What happens in Vega$: steroids, swimmers, and a billion-dollar hustle
What happens in Vega$: steroids, swimmers, and a billion-dollar hustle
拉斯维加斯风云：类固醇、游泳健将与十亿美元的生意
I am sitting in the sweltering Nevada heat watching a man struggle to lift a bar over his head. If the man manages to do it, he will win $250,000. The man is Boady Santavy — a two-time Olympic weight-lifting contestant from Canada — and he has muscles that look culled from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: massive, cartoonish arms that might as well belong to a superhero rather than a real human.
我正坐在内华达州酷热的阳光下，看着一名男子挣扎着想要将杠铃举过头顶。如果他成功了，就能赢得25万美元。这名男子是来自加拿大的两届奥运会举重选手博迪·桑塔维（Boady Santavy），他的肌肉看起来像是从漫威电影宇宙中走出来的：那双巨大且夸张的手臂，与其说是属于人类，倒不如说是属于超级英雄。
Santavy is attempting to beat the world record for the men’s snatch — a lift of 183 kilograms, or approximately 403 pounds. After a tortured few seconds, Santavy drops the bar — an official “no lift” — and, with a look of animated dismay on his face, hobbles away, visibly cursing.
桑塔维正试图打破男子抓举的世界纪录——183公斤（约403磅）。在经历了痛苦的几秒钟后，桑塔维丢下了杠铃——这被判定为“举重无效”——他脸上带着生动的沮丧神情，一瘸一拐地走开，嘴里还骂骂咧咧。
Santavy is one of a small horde of 42 athletic contestants — weight lifters, swimmers, and track runners — that have gathered in Las Vegas over Memorial Day weekend to compete in the Enhanced Games, a unique (and, by now, quite notorious) athletic competition in which almost all of the participating athletes are on performance enhancing drugs.
桑塔维是聚集在拉斯维加斯参加“增强运动会”（Enhanced Games）的42名运动员之一。这些举重、游泳和短跑选手在阵亡将士纪念日周末齐聚于此，参加这场独特（且如今已相当臭名昭著）的体育赛事，几乎所有参赛选手都使用了提高成绩的药物。
Broadly derided by critics as the “steroid Olympics,” the games have taken the deeply unprecedented step of juicing many of their athletes to the gills — anabolics, testosterone, peptides, human growth hormones, and more are all in circulation. All of that chemical enhancement has taken place under the watchful eye of a team of medical professionals.
这场赛事被批评者广泛嘲讽为“类固醇奥运会”，它采取了史无前例的举措，让许多运动员大量使用药物——合成代谢类固醇、睾酮、肽类、人类生长激素等都在使用范围内。所有这些化学增强手段都是在专业医疗团队的严密监视下进行的。
Indeed, the competitors — a hodgepodge of athletes from different ages, skill levels, and backgrounds — spent 12 weeks in the United Arab Emirates at an elite compound, where they trained for the weekend’s event while working closely with doctors who tailored their “protocols” — or drug cocktails — to their individual needs.
事实上，这些来自不同年龄、技术水平和背景的参赛者，在阿拉伯联合酋长国的一个精英基地度过了12周。他们在为周末的比赛进行训练的同时，与医生密切合作，医生们根据他们的个人需求量身定制了“方案”——也就是药物鸡尾酒。
(Image Caption: LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – MAY 24: (L-R) Kristian Gkolomeev, Shane Ryan and James Magnussen are seen during the Enhanced Games at Resorts World Las Vegas on May 24, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Image Credits: Getty Images for Enhanced)
（图片说明：内华达州拉斯维加斯 – 5月24日：2026年5月24日，克里斯蒂安·戈洛梅耶夫、肖恩·瑞安和詹姆斯·马格努森在拉斯维加斯名胜世界举行的“增强运动会”上。图片来源：Getty Images for Enhanced）
The athletes are also being paid “appearance fees” just to participate in the contest and, like Santavy, any competitor who happens to break a world record or place first during their competitive feats will be gifted extra cash — up to $1 million in the case of the 100 meter sprint and 50 meter freestyle. In other words: Enhanced has taken the rulebook for professional athletic competition and aggressively spiraled it out the window.
运动员们仅凭参赛就能获得“出场费”。像桑塔维一样，任何在比赛中打破世界纪录或获得第一名的选手，都将获得额外的奖金——在100米短跑和50米自由泳项目中，奖金最高可达100万美元。换句话说：“增强运动会”已经把职业体育竞赛的规则手册扔出了窗外。
Why am I, a technology journalist, covering this event? Odd as it might seem for a place associated with weak-limbed nerds, Silicon Valley is largely to blame for Enhanced. Indeed, the bizarre spectacle is the work of a former startup that was founded by veterans of crypto, AI, and biotech firms, and that has been backed by the likes of mega-investor Peter Thiel and former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan.
为什么我一个科技记者要报道这个活动？虽然对于一个常与“四肢无力”的极客联系在一起的地方来说这显得很奇怪，但硅谷在很大程度上是“增强运动会”的幕后推手。事实上，这场离奇的闹剧是一家初创公司的杰作，该公司由加密货币、人工智能和生物技术公司的资深人士创立，并得到了超级投资者彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）和前Coinbase高管巴拉吉·斯里尼瓦桑（Balaji Srinivasan）等人的支持。
The event is also at the forefront of a growing industry that Silicon Valley has embraced with open arms — that of human enhancement, in which injectable drugs and ingestible supplements serve as a source of both physical empowerment and good business.
该赛事也处于硅谷张开双臂拥抱的一个新兴行业的前沿——即“人类增强”产业。在这个行业中，注射药物和口服补充剂既是身体赋能的来源，也是一门好生意。
Traditional athletic health organizations, of course, hate it. The World Anti-Doping Agency — the regulatory body for the Olympics — has called the Enhanced Games “dangerous,” and Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, describes it as a “clown show that puts profit over people.”
传统的体育健康组织当然对此深恶痛绝。奥运会的监管机构——世界反兴奋剂机构（WADA）称“增强运动会”是“危险的”，而美国反兴奋剂机构（USADA）首席执行官特拉维斯·泰格特（Travis Tygart）则将其描述为“一场将利润置于人命之上的马戏团表演”。
Steroids have long been viewed warily by the international health community, and even federally approved consumer drugs have stirred some concern among health professionals. However, Enhanced’s organizers argue that they are actually the good guys — that they are trying to fix a persistent bug in organized sports that has existed since forever.
类固醇长期以来一直受到国际卫生界的警惕，甚至连联邦批准的消费类药物也引起了一些医疗专业人士的担忧。然而，“增强运动会”的组织者辩称，他们实际上是“好人”——他们试图修复有组织体育运动中长期存在的一个顽疾。
That bug is that a whole lot of athletes are already doping — they’re just doing it secretly. The secrecy increases risk, as there may be limited medical oversight of how the athletes are using them. Conversely, in the Enhanced version of sport, athletes self-admittedly do the drugs under the careful supervision of a team of medical professionals.
这个顽疾就是：大量的运动员已经在服用兴奋剂——只是他们做得非常隐秘。这种隐秘性增加了风险，因为运动员如何使用这些药物可能缺乏足够的医疗监督。相反，在“增强运动会”的模式下，运动员在专业医疗团队的严密监督下公开承认并使用药物。
If Enhanced were merely trying to improve sports safety, that would be one thing. But the truth is that it isn’t just an athletic competition — it’s also a business. The games are the work of Enhanced Group, Inc., a newly public company that enjoyed an IPO earlier this month at a $1.2 billion valuation.
如果“增强运动会”仅仅是为了提高体育安全性，那还说得过去。但事实是，这不仅仅是一场体育比赛，更是一门生意。这场赛事由Enhanced Group, Inc.主办，这是一家本月初刚上市的公司，估值高达12亿美元。
Enhanced sells personalized health treatments, including peptides, GLP-1s for weight loss, testosterone injections, and other physically “enhancing” drugs. The company also recently partnered with an AI company, Rezolve Ai, to launch a digital telehealth platform. Enhanced wants to take what it’s done in Vegas and transform it into a global business: a distribution network for consumers looking to bulk up and make themselves more youthful.
Enhanced销售个性化的健康疗法，包括肽类、用于减肥的GLP-1药物、睾酮注射剂以及其他身体“增强”药物。该公司最近还与人工智能公司Rezolve Ai合作，推出了一个数字远程医疗平台。Enhanced希望将他们在拉斯维加斯的模式转化为全球业务：为那些想要增肌和保持年轻的消费者建立一个分销网络。
The drugs that Enhanced sells have been cleared by the FDA, but there is some concern that by normalizing steroid use, the company could have a trickle-down effect on the wider culture, leading some consumers (notably young ones) to seek less regulated, more dangerous compounds that could end up having disastrous results.
Enhanced销售的药物虽然已获得美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）批准，但人们担心，通过将类固醇的使用常态化，该公司可能会对更广泛的文化产生负面影响，导致一些消费者（尤其是年轻人）去寻求监管更少、更危险的化合物，最终可能导致灾难性的后果。
This concern hangs over Enhanced’s athletic competition, which has largely been read as a big advertisement for its own business — as well as the peptide industry itself.
这种担忧笼罩着“增强运动会”，该赛事在很大程度上被解读为对其自身业务以及肽类行业的一场大型广告宣传。
One nation, under peptides 肽类之下的国度
I am one of some 200 journalists from around the world who touch down in Vegas two days prior to the games. Enhanced, which provides us with a dedicated workspace, regular meals, and press time with athletes and Enhanced executives, is exceedingly nice to us but one can’t escape the nagging suspicion that it’s because we are an integral part of their business plan.
我是全球约200名在比赛前两天抵达拉斯维加斯的记者之一。Enhanced为我们提供了专门的工作空间、定期的餐食，以及与运动员和公司高管的采访时间。他们对我们非常友好，但人们无法摆脱一种挥之不去的怀疑：这是因为我们是他们商业计划中不可或缺的一部分。
As the skeptical oglers of this Barnum & Bailey-esque curiosity, our job is to report back to the masses, who will then know of its existence. In other words, we are free marketing for Enhanced’s business. That business is part of an industry that is due for a gold-rush-like boom later this year, should a certain…
作为这场巴纳姆与贝利式（Barnum & Bailey-esque，指马戏团式的奇观）好奇心事件的怀疑观察者，我们的工作是向大众报道，让他们知道它的存在。换句话说，我们是Enhanced业务的免费营销人员。这项业务所属的行业预计将在今年晚些时候迎来淘金热般的繁荣，如果某个……