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The Enhanced Games, announced last May, has been in a recruiting drive to secure athletes to participate in a spectacle of doping-allowed sports next May in Las Vegas.
Appearance fees and prize pools of $500,000 per event are promised in four swimming events, four track & field sprint and hurdle events and weightlifting. Bonuses are to be offered for world records.
So far, the promotion has announced five athletes – four men, one woman – all of whom are swimmers, all but one retired from 5-12 years.
But the recruiting is ongoing. So much so that USA Weightlifting is the latest to issue a statement against the project, posted Tuesday with President Matt Sicchio explaining in part:
“We are aware that Enhanced Games staff are actively recruiting weightlifters and have contacted USA Weightlifting-affiliated athletes.
“USA Weightlifting stands with the International Weightlifting Federation in strong opposition to the Enhanced Games. Leaders within our sport have worked diligently for years to clean up the sport, reestablish trust in the results we see on the platform, and cement the continued participation of weightlifting in the Olympic Games. The Enhanced Games fly in the face of those efforts and corrode the foundation of integrity of which true sport operates.
“We have worked too hard to rebuild trust around our sport to go backwards now. Performance enhancing drugs have no place in weightlifting. There are no shortcuts to the top. USA Weightlifting is committed to bolstering the integrity of weightlifting, ensuring the pillars of clean sport are upheld, and protecting the health and safety of athletes. The Enhanced Games are an unwelcome sideshow that threaten to take the sport of weightlifting backwards, violate the spirit of true sport, and unnecessarily risk the long-term health and safety of athletes.”
Condemnations of the Enhanced Games came quickly from the international federations, including World Athletics and the International Weightlifting Federation, and World Aquatics, which adopted a new bylaw in June which bans participation in any federation-sanctioned activity who has:
“(i) actively supported or endorsed a sporting event or competition that embraces scientific enhancements that include the use of Prohibited Substances or Prohibited Methods (as those terms are defined in the Doping Control Rules) and/or the use of any illegal drug; and/or
“(ii) participated (in any capacity) in any such event or competition; and/or
“(iii) supported (e.g., as a coach, trainer, manager, training partner, doctor, or physiotherapist) any other person in their preparation for and participation in any such event or competition.”
Observed: For weightlifting, the danger of an event like the Enhanced Games is too painful to bear.
The sport infamously suffered from doping cover-ups, mismanagement and cheating of all kinds for decades, finally exploding in a 2020 documentary from ARD Germany that forced out long-time President Tamas Ajan (HUN) and had the sport off of the Olympic program for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles when initially announced in 2021.
The IWF replaced its board and staff, undertook a severe restructuring – including independent, outside management of its anti-doping program – and convinced the International Olympic Committee to readmit it for LA28 in 2023.
Any whiff of intentional or organized doping attached to weightlifting could be enough to dismiss it from the Olympic Movement altogether. The sport has paid a high price for its sins, with Olympic athlete participation slashed from 260 at Rio 2016 to 196 at Tokyo 2020 and then to 122 at Paris 2024. For LA28, the quota is set at 120, in 10 weight classes – five each for men and women – down from 15 total in 2016.
Sicchio noted the health questions for athletes surrounding the Enhanced Games, but for weightlifting itself, such an event represents its death.
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