Some steered occasions for Peter Thiel’s all-drug Olympics

In a case of life imitating Saturday Evening Stay, Peter Thiel has invested in a seed spherical of the Enhanced Video games, which describes itself as “the trendy reinvention of the Olympic Video games that doesn’t have drug testing.”

It does appear to go somewhat past simply not testing, although, no less than judging by the press launch. The traders “see the imaginative and prescient of a brand new mannequin of sports activities, that overtly celebrates scientific innovation and truthfully represents using efficiency enhancements in sports activities as we speak,” stated Aron D’Souza, president of the Enhanced Video games, within the assertion. Thiel himself actually has no downside backing medical experiments.

The discharge says some bizarre issues about not burdening taxpayers as a result of it’s a non-public firm, which made me chuckle fairly onerous, given the historical past of privately owned groups demanding taxpayer-funded stadiums. In equity to the Enhanced Video games, their preliminary focuses look like monitor and discipline, swimming, gymnastics, weight lifting, and “fight sports activities,” which have much less of a historical past of strong-arming the general public than, let’s say, baseball or soccer. After all, that will merely be as a result of these sports activities are much less widespread!

I’m not going to ask too many questions on the legality of performance-enhancing medicine (PEDs); many are authorized with a prescription, anyway. (Legal guidelines and enforcement additionally fluctuate by nation.) There are some well being dangers concerned with PEDs, as there are with all medicine. The Enhanced Video games makes an attempt to allay this concern by noting it can do in depth medical checks earlier than occasions, which appears smart; having an athlete’s arms fall off throughout competitors can be, at minimal, unhealthy press.

Personally, I don’t particularly care what adults do with their our bodies, drug-wise. I do suppose, nevertheless, the Enhanced Video games is lacking out on some possibilities to innovate. Listed below are a few of my proposals:

The purpose of testing for PEDs in sports activities is, as I perceive it, to offer an equal enjoying discipline for athletes who can’t or gained’t use them. (Russia even ran state-sponsored doping packages, which actually appears like an unfair benefit in opposition to smaller opponents.) However detection and enforcement have been decidedly uneven. Who is aware of? Perhaps the Enhanced Video games will draw the PED customers away from different sports activities, leaving the athletes preferring to work clear higher in a position to showcase their very own talents.