From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   Why I’m behind the Enhanced Games   
      
      
   'Enhanced’– it’s such a slinky word. A ‘boob job’ sounds like a   
   gimmick   
   on a stick and a ‘breast augmentation’ implies cantilevers and   
   mathematics – but a ‘breast enhancement’ sounds like something highly   
   agreeable that everyone is going to benefit from. It’s with this bias   
   towards the word that I consider ‘The Enhanced Games.’   
      
   Let’s be honest – it’s also because until I gave them up ten years ago.   
   I was crazy about drugs, especially ones that enhanced my performance.   
   Yes, I liked taking them in order to interact with other people on drugs   
   – all of us no doubt yelling boring, repetitive rubbish – but most of   
   all I loved to be alone with a gram of cocaine and a deadline, getting   
   to work on drugs. Especially when writing my 1998-2000 columns for the   
   Guardian (how surreal that sentence looks now!) I was fuelled by the   
   white stuff, and got a great deal of very high-quality writing done very   
   quickly indeed. I also wrote a young adult novel, Sugar Rush, in six   
   afternoons after good luncheons at pleasant restaurants where drink was   
   taken; just one ‘line’ when I got home and I was ready to go. It went on   
   to be made into an excellent television series, which won an Emmy.   
   Should I have had my Emmy removed because the initial work which the   
   show sprung from was carried out with the aid of chemicals? I think not!   
      
   So my interest was naturally piqued by the Enhanced Games, in which   
   athletes may partake of pharmaceuticals in order to be the best they can   
   be at what they like to do best. It’s due to take place in May, in Las   
   Vegas, featuring swimming, weightlifting and track and field events, and   
   has a lovely website, which informs us that ‘The Enhanced Games is a   
   global annual competition that celebrates human potential through safe,   
   transparent enhancement, offering fair play, record pay, and unmatched   
   athlete care.’   
      
   I love that last bit. ‘Unmatched athlete care’ tells us very firmly that   
   there won’t be any of the nasty business we associate with East Germany   
   and the way it treated its female athletes from the 1960s right up to   
   the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The state-sponsored dosing with   
   testosterone – without their knowledge – of thousands of athletes being   
   groomed as Olympic competitors – including minors – was a terrible   
   crime. At the time, when I was a kid, it was seen as somewhat curious   
   and amusing, with the phrase ‘East German shot-putter’ being shorthand   
   for a highly unattractive female bent on doing our dainty British girls   
   out of their place on the podiums. But it was a serious and vicious act   
   by the East German state, and a strange harbinger of the continuing   
   argument today about the efficacy of giving drugs to young women which   
   will interfere with the development of their biological sex. East German   
   girl athletes grew up to suffer from liver tumours, infertility and   
   cardiovascular problems; some grew beards and some saw their clitorises   
   grow into penises (small ones, which makes it better or worse depending   
   on your point of view) while depression and suicide were frequent. Heidi   
   Krieger, the champion shot-putter, was doped from the age of 16. Her   
   testosterone levels reached 37 times that of an average woman at the   
   ‘height’ of her sporting career and she eventually saw no other option   
   but to have a ‘sex change’ in 1997. Why were thousands of young women   
   abused in this heinous way? To win a few stupid trophies. To make it   
   worse, it turns out that West Germany were at it too, the rival puppet   
   states of the super-powers involved in a ‘doping race’ which lasted for   
   decades.   
      
   The Enhanced Games, thankfully, couldn’t be further from this   
   nightmarish scenario which was carried out so cruelly in the healthy and   
   apparently harmless name of ‘sport.’ The competitors – some from the UK   
   – are very visibly mature and healthy types, who it seems laughable to   
   imagine being puppeteered by some white-coated rotter. There are only 50   
   of them, though, which belies the controversy surrounding the event, and   
   the predictable tut-tutting from the sports establishment about how   
   naughty it is to take performance enhancers. The Games was founded by an   
   Australian businessman named Aron D’Souza ‘because he believes that   
   athletes are entitled to do what they wish with their own bodies, and   
   that the International Olympic Committee is corrupt for exploiting them.’   
      
   There’s already been quite a bit of ‘fun and games’ involved in bringing   
   this chemically-altered sporting smorgasbord to fruition. In December a   
   judge dismissed an $800 million lawsuit from the EG which posited that   
   both swimming organisations and the World Anti-Doping Agency had been   
   conducting campaigns aiming to dissuade athletes from taking part. Some   
   of the competitors – currently training in Abu Dhabi – seem unsure, or   
   shy, about whether they will be helping themselves to the chemical   
   buffet available. For example, the former Team GB sprinter Reece Prescod   
   said recently that he would not be having a nibble of any banned   
   substances and that his motivation was financial, but now appears to   
   have more of an ‘open mind’ on the subject, telling The National: ‘What   
   I said was, at that current time, I hadn’t taken anything or partaken in   
   anything… I’ve obviously got great medical supervision from doctors. I’m   
   going to train to a certain level. I will have a conversation with the   
   enhancement team and just see what that potentially could look like for   
   me.’ I think that may be a ‘Yes’ from Mr Prescod, then; after all,   
   what’s the point in attending an orgy while wearing a chastity belt? On   
   the other hand, the Olympian swimmer, Australian James Magnussen, quoth   
   brazenly that he would happily ‘juice to the gills’ in order to take   
   away the $1 million purse for breaking the 50m freestyle world record.   
      
   Mr D’Souza has all sorts of high-falutin’ rationales about how the   
   current anti-doping attitudes are ‘anti-science’ and stop athletes from   
   being the best that they can get. The Enhanced Games will thus show us   
   ‘the ultimate demonstration of what the human body is capable of’.   
   Perhaps, but it’s the honesty of the EG which is one of the aspects of   
   it that appeals to me. So much of top-level ‘natural’ sport can be   
   economical with the actualite – nearly half of top athletes have   
   admitted when questioned anonymously to partaking of banned substances,   
   though only 2 per cent get nabbed, according to a survey carried out by   
   the World Anti-Doping Agency. And if we are honest, most of us would   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)