The so-called Enhanced Games, a controversial sporting event allowing performance-enhancing drugs, has run headfirst into the brick wall of sporting orthodoxy. The event’s only world record will not be recognised by any mainstream athletics body, and UK Athletics’ chief executive has demanded a formal integrity review. This is a fiscally plausible outcome: regulators are protecting the value of their own product.
The record in question was set in the men’s 100 metres by a competitor using a cocktail of banned substances. The time, 9.78 seconds, would have been competitive at the clean Olympics, but it is now destined for the footnotes of freak shows. UK Athletics chief executive Jack Buckner did not mince words: “This is not a legitimate athletic achievement. It is a chemically engineered stunt. We have a duty to protect the integrity of our sport.”
From a market perspective, Buckner is entirely rational. The brand of athletics is built on the assumption of a level playing field. The Enhanced Games, by contrast, is a free market in pharmacology. Letting its records be recognised would dilute the value of every clean athlete’s performance. It would be like allowing a company to use fraudulent accounts to boost its share price: regulators must step in to preserve trust.
The Enhanced Games, funded by private investors and a cryptocurrency exchange, bills itself as a celebration of human enhancement. Its founder, Aron D’Souza, argues that doping bans are a relic of a puritanical past. “We are showing what humans can really do,” he said. But what they are really showing is that you can buy a world record for the price of a few doses of erythropoietin. The economic term for that is inflation: the debasement of the metric.
The refusal to recognise the record is a classic central bank intervention. Just as the Bank of England would refuse to accept a counterfeit note, UK Athletics is saying this currency is not legal tender. The record will stand only in the Enhanced Games’ own ledger, a private currency that no one else accepts.
Buckner’s demand for an integrity review is equally telling. He wants to ensure that no UK Athletics officials or athletes were involved in the Enhanced Games. This is a risk management exercise: identifying potential liabilities before they become losses. If any British athletes had participated, UK Athletics would face a reputational write-down. Better to conduct a thorough audit now.
There is also the question of capital flight. If athletes see the Enhanced Games as a legitimate alternative, they might defect from the Olympic system. But Buckner’s firm stance suggests the barrier to exit is high. The Enhanced Games offers prize money but no long-term earning potential. Endorsements, pension schemes, and media rights all flow through the official channels. Rational athletes will not swap a gilt-edged bond for a junk bond.
Critics might accuse UK Athletics of protecting a monopoly. They have a point. The Olympics is a cartel that restricts the supply of clean competition to keep prices high. But every cartel needs a justification, and here it is the integrity of the sport. The Enhanced Games threatens to disrupt that monopoly by offering a lower quality product: records set under unverified conditions. The market will decide, but for now, the official regulators are holding the line.
Buckner’s call for an integrity review is also a signal to sponsors. They are the ultimate stakeholders in this drama. If a shoe company were to sponsor an Enhanced Games athlete, it would risk alienating its core market. The review is a reminder that the official sport is still the blue-chip investment.
In the end, this is about who controls the yardstick. The Enhanced Games wants to redefine what a record means. But records are only valuable if they are scarce and verifiable. By refusing to recognise the 9.78 seconds, the athletics establishment is protecting the scarcity of its own assets. It is a textbook case of regulatory intervention to maintain market integrity.
The Enhanced Games will continue, no doubt. But its records will be like cryptocurrency: volatile, disputed, and not accepted by the mainstream. That is the price of operating outside the controlled environment of official sport. As any fund manager will tell you, there is no substitute for a regulated market.
