In February, Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev dove into a pool in North Carolina and emerged $1 million richer. His unofficial 20.89-second 50-metre freestyle beat César Cielo’s 2009 world record by 0.02 seconds, achieved while openly using banned performance-enhancing drugs under medical supervision. Two months later, wearing regulation textile shorts rather than the banned “supersuit” he’d used for his first attempt, Gkolomeev clocked 21.03 seconds — beating the fastest “clean” time ever recorded.

These weren’t desperate stunts by a washed-up former champion. Gkolomeev finished fifth at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, swimming 21.59 seconds. His previous personal best was 21.44, which was good enough for European Championship silver. This is a swimmer still in his prime, competing at the highest level, who chose to cross over to Peter Thiel’s Enhanced Games at the height of his career.

The achievement represents more than one or two fast swim times. It suggests that the Enhanced Games have succeeded in recruiting legitimate talent and producing genuine athletic breakthroughs. Gkolomeev reportedly added 10 pounds of lean muscle in two months under clinical guidance, creating valuable data about human performance enhancement that extends far beyond sport into the broader wellness industry.

Even more surprising is the calibre of athletes following him. Ukraine’s Andrii Govorov, the 50-metre butterfly world record holder, announced his retirement from Olympic sport this month to join the Enhanced Games. Bulgaria’s Josif Miladinov, a 21-year-old European 100-metre butterfly silver medallist, has also signed up.

The recruitment strategy reveals a shrewd understanding of global athletics. The Enhanced Games have thus far targeted Eastern European athletes from countries with historically relaxed attitudes toward performance enhancement. East Germany’s systematic doping programme dominated swimming in the Seventies and Eighties, and that cultural legacy persists. For athletes from Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Greece, where six-figure prize money still represents life-changing sums, the Enhanced Games offer financial rewards that dwarf anything available in traditional competition.

This success contradicts the scepticism many observers — myself included — expressed about the venture’s prospects. When I wrote about the Enhanced Games last year, I assumed Thiel’s “Olympics on steroids” would struggle to recruit legitimate athletes and would become a glorified strongman-style freak show. The evidence now suggests otherwise.

Not only that, but this development was probably inevitable, given the extent of the problem. A study of elite athletics competitions, commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), found that up to 57% of competitors admitted doping in the previous 12 months. The research took nearly six years to be officially published, despite results being leaked to the media in 2013, suggesting authorities were reluctant to confront the scale of the problem. More recent research has produced significant results, but no number quite that staggering.

The Enhanced Games have scheduled their inaugural event for Las Vegas in May 2026, featuring swimming, sprinting, and weightlifting competitions. They aim for a 100-strong roster of participants and are planning to construct dedicated facilities at Resorts World. With serious venture capital backing from Trump Jr.’s fund and Thiel, elite athletes, and growing public interest, this event is more than a sideshow. The organisers also plan to market “performance and longevity enhancements” to consumers this summer, promising to make the same protocols used by their athletes available to paying customers.

This move represents the logical endpoint of a wellness industry already comfortable promoting human growth hormone, testosterone replacement therapy, and peptide treatments to almost anyone with the money to pay for them. Silicon Valley types routinely discuss hormone optimisation regimens, while social media influencers promote experimental compounds to millions of followers.

Yet we may find ourselves regretting this seemingly inevitable normalisation. The clinical supervision that Enhanced Games organisers tout cannot eliminate the fundamental risks of pushing human physiology beyond its natural limit. As the East German example showed us, women will see the greatest improvements from steroids but also face the most severe side effects, including permanent virilisation and fertility problems. The long-term cardiovascular and neurological effects on male users are becoming clearer as the first generation of serious steroid users from the 1990s reaches middle age.

The Enhanced Games aren’t going to replace traditional sport, at least not yet, but they’re well on their way to creating a parallel universe that makes mainstream competitions look increasingly quaint. Whether this represents the final destination for athletic competition or a cautionary tale about pharmaceutical experimentation, we’re past the point of dismissing this as a publicity stunt. The athletes and their results are real, the benefits (and costs) are mounting, and they’re only getting started.

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Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

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