“What else can we do in long distance triathlons? What can we do in cycling? What can we do in marathon running?”
That quote came from Max Martin, the chief executive and co-founder of the controversial Enhanced Games in an interview with BBC Sport last weekend when he said he was “very excited about expanding beyond the three sports that we’re currently offering” and added: “We’re speaking to athletes already outside of the core three sports.”
The Enhanced Games will permit athletes, under medical supervision, to take drugs banned in mainstream sport and its inaugural competition will take place in Las Vegas in May, featuring track sprinting, swimming and weighlifting. It has a reported prize pool of $25m and offers appearance fees and bonuses of up to $1m for breaking a world record.
Widespread condemnation
There will be three months of training beforehand in the United Arab Emirates where the athletes will be offered performance-enhancing drugs that are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The organisers say competitors will have strict medical assessments but the concept has been condemned by multiple sports and anti-doping bodies for normalising doping and endangering athletes’ health.
Many athletes too have also been vocal in their opposition to the concept, including reigning men’s Olympic triathlon champion Alex Yee.
Asked at the recent launch of this year’s World Triathlon Championship Series race in London about his take on the Enhanced Games, for which British athletes Ben Proud (swimming) and Reece Prescod (sprinting) have signed up, short course triathlon star Yee was unequivocal.
“My first emotion is it seems quite dangerous,” he said. “There’s a reason why substances are banned and it’s priority to health and well-being of athletes primarily.
“You hear about so many people from different walks of life who were doping in previous generations, having to stand up in the middle of the night because otherwise their heart would stop moving and stuff like that. And you are concerned that it could be a matter of time before something more serious does happen as a result of something like this.
“So my primary concern is for the well being of the athletes that are taking on this risk for I guess financial benefit.”
Attention grabbing?
Long distance triathlon was one of three additional activities mentioned by Martin in his interview with BBC Sport – cycling and marathon running being the others, all a world away from the bite-sized attention span needed to watch the three disciplines set to feature in this May’s Enhanced Games.
And long distance triathlon also strikes us as a somewhat strange suggestion anyway as, unlike cycling or marathon running, there is no iconic or clearly-defined world record to try and generate headlines around – quite the opposite in fact.
The sub-two hour men’s marathon mark has long been a holy grail while the world hour record for both men and women in track cycling continues to capture the imagination in that sport.
Not so in long-distance triathlon. If it’s termed full-distance then that means any race with a 3.8km swim, 180km bike and marathon run, so Challenge Roth has produced both the male and female bests in recent years.
However by far the quickest men’s time of 7:21:12 came at IRONMAN Cozumel in 2021 but that seems to have an asterisk against it for many because it featured a down-current swim, illustrating one of many variables.
Even the length of transitions can play a part – if they were less extreme at IRONMAN Hamburg then that event might already have seen the first-ever sub eight hours time by a woman, one of the few benchmarks that does generate attention in the world of long distance swim, bike and run.
So if even within the sport there’s confusion and relative indifference to record times then it’s hard to see it drawing in those from outside. Which in this particular case, as far as we are concerned, is no bad thing.
