Enhanced Games sparks research collaboration involving UNLV institute

UNLV’s Sports Innovation Institute has signed a memorandum of understanding for a research partnership with the Enhanced Games, an Olympic-style sports competition coming to Las Vegas in May with a major twist: The athletes’ use of many performance-enhancing drugs is legal.

Participants can use medically prescribed performance enhancers like testosterone, growth hormone and anabolic steroids, if they’re legal in the United States.

Jay Vickers, the institute’s chief operating officer, said the institute will use Enhanced Games’ data to research the effects of performance enhancers typically banned from competition. What those studies could look like hasn’t yet been decided, he said, but “all the research is on the table.”

“We get to work around what they’re doing, see behind the scenes. Obviously, this event is going to be in 2026, so there’s a lot of work they need to do before we are even going on that road,” Vickers said. “We want to make sure that, regardless of whoever we work with, that we’re doing it in the name of research.”

The competition at Resorts World will feature swimming, track events and weightlifting.

But its lax rules on PEDs worry organizations such as the World Anti-Doping Agency, which condemned the event in May for being “dangerous and irresponsible.” Enhanced Games sued the organization over supporting a ban on swimmers who participate in the competition or similar ones, The Associated Press reported.

Aron D’Souza, president and founder of Enhanced Games, can quickly rattle off the safety measures Enhanced Games is putting in place.

The organization’s focus is on “pre-competition clinical assessments,” he said. That means every athlete gets a cardiogram, MRI and blood work prior to competing, regardless of whether the person is “enhanced” or not.

“Let’s be very clear: The drug testing system invented by the International Olympic Committee is for fairness in competition,” D’Souza said. “It’s not for safety.”

Matt Fedoruk, the chief science officer at the United States Anti-Doping Agency, has said the negative effects of “banned substances” can come years later — even with the Enhanced Games’ safety precautions.

“The physical and mental toll that performance-enhancing drugs have taken on athletes over the years has been substantial,” WADA said in a statement to CNN after the lawsuit was filed. “People have died.”

Vickers said he didn’t know if the event was dangerous, emphasizing that the institute’s work could give a clearer understanding of the event’s safety. While noting he had limited knowledge, Vickers said many of the approved “performance enhancers” could be found in supplement stores.

Any information given to the institute will be public, he later said.

“People are very interested in what Enhanced are doing, and we get to be in a position to say, ‘Look, this is great, this is bad, this is OK, this is in the middle,’ ” Vickers said. “Hopefully, through this relationship, we can provide some good answers to some of those questions.”

Enhanced Games wrote in a statement to the Sun that the organization and UNLV were “currently collaborating” to create a “formal relationship” with the institute.

“We are truly excited about this potential partnership,” Enhanced Games wrote. “This is an evolving area that will benefit athletes of all performance levels, from elite competitors to those seeking to live healthier and higher-quality physical and mental lives.”

D’Souza compared some critics to what taxi cabs were to Uber and what Blockbuster was to Netflix. Older institutions, namely the International Olympic Committee, “are facing disruption for the first time,” he said.

D’Souza said he wanted athletes to have a choice between the IOC — which he called “old” and “slow” — and his competition.

The financial pressures on world-class athletes are real. The wife of one of Enhanced Games’ first athletes, swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev, wrote in a letter published by the organization that he had beenpaid “as little as” $5,000 a year as a top swimmer in the world playing by the book.

In May, Enhanced Games announced Gkolomeev “broke” the previous 50-meter freestyle world record and claimed the competition’s first $1 million prize.

First-place winners at the Las Vegas competition, which is scheduled to take place next Memorial Day weekend, will earn $250,000.

“We live in a world transformed by science,” D’Souza said after Gkolomeev’s swim. “But sport has stood still. Until today. We are not updating the rulebook — we are rewriting it. And we’re doing it safely, ethically and boldly.”