks like, it's worth asking, what we're actually progressing toward.
