An Olympic-styled competition for drug-taking athletes is being launched by an Australian entrepreneur.
Aron D’Souza plans to stage the inaugural games of no drug testing in December next year, with two high-profile Australian athletes among those expressing interest.
A Melbourne-born, London-based businessman, D’Souza is president of Enhanced Games, a coalition of athletes, doctors and scientists.
The competition is challenging the Olympic Games model which, he says, is broken, corrupt and “mafia-like”.
“The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has effectively been a one-party state running the world of sport for 100 years,” D’Souza told AAP.
“And now the opposition party is here.
“We are ready for a fight. I know they are going to play dirty. I know they are going to threaten us.
“But ultimately we know that we are morally correct.”
Five sports categories – track and field, swimming, weightlifting, gymnastics, and combat sports – will be on the program of the Enhanced Games, to be held annually.
Ben Johnson.(Photo by Mike Powell/Getty Images)
“Athletes are adults … and they have a right to do with their body what they wish – my body, my choice; your body, your choice,” D’Souza said.
“And no government, no paternalistic sports federation, should be making those decisions for athletes – particularly around products that are FDA regulated and approved.”
D’Souza said there was great curiosity about any limit to human endeavours.
“It’s not just a question of can we break the nine-second 100 metre, I am sure we will,” he said.
“I want to see a 40, 50, 60-year-old break world records because performance medicine is the rod to anti-ageing, it’s the route to the fountain of youth.
“Nothing will improve the productivity of our society more than preventing ageing.
“It sounds like science fiction now but we live in the future, look at the rise of artificial intelligence and other technologies.
“And the reason why anti-ageing has been so stymied in the scientific community is because hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money around the world is going to fund anti-science authorities – ie WADA, USADA, Sports Integrity Australia – whose job it is to stop scientific progress.
“The reality is that the IOC and WADA have created an unsafe system which has forced the use of performance enhancements underground.”
A location for the inaugural Enhanced Games was yet to be settled but a city wouldn’t need to spend exorbitant funds to host, as Olympic cities do, he said.
“By reducing it from 13,000 (Olympic) athletes to maybe a couple of thousand, no specialist infrastructure – instead of costing $100 billion to deliver this, it will cost double-digit millions,” D’Souza said.
“And we could use any division one university in the United States or comparable around the world.
“The biggest problem about the Olympics is infrastructure.
“Cities do not want to host the Games because it costs up to $100 billion and you have got a dozen stadiums and you throw them away after two weeks.
“And that is the most wasteful activity that a city or a country or a government can undertake and it’s bankrupting places.”
D’Souza said competing athletes would be given stocks in Enhanced Games, a for-profit entity which he was self-funding but also attracting interest from investors in California’s Silicon Valley, the location of many start-up and global tech companies including Apple and Google.
“If you participate, you’re going to get stock in the league and be a co-owner and that is really important to us because that is going to be an opportunity for athletes to generate wealth,” he said.
“I assumed that if you were an Olympian and won a gold medal, your life is made – it’s not the case.
“It’s sad to see people who have achieved the highest level of human excellence and they’re living an objectively impoverished existence.
“And at the same time you have these sports bureaucrats who are earning millions and in the case of Thomas Bach, the IOC president, he is flying around the world in a private jet, he’s living in a palace paid for by the IOC.
“It is literally an exploitation system.”
© AAP
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