ENHANCED GAMES: A BANE OR BOOST?

Critics call Olympic rival Doping Wild West; creator D'Souza calls it 'a righteous force'

On a recent morning this fall, Aron D'Souza was at home in London expecting a long-anticipated delivery - a vintage set of the "Great Books of the Western World," a collection with over 50 volumes of philosophy, history and literature published in the 1950s by Encyclopaedia Britannica, including "Faust," Freud's "On Narcissism" and "The Hippocratic Oath".

"It's like 200 kilos' worth of books," D'Souza said in a video call. "This is now my task over the next decade, to read all of these books."

"The Hippocratic Oath," which is a guide to ethical standards in medicine, should be an interesting one for D'Souza.

In the summer of 2023, D'Souza shocked the sports world with an announcement that he was creating an event called the Enhanced Games, which he said would be a far-ranging athletic competition seeking to challenge the Olympics by allowing participants to use a variety of banned substances, including performance-enhancing drugs.

Reactions after the announcement were overwhelmingly negative.

Critics, including representatives from anti-doping agencies and sports commissions, called the concept a "clown show" and said it was "dangerous and irresponsible," while the International Olympic Committee (IOC) told multiple news outlets that the Enhanced Games did not "merit any comment."

Since then, the furore over the Games has largely settled down, even if the core question about whether they should exist still remains. It is now up to D'Souza and his team to actually plan them.

THE THREE PILLARS OF PLANNING Much remains to be done for the Enhanced Games to become a reality.

D'Souza, 39, said that he was focused on "three major pillars" of planning - determining health protocols and working with pertinent government regulators, finding an appropriate venue (or venues) for the events and recruiting athletes.