The Enhanced Games (AKA Steroid Olympics) Explained

0:00 On May 24th, 2026, that's just over a month from when this video drops,

0:04 a group of elite world-class athletes are

0:07 going to walk into Resorts World Las Vegas,

0:09 juiced to the gills on testosterone, growth hormone, and God knows what else,

0:14 and then they're going to break every Olympic record in existence.

0:17 On purpose, on camera, with the whole world watching, including this guy.

0:23 It's called the Enhanced Games,

0:25 and the sporting world is absolutely losing its mind over it.

0:28 WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, cited it as dangerous and irresponsible.

0:33 World Aquatics called the athletes clowns juggling knives in a circus,

0:36 while the International Weightlifting Federation put out a formal statement

0:40 that was basically just the word no repeated for three paragraphs.

0:43 Threaten much, guys?

0:44 Meanwhile, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr.'s investment fund,

0:47 and a German biotech billionaire have poured millions into this thing.

0:51 They're offering a million-dollar bounty to anyone who breaks a world record,

0:55 and an Olympic swimmer literally said he was

0:57 going to juice to the gills on live television.

1:01 I can't tell you how excited I am.

1:03 So, what is actually going on here?

1:05 Is this the future of sport, or is this a one-time dangerous stunt,

1:09 or is this just what happens when Silicon Valley finally discovers testosterone?

1:14 What's up, my lab rat legion?

1:15 This is Dr.

1:16 Alex Tatum.

1:16 I'm a board-certified urologist and fellowship-trained men's health specialist.

1:20 I prescribe testosterone for a living.

1:22 I work with athletes who compete in non-tested federations,

1:25 powerlifting, bodybuilding, strongman, and jujitsu,

1:27 and I'm probably more qualified than most people on YouTube to talk about this.

1:31 So, today, we're going to break it all down.

1:33 But before we get into it, I need to know where you stand.

1:36 Drop a comment right now.

1:37 Are you going to watch the Enhanced Games?

1:39 Yes, no, or maybe only watch the highlights

1:41 if someone literally hulks out on the starting blocks.

1:44 I want to know.

1:45 Hit that comment section, and let's go.

1:47 All right, let's start with the basics.

1:49 The Enhanced Games are a planned annual multi-sport

1:51 competition that explicitly rejects the World Anti-Doping Agency model.

1:55 Instead of banning performance-enhancing drugs and testing athletes for them,

1:59 the Enhanced Games say, "Go ahead, use them, or don't.

2:02 But if you are going to use them,

2:03 you have to do it under medical supervision, with transparency,

2:06 and with doctors monitoring your health the entire time."

2:09 The inaugural event is scheduled for May 21st through the 24th,

2:12 2026, at Resorts World Las Vegas, and it's going to be three sports,

2:16 swimming, track and field, and Olympic weightlifting.

2:19 Specifically, we're talking the 50-m and 100-m freestyle,

2:22 the 50-m and 100-m butterfly in swimming.

2:25 Then for track and field, we have the 100-m sprint and the 100/110-m hurdles.

2:30 And then in Olympic weightlifting, we have the snatch and the clean and jerk.

2:33 And we have about 50 athletes.

2:35 It's not a massive field,

2:36 but these aren't randos from your local Planet Fitness who discovered tren.

2:39 We're talking about Olympic medalists, world champions,

2:42 and elite international competitors who are willing to sacrifice

2:45 their eligibility in traditional sport for the opportunity to compete here.

2:50 We're talking heavy hitters like Fred Kerley,

2:52 the 2022 world champion in the 100-m sprint and an Olympic silver medalist.

2:56 We're talking James Magnussen,

2:58 two-time 100-m freestyle world champion from Australia.

3:01 Kristína Glockamäyr, which is the best I'm going to do.

3:04 Ben Proud, Arley Mendes.

3:06 These are all serious credentialed athletes.

3:08 Now, before you say, "Okay, Dr.

3:10 Alex, powerlifting and bodybuilding have been doing this forever." Yeah,

3:13 you're right, they have.

3:14 Untested federations have existed basically since the inception of those sports,

3:18 and nobody's pretending otherwise.

3:20 But here's what makes this genuinely different.

3:22 For the first time, we're going to see

3:23 enhanced athletes competing in the exact same events,

3:26 under the exact same conditions, as their Olympic counterparts.

3:30 Same distances, same weights, same stopwatch.

3:33 A direct, quantifiable, side-by-side comparison.

3:36 How much faster is the 100-m sprint with 500 mg of testosterone a week?

3:41 How much more weight goes on the bar when growth hormone enters the chat?

3:44 We've never had this data,

3:46 and as a physician who works in this space every single day,

3:48 I find this absolutely fascinating.

3:51 And for the first time, we have something we've never seen before,

3:54 actual advertisers pouring money into an event

3:57 that is promoting enhanced athletics.

4:00 And look, I get it.

4:01 We've always had supplement companies backing bodybuilders,

4:03 but if you compare what their lifetime

4:05 earning potential is to an athlete that could

4:07 get a major sponsorship deal out of something

4:09 like the Enhanced Games, it's night and day.

4:12 The Enhanced Games were founded by Aaron De Souza,

4:14 an Australian-born, Oxford-educated lawyer.

4:16 Now, if that name sounds familiar, De Souza is the guy that actually helped

4:19 Peter Thiel orchestrate the lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker Media.

4:23 Rest in peace, Hulk Hogan.

4:24 This is a man who clearly enjoys disrupting things for a living.

4:27 Then we have co-founder and executive chairman Christian Angermayer.

4:31 This is a German biotech billionaire whose investment

4:33 portfolio looks like a longevity clinic's medicines cabinet.

4:36 We're talking psychedelics, peptides,

4:37 anti-aging companies, the whole nine yards.

4:40 Their current CEO is Maximilian Martin,

4:42 an investment banker and former crypto guy, because of course he is.

4:45 And financial backing includes Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and 1789 Capital.

4:50 That's Donald Trump Jr.'s investment fund.

4:53 So, we've got Silicon Valley libertarianism

4:55 meeting biotech venture capital meets my body,

4:58 my choice applied to anabolic steroids.

5:00 It is the most aggressively 2026 thing that I've ever seen.

5:04 Now, De Souza's philosophy boils down to a few core arguments.

5:08 The first, anti-doping is hypocritical.

5:10 A WADA-commissioned study estimated that 44% of elite

5:13 athletes have used banned substances in a given year.

5:16 The system isn't clean, it's just selectively enforced.

5:19 Number two, transparency plus medical supervision

5:22 is safer than secrecy plus punitive testing.

5:25 If athletes are going to use these substances anyways,

5:27 wouldn't you rather they do it under the care

5:29 of a physician rather than in a gym bathroom with a vial they bought from a guy

5:32 named Big Tony on a Telegram channel?

5:34 No shade to Big Tony, he's been taking care of me for years.

5:37 Three is bodily autonomy.

5:39 De Souza literally uses the phrase my body, my choice, your body,

5:42 your choice, which, love it or hate it, is at least philosophically consistent.

5:46 Four is that the Olympics just don't pay their athletes enough.

5:49 The IOC generates billions in revenue,

5:52 while 59% of US Olympians reportedly make less than 25 grand in an Olympic year.

5:57 Enhanced is offering 250 grand for first place

6:00 and a million dollars for a world record.

6:03 That's persuasive when your alternative is maybe a gold medal,

6:06 but all you get is a sponsorship

6:07 deal afterwards with a regional mattress company.

6:10 I think De Souza makes some genuinely good points here.

6:12 The system is inconsistent.

6:14 Athletes are underpaid.

6:15 And as a doctor who prescribes testosterone and fertility medications every day,

6:19 I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that I have had Olympic and Paralympic

6:22 athletes in my clinic that I can't treat because it might piss off WADA.

6:27 But we need to look at the bigger picture here,

6:29 because the truth is this is not just a sporting event.

6:31 In early 2026, Enhanced launched

6:33 a direct-to-consumer supplement and telehealth line.

6:36 Now, they're actually selling testosterone protocols,

6:38 semaglutide, and longevity products to the masses.

6:41 So, no, this isn't just a sporting event.

6:43 It's a vertically integrated enhancement business that is

6:46 using sport as the proof of concept.

6:48 And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but what this really is is it's

6:51 showing what could be accomplished by elite athletes,

6:53 and then asking the public,

6:55 "What could you do if you were enhanced?" Now, let's get into the rules.

6:59 What substances can and can't be used?

7:01 And this gets really interesting,

7:03 and it's actually so involved that we're going to make an entire separate

7:06 video that does a deep dive into exactly what's permitted and what isn't,

7:09 compound by compound, category by category, and that video is going to be wild.

7:13 So, subscribe so you don't miss it.

7:15 But here's the high-level version.

7:17 The Enhanced Games say that athletes can only use substances that are

7:20 legal in the United States and can be prescribed by a licensed physician.

7:23 They also say that they will not be conducting traditional drug tests,

7:26 no urinalysis, no blood metabolite screening.

7:29 So, no WADA-style enforcement.

7:31 And this makes sense.

7:32 It perfectly aligns with their vertically integrated telehealth care model.

7:35 So, instead, they're going to rely on pre-participation medical screening,

7:39 physician supervision, athlete self-disclosure, and ongoing clinical monitoring.

7:43 Think of it as an anti-WADA.

7:45 Instead of, "You can use this, and we'll catch you if you do," it's,

7:48 "You can use this, but a doctor has to be involved,

7:50 and we need to monitor your health markers." In practice,

7:53 that means that most of the big-ticket anabolic steroids are on the table.

7:56 Testosterone, nandrolone, Anavar, Anadrol, Winstrol.

7:59 All of these have FDA approval, and they're legally available in the United

8:03 States through either compounding pharmacies or commercial ones.

8:06 Growth hormone, EPO, insulin, aromatase inhibitors,

8:08 SERMs like Clomid and Nolvadex, hCG, stimulants like Adderall and modafinil.

8:13 All of these are FDA-approved drugs that WADA bans,

8:15 but the Enhanced Games are going to presumably allow.

8:18 So, what isn't allowed?

8:19 Tren, I'm looking at you.

8:20 Link to the video up above.

8:22 Tren is a veterinary drug that's never

8:23 been FDA-approved for humans in the United States.

8:26 Boldenone, also known as EQ, same thing.

8:29 Also, BPC-157, TB-500, and most popular peptides are research

8:33 chemicals that have never received FDA approval,

8:35 which theoretically means that they're off the list.

8:38 Also, cardarine, one of the most

8:40 popular endurance boosters in the fitness world,

8:42 was abandoned in development and never approved,

8:44 which again, means that it's not on the list for use in the Enhanced Games.

8:48 Even more esoteric options like trimetazidine,

8:51 which is the metabolic modulator that got Iga Świątek suspended

8:54 from tennis for a month and Kamila Valieva banned at the Olympics,

8:57 have never been FDA-approved in the US, so they're out, too.

9:00 And here's the irony that I find genuinely fascinating as a physician.

9:04 Some of the safest compounds we know of, like BPC-157,

9:07 which has been linked to tissue repair and healing with minimal side effects,

9:10 are excluded just because they lack regulatory approval.

9:13 And while some of the most hepatotoxic

9:15 and cardiovascularly dangerous drugs on the planet, like Anadrol and Halotestin,

9:19 are totally fine because they've got that FDA stamp,

9:21 or at least they did at one point.

9:23 So, really, the determining factor for this isn't safety,

9:25 it's regulatory status.

9:26 And the reason is obviously legal and insurance-related.

9:29 So, yes, the playing field is exponentially wider

9:32 than anything we've ever seen in sanctioned sport, but it's not a free-for-all.

9:36 Better to think of this as the anti-WADA games, not the anything-goes games.

9:40 And we're going to break all of this down,

9:41 every category, every compound, every irony in our deep-dive video.

9:45 So, go ahead and subscribe.

9:46 Trust me, you're not going to want to miss it.

9:48 But the bigger question that I have is,

9:50 how are they going to enforce this without testing?

9:53 And the honest answer is they probably can't, not really.

9:56 The medical screening can identify health risks like cardiac issues,

9:59 dangerous hematocrit levels,

10:00 and liver damage, which is good, but it's terrible as a lie detector.

10:04 An athlete could potentially use trend for 12 weeks in prep, come off,

10:08 present only legal prescriptions during screening,

10:10 and nobody's going to know the difference.

10:11 A medical screening model is a good safety net,

10:14 but it's not meant to be an anti-cheating system.

10:16 So, in reality, I think the FDA-approved

10:18 drugs only messaging that's coming from the Enhanced

10:20 Games is really more of a CYA move rather than an enforced rule set.

10:24 Okay.

10:25 Time to put on my doctor hat.

10:27 The Enhanced Games have said that athletes will be closely monitored

10:30 and won't be allowed to take anything with irreversible health consequences.

10:33 De Souza has called this the safest sporting event in history,

10:36 and CEO Max Martin told Reason magazine that performance

10:39 enhancements are not that dangerous under the right supervision.

10:43 And he's not entirely wrong, but he may be sugarcoating it just a little bit.

10:47 Supervised use is safer than unsupervised use.

10:49 The cardiac screening and longitudinal blood

10:51 work that Enhanced is doing is generally better than what most athletes using

10:54 these compounds currently get, which is nothing.

10:57 But, claiming no long-term risk just isn't an honest assessment of the science.

11:01 That's more of a PR move,

11:02 and I say that as someone who prescribes these exact medications.

11:05 High-dose androgens tank your HDL cholesterol, which is your good cholesterol.

11:09 So, when HDL drops and LDL rises,

11:11 you're going to be accumulating vascular damage,

11:14 even if you're only living in that environment

11:15 for a temporary period of training.

11:17 So, even after you normalize once the cycle's all done,

11:20 your arteries have a memory, and that memory is not forgiving.

11:23 Also, superphysiologic androgen use can cause cardiac remodeling.

11:27 Yes, we can help mitigate that with beta and angiotensin receptor blockers,

11:30 but we can't completely eliminate it.

11:32 We're talking left ventricular hypertrophy,

11:34 which is thickening of the heart wall, reduced diastolic function.

11:37 This is all documented in the literature,

11:38 and your heart doesn't care about your libertarian philosophy.

11:41 But, I do, provided you click the subscribe button.

11:44 Also, we have to talk about polycythemia,

11:46 which is an elevated red blood cell count.

11:48 Thick blood increases stroke and PE risk.

11:50 This is manageable with monitoring,

11:52 but it's a real risk that can require real intervention.

11:55 We've also got hepatotoxicity from oral steroids like Anadrol and Halotestin.

11:59 17-alpha alkylated compounds are brutal on the liver.

12:01 Your liver is one of the most forgiving organ in the body,

12:03 but even it has its limits.

12:05 And then we have fertility.

12:07 Exogenous testosterone shuts down the HPG axis.

12:10 Your brain stops telling your testes to make sperm,

12:12 and for a 25-year-old athlete who may want kids someday, this isn't trivial.

12:16 And yes, I'm a guy who has written papers

12:18 on how you can get sperm back after testosterone exposure,

12:21 but it's not always a guarantee.

12:23 So, can you mitigate these risks?

12:25 Absolutely.

12:26 Monitoring, dose management, ancillary medications,

12:29 and fertility preservation is literally what I do for a living,

12:32 but mitigating risk is not the same as eliminating it.

12:35 And anyone who says that high-dose anabolic use has

12:37 no long-term consequences probably isn't accurately representing the science.

12:41 Now, for one of my favorite parts of this whole saga.

12:43 James Magnussen, a two-time world champion, Olympic medalist,

12:47 and the face of the Enhanced Games,

12:48 went on a full performance enhancement protocol.

12:51 We're talking testosterone and the whole shebang,

12:53 and reportedly within 10 days he put on 10 lb of muscle.

12:56 Jury's still out on that DEXA scan, but he eventually hit 253 lb.

13:00 For reference, he raced at 209 during his Olympic career.

13:03 The guy is freaking enormous.

13:05 He looked like someone crossbred a swimmer with a refrigerator.

13:08 But then he got in the water,

13:10 and he was 1.2 seconds slower than his personal best from when he was clean.

13:15 1.2 seconds in a 50-m sprint event.

13:18 That isn't a rounding error.

13:19 That's a lifetime.

13:20 He literally said himself, "I got too big,

13:22 and it didn't translate in the water."

13:24 It turns out refrigerators aren't that aerodynamic.

13:26 He was sinking.

13:27 More muscle meant more drag, more body weight, and worse buoyancy.

13:31 So, there's a lot more at play

13:32 here than just more gear equals better performance.

13:35 Meanwhile, Kristóf Milák,

13:37 only 3 weeks into a much lower dose protocol, swam a 20.89.

13:41 That's 0.02 seconds faster than the world record held by César Cielo since 2009.

13:46 He's leaner, lighter, and ran a smarter protocol.

13:49 And here's the kicker.

13:50 When Milák tried to replicate that time

13:52 weeks later after more time on his protocol, he was slower again.

13:57 And this is the data that I'm excited about.

13:59 It challenges the lazy assumption that steroids are a magic win button.

14:03 In swimming, they might actually make you worse

14:05 if that protocol isn't calibrated to your event.

14:07 More always isn't better.

14:09 Your body is not a video game character where

14:11 you can just dump points into strength and everything improves.

14:14 Now, what about weightlifting?

14:16 We know that androgens are going to be a massive advantage.

14:18 Pure force production against gravity, straightforward.

14:21 When it comes to sprinting, it may be more nuanced.

14:23 We know it's probably going to be helpful, but it's going to be complicated.

14:26 We have to calculate power-to-weight ratio, neural drive, and technique.

14:30 It isn't just about quad size.

14:32 And in swimming, apparently the answer is it

14:34 depends if you turn into a human tugboat.

14:35 Who knew?

14:36 So, should you watch the Enhanced Games?

14:39 Absolutely 1,000%.

14:41 For the first time in history,

14:43 we are going to see what the human body is capable

14:45 of with pharmacological assistance as a direct

14:48 measurable comparator against the Olympic baseline.

14:50 Same events, same distances, different pharmacology.

14:54 And what we find might genuinely surprise us.

14:56 We've already seen that anabolics can make a swimmer slower.

14:59 We might find that the sprinting gap is smaller than we expected,

15:02 or we might see that a weightlifter puts up numbers

15:04 that make the Olympic record look like a warm-up set.

15:06 We just don't know, and that's what makes this exciting.

15:09 So, do I have concerns?

15:11 Absolutely.

15:11 I'm a doctor.

15:12 Do I think the health messaging might need a little bit of work?

15:15 Well, yeah, safest sporting event in history may not

15:17 necessarily be the most accurate way to portray your event,

15:20 but I do think that we can thread this needle.

15:23 The truth is is that monitored performance

15:25 enhancement is exponentially better than unmonitored performance enhancement,

15:29 and actually, based on WADA's own data,

15:31 that may be what we've been seeing for years.

15:34 This is one of the most

15:35 exciting cultural and population-level experiments in history,

15:38 and I am here for it.

15:40 So, what is my takeaway at the end of the day?

15:42 Listen, I'm a doctor who prescribes testosterone.

15:44 I work with athletes who use these compounds

15:46 responsibly under supervision and with informed consent.

15:49 Is the risk zero?

15:51 No, absolutely not, but we can minimize it.

15:53 And I believe in bodily autonomy and transparency,

15:56 and I believe that the worst-case scenario isn't the Enhanced Games existing,

16:00 it's athletes continuing to use these compounds in secret,

16:02 without monitoring, without blood work, and without anybody watching.

16:06 So, May 24th, Las Vegas.

16:08 I'll be tuning in and probably screaming at my TV the whole time.

16:11 That's it for today.

16:12 If you learned something, smash that like button.

16:15 If you disagree with literally anything I said, drop a comment.

16:18 If you agreed with anything I said, drop that comment.

16:21 I read them all, and I appreciate it deeply.

16:23 Subscribe if you want more content like this, and definitely

16:26 subscribe if you want to see the deep

16:27 dive that we're going to do on exactly what

16:29 drugs are and aren't allowed at the Enhanced Games.

16:31 That video is coming next, and it's going to be wild.

16:34 Until next time, I'm Dr.

16:35 Alex.

16:36 Stay healthy, stay informed, and proceed accordingly.