When asked how he thought it would feel if he takes some of the drugs being made available – which include steroids, growth hormone and testosterone – Prescod said: “It’s quite mind-boggling, if I’m being honest.<\/p>\n
“Obviously during my career, I abided by the rules. I never had any sort of violations, missed tests, anything like that.<\/p>\n
“If that’s the journey I go down with enhancements here and I run extremely fast, it’ll just be interesting to know that’s how fast I can run with the additional help.”<\/p>\n
During three months of training in the United Arab Emirates, 39 athletes in sprinting, swimming and weightlifting will be offered performance-enhancing drugs that are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).<\/p>\n
Organisers say the competitors will undergo strict medical assessments at a hospital on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, and claim the event – which has a prize pot of $25m and offers appearance fees and bonuses of up to $1m for breaking a world record – will deliver transparency and health safety by removing the stigma of enhancement.<\/p>\n
But it has also been condemned by a range of sports and anti-doping bodies for normalising doping, endangering athletes’ health, and harming the integrity of sport.<\/p>\n
Last year, World Aquatics became the first international sport federation to ban athletes, coaches and officials from its events if they have taken part in the Enhanced Games.<\/p>\n
When asked if he was worried about any long-term side effects that could harm his health, Prescod said: “With anything in life, any sort of medication, there’s always a risk with that kind of situation.<\/p>\n
“I trust in the doctors and I trust what’s going on here.”<\/p>\n
The fourth-fastest British man over 100 metres, with a personal best of 9.93 seconds, Prescod says the prospect of financial security was a major factor in his decision. But he has been criticised by UK Athletics, which said it was “disappointed” by the sprinter signing up.<\/p>\n
“Obviously there’s been some controversy around the decision and I can understand everyone’s entitled to their opinion but ultimately it’s my decision – I’m going to stand by it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They’d probably be better to actually speak to all the athletes and try and improve the service that they’re given. They need to focus on improving that. <\/p>\n
“What people are not necessarily understanding is that the Enhanced Games is a different format. It’s a different entity, where we have our own rules.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When asked how he thought it would feel if he takes some of the drugs being made available…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-282823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}