World's first 'Enhanced Games' will see athletes using approved performance-enhancing substances

2026 will be a bumper year for sports fans, headlined by top international events like the FIFA World Cup and the Winter Olympics.

There is also something completely new on the horizon - the Enhanced Games are set to take place in Las Vegas in the US in May 2026.

The Enhanced group describes their vision as the Olympics of the future, with the world's best athletes 'fully unleashed, empowered by science'.

In a nutshell, the event permits athletes to use performance-enhancing substances approved by the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under medical supervision.

The inaugural Games will offer swimming, track and field, and weightlifting.  At this point, 50 competitors are signed up to participate, including former Olympian and World Championship medalists.

As futurist Graeme Codrington from TomorrowToday says, the ⁠$25 million prize pool also makes the Enhanced Games very attractive.

"The point behind this is to say, every sports event is looking to see how far you can push the human body and why not do it enhanced by science - and allow people who are prepared to do whatever that does to the body to do it, to see what happens."

Talking about the fairness principle that governs sporting competition, Codrington moots the idea that what we are born with is not 'fair' in the first place.

"Fairness is an interesting grey area to start with - of course those who have height and weight or muscle density advantages put in years of work on top of that, but that underlying genetic advantage is there to start with and it's NOT fair. So, if it isn't fair, why not just have another category of people who say, let's see what my genetic inheritance and my discipline AND a little bit of science and chemicals can do."

Looking into the future, Codrington suggests we could well see the 'Robotic Enhanced Games' in addition to the Enhanced Games by the end of the decade.

"I would pay to see somebody strap on an exoskeleton and, say, jump 30 metres into the air or jetpack around the stadium instead of running. So I do think this is something that opens interesting new sporting opportunities, and maybe that's the way to think about it best - these are new sports rather than us drugging up the old sports."

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to this fascinating conversation about the future of competitive sport