Published March 4, 2026 10:13AM
By now you’ve probably heard of the Enhanced Games, the proverbial Olympics for dopers. The competition, which runs this May 21 to 24, openly invites its participants to inject or ingest steroids or Human Growth Hormone or whatever doping product du jour before competing.
Ever since they were announced a few years ago, the Enhanced Games have generated an impressive tonnage of think pieces and essays about the ethics of watching the juiced-up run, jump, and swim faster than what is humanly possible.
The entire hubbub has made me want to puke. In my former career as a cycling journalist, I reported on the Tour de France and other major cycling races during sport’s era of rampant doping. Cycling pulled itself apart as it wrestled with its performance-enhancing drug (PED) problem, and entire generations of cyclists had their lives upended by the specter of cheating.
I can spell out in great detail what happens to a sport when its culture of competition becomes intertwined with chemical enhancement. News flash, it isn’t great! That’s why, whenever anyone in my life has brought up the Enhanced Games, I have closed my eyes, jammed my fingers into my ears, and screamed NANANANANA MAKE IT GO AWAY!
Well, now even a hater like me has a reason to watch the coming freak show. And that reason is a current American Olympic swimmer named Hunter Armstrong.
Swimmer Hunter Armstrong says he will race clean at The Enhanced Games (Photo: Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
On March 3, Armstrong announced his plans to compete in the Enhanced Games. But unlike the other participants, he will not take PEDs.
“I want to be very clear: I am joining the Enhanced Games as a clean athlete,” he posted on Instagram. “I will NOT be taking any banned substances and I WILL be continuing my path to win gold on home soil in Los Angeles.”
Armstrong, 25, is a two-time American Olympian, and he won gold medals for Team USA in relay events at the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Games. He is one of the world’s fastest in the backstroke and sprint freestyle events, and he told ESPN that he plans to target the 50-meter backstroke and 100-meter freestyle events at the Enhanced Games.
You may be wondering why a decorated Olympian in the prime of his career is choosing to compete against a bunch of drug cheats at a garish event with zero international acclaim.
The answer, of course, is money.
The Enhanced Games is flush with cash, and it is offering hefty prize purses to the athletes who participate. According to ESPN, the Enhanced Games pays $250,000 for first prize in an event. They also pay salaries and offer cash bonuses to anyone who can beat a world record.
Olympic swimming, by contrast, offers even its gold medalists very little in the way of funding. More than a decade ago, journalist Ben McGrath wrote a fabulous story in The New Yorker all about the overly competitive marketplace for Olympic sponsorships. It turns out that a massive earning chasm exists between the haves and have-nots at the Olympics. While celebrity Olympians like Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, and Simone Biles earn millions from endorsements, lesser-known Olympic heroes like Armstrong must pinch pennies.
Apparently, Armstrong’s bank account recently suffered a major pinch. In a recent interview with the swimming podcaster Mel Stewart, Armstrong said that a brand that sponsored him decided not to renew its deal.
“I went from an income that was good enough to buy a house, to zero in an hour. I had no idea what I was going to do. I was faced with oh my gosh I’m going to lose everything and start my adult life in crazy debt,” Armstrong said. “Do you want to find a way to continue on the swimming path, or are you going to give up, lose everything you’ve built?”
Armstrong told Stewart that he currently coaches, runs a real estate and contracting business, and teaches on the side to pay for his bills. Winning the Enhanced Games would give him the financial freedom to keep training for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
The Armstrong story has transformed me into a fan of his. And while I had previously sworn off watching one millisecond of the Enhanced Games, I’m considering tuning in to watch him race.
I’d love nothing more than for Hunter Armstrong to win the Enhanced Games and pocket $250,000. And I actually think he has a puncher’s chance at victory.
Unlike cycling or distance running—sports in which EPO and blood transfusions provide enormous advantages in endurance—swimming is a sport of technique and style. The world’s best swimmers spend thousands of hours refining their body movements so that their arms, legs, and torsos glide through the water with as little drag as possible. Steroids and EPO can build your muscles and boost your endurance, but they cannot gift anyone a perfect swim stroke. They can greatly improve the speed of a gifted swimmer, but then cannot transform a donkey into a thoroughbred.
And there are examples of swimmers deemed to be clean beating those believed to be dirty. A 2024 New York Times investigation into China’s national swim team found that 21 of the country’s swimmers had tested positive for doping substances on the eve of the 2020 Games in Tokyo. Many of those Chinese swimmers took home medals, but many others were beaten.
Could Hunter Armstrong beat a pool full of dopers? I dearly hope so. I’d love for him to stand on a podium alongside a cadre of chemically-enhanced freaks, and to raise his arm to the sky in triumph, as a sign to athletes everywhere that you can compete and win, without turning your body into a science experiment.