When Evgenii Somov last participated in a major swimming competition, international sanctions prevented him from representing his home country. But those restrictions couldn’t stop him from representing another home, one that was quite proud to have him as a representative: Oakland.
The Russian-born swimmer, and recent Oakland resident, made it to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris through a combination of efforts at home and abroad. The International Olympic Committee opened the door for the opportunity when it allowed Russian and Belorussian athletes to compete as Independent Neutral Athletes after they were initially barred in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war. It was people throughout the East Bay who helped the dream come true between keeping him active in the pool through coaching, and fundraising to get him to these quadrennial games.
For his next international competition, however, the support has been nonexistent from every previous avenue. While the IOC may have changed its mind for Paris, the organization, alongside the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), has stood firm against Somov’s latest athletic endeavor: the Enhanced Games. And the local support that cheered on the local Olympian as he chased international glory has gone silent.
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World Anti-Doping Agency President Witold Banka, right, and WADA Director of Intelligence & Investigations Gunter Younger address a press conference in New Delhi on April 16, 2026.
Sajjad HussainAFP/Getty Images
It’s not a big shock. The Olympic-style event will allow athletes to compete in swimming, weightlifting and track-and-field events while they take performance-enhancing drugs banned in every major sporting competition, such as testosterone, human growth hormone and stimulants like Adderall. The policy has led some to dub these the “Steroid Olympics.” It also doesn’t help that the funding includes investments from controversial tech billionaire Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal Al-Saud.
The arguments from its founders are that this is simply a case of embracing modern medicine for the sake of maximizing the achievement of already capable athletes, and that the performance-enhancing drugs, which are all FDA-approved, are taken under stringent medical supervision.
“Everything’s going to be published and people will just see in the athletes and their biometric data that they have never been healthier and never been performing better before,” Enhanced CEO Maximilian Martin told SFGATE in a March interview. “And then it’s really just about, do you want to believe in science, or do you not?”
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Still, it’s been difficult for the Enhanced Games to shake the association with cheating from a rather broad perspective. The IOC and WADA Athletes’ Commissions said in a joint statement last June that this event would “undermine the integrity of sport.”
USA Swimming sent out a letter last May warning members that even affiliating with the games at all could be a detriment to their “livelihood, future career, and reputation within the sport and the Olympic Movement.”
FILE — Greece’s Kristian Gkolomeev celebrates after winning the Men’s 50m Freestyle Final at the European Aquatics Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, June 23, 2024.
Darko Bandic/AP
For what it’s worth, Somov himself is not a fervent supporter of blanket PED usage. During his media availability on Friday in Las Vegas, a reporter asked the Russian-born swimmer and fellow competitor Miguel de Lara what advice they would give to 19-year-olds who are trying to get ripped like them through such drugs. De Lara, a Mexican-born swimmer who won a bronze medal at the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, was first to respond with, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it without the medical supervision you need, it’s as simple as that.”
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Somov then added, “And talk to your parents, like, 19 — like, I remember myself when I was 19, like I would say, talk to your parents, and definitely don’t do it without supervision.”
Still, the stigma of performance-enhancing drug usage is perhaps why Somov’s Bay Area support has been practically nonexistent on his journey. Those who helped get him onto the Olympic stage may not feel as inclined to cheer on his participation in an event that has raised ethical and medical concerns. SFGATE made multiple attempts to contact some of the organizations Somov coached for during his attempt to make the Olympics — including Bishop O’Dowd High School, Oaklantis and Fitter & Faster — as well as the organizers of the GoFundMe that helped finance his trip, but got no responses from anyone.
Only Albany Armada Aquatics, a Team USA-supported swim club where Somov coached children and competed, replied, to decline comment. A source within the organization did share that many on staff only found out that the 27-year-old swimmer was competing in the Enhanced Games through his Instagram, and that they were under the impression he left the club to train for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Compare the relative silence to the support Somov received even before the Olympics were on his mind. As recounted in a San Francisco Chronicle story, Somov spent time in San Francisco to study English in his youth and eventually moved to the Bay Area as an adult to start moving on from swimming competitively. He coached in Fremont, then Oakland and then Albany, opportunities that came thanks to local contacts from former competitors on the elite circuit. In all, he took about an 18-month competitive break from the sport, and it wasn’t until he competed in a local meet with the Armada that he realized he was actually close to Olympic shape. While it was incumbent on him to carve out a path to the Paris Games at first, he qualified with a 100-meter breaststroke Russian record and four clean drug tests, and parents of his then-students set up a fundraiser to get their coach to the games, raising nearly $27,000.
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FILE — Megan Romano swims in the women’s 100-meter freestyle preliminaries at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials, Friday, June 29, 2012, in Omaha, Neb.
Nati Harnik/AP
Between the navigation of international political strife, and the sudden grassroots American support, Somov’s story was unusual as it pertained to Paris Olympians. But the Olympic background is anything but that for the Enhanced Games. Other former Olympians include swimmer Max McCusker (Ireland), swimmer Isabella Arcila (Colombia), sprinter Fred Kerley (USA), swimmer Ben Proud (England, Paris silver medalist), swimmer Hunter Armstrong (USA), sprinter Tristan Evelyn (Barbados) and weightlifter Boady Santavy (Canada). Not everyone is participating in the performance-enhancing drugs part, however. Armstrong and Evelyn, for instance, are competing as “non-enhanced” athletes, with the American swimmer hoping to compete in the 2028 Los Angeles games — it’s not clear whether the mere act of participating would preclude that from happening.
In the eyes of the IOC, WADA and perhaps even their past supporters, Somov and these other past Olympians might be spurning the integrity of their journey as professional athletes. But there is something that the Enhanced Games are able to offer that the Olympic path simply cannot: financial stability.
Even when the games were in the early stages of development, money was the ultimate motivator. In a Wired story last year covering the genesis of Enhanced, Kristian Gkolomeev, who competed in multiple Olympic Games, shared that he was burnt out trying to make it work as a professional swimmer when the Enhanced Games came to him with the offer of $1 million for breaking a world record under its performance-enhancing regimen.
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“One successful year in the Enhanced Games and I could make as much as I would have made in almost 10 careers,” he told the online magazine at the time.
Individual Neutral Athlete Evgenii Somov reacts after competing in the Men’s 100m Breaststroke Heats on Day 1 of the 2024 Olympic Games at Paris La Defense Arena on July 27, 2024 in Nanterre, France.
Jean Catuffe/Getty Images
He did just that in February 2025 with a 50-meter freestyle time of 20.89 seconds, 0.02 second faster than the world record. As of this month, that seven-figure bonus still stands for the 50-meter freestyle race. It’s only $250,000 for the six other aquatic competitions, but that’s the same prize for finishing first in any race — meaning a record-breaker can double their take. Every swimmer will make no less than $50,000 per race, and with every swimmer competing in two races, that means a $100,000 minimum of prize money for one evening of competition. Keep in mind that this is after every athlete spent the last few months in Abu Dhabi at a five-star hotel with state-of-the-art training facilities with top trainers under keen medical supervision. Such are the benefits of having the kind of war chest bankrolling this endeavor.
“I mean, do you see how they’re treating us?” Somov said Friday, referencing the amenities during his training. “Do you see all of that? I didn’t have all of that before, like I didn’t have that at Olympics, I didn’t have that at any World Junior Championship, European Junior Championship. I’m originally from Russia. I never had it in Russia back home.”
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The stress of wondering whether chasing Olympic dreams is fiscally responsible is one Somov is all too familiar with. He couldn’t only focus on his performance in the pool, as part of his preparation for Paris included actively fundraising, a responsibility that still fell on him even with the help of local supporters. As if that wasn’t enough, he had to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare of securing drug tests and getting a visa — which didn’t arrive until one week before he flew to Paris — without the support of a national sports body. His efforts culminated in a 13th-place finish in the semifinals of the 100-meter breaststroke, leaving him “disappointed” that he didn’t make it to the finals, according to a profile in Swimming World.
Evgenii Somov of Russia looks on prior to competing in a heat of the Men’s 50m Freestyle during Day 3 of the TYR Pro Swim Series at North Natomas Aquatic Center on April 4, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif.
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
The appeal for someone like Somov is pretty clear. With his regimen planned out by a team of other professionals, the logistical barriers are taken care of. With only three other opponents, the chance of competitive glory is more likely to be his for the taking. With all the money available, he can earn more than he ever has in his professional career. Most importantly, he has a chance to do something that he’s never been able to truly do before: just focus on swimming.
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“I’m able to have my mom around me all the time,” Somov said Friday. “I’m able to just focus on swimming and not focus on anything else, such as my work, and this, and this, and this. I was combining like pretty much two full jobs — I was working a full-time job, and then also being a swimmer from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. It’s already changed, for sure.”
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For someone who had dedicated his entire life to the sport, the risks, potential punishments and even social ostracism might just be worth it.
(The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)