The “steroid olympics” were a circus—and a window into our culture
The “steroid olympics” were a circus—and a window into our culture
“类固醇奥运会”是一场闹剧，也是窥探我们文化的一扇窗
Testosterone. Methenolone. Nandrolone. Human growth hormone and EPO. Meldonium, modafinil, and mixed amphetamine salts. Clomiphene, anastrozole, levothyroxine, and liothyronine. Patches and capsules, creams and pills. A whole galaxy of steroids, metabolic modulators, and synthetic hormones coursing through the blood of a few dozen swimmers, sprinters, and weightlifters. And millions of dollars up for grabs for athletes who could break world records and usher in the age of superhumanity. 睾酮、美替诺龙、诺龙。人类生长激素和促红细胞生成素（EPO）。米屈肼、莫达非尼和混合苯丙胺盐。克罗米芬、阿那曲唑、左甲状腺素和利奥甲状腺原氨酸。贴片、胶囊、药膏和药丸。成千上万种类固醇、代谢调节剂和合成激素，在几十名游泳运动员、短跑运动员和举重运动员的血液中奔涌。对于那些能够打破世界纪录并开启“超人类”时代的人来说，数百万美元的奖金触手可及。
On Sunday, May 24, at a $50 million arena built in a casino parking lot in Las Vegas, I witnessed a libertarian thought experiment come to life. The inaugural Enhanced Games were the first sporting competition where participants were encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs. The founders say they’re challenging dated sporting norms and helping to build a world where we can all live better, longer lives. Critics say the event is an embarrassment, that it glamorizes the use of dangerous substances and puts lives at risk. 5月24日星期日，在拉斯维加斯一家赌场停车场搭建的耗资5000万美元的竞技场内，我亲眼见证了一个自由意志主义思想实验的实现。首届“增强运动会”（Enhanced Games）是第一个鼓励参赛者服用兴奋剂的体育赛事。创始人称，他们正在挑战过时的体育规范，并致力于构建一个让我们都能活得更好、更长久的世界。批评者则认为，这场赛事是一场尴尬的闹剧，它美化了危险物质的使用，并将生命置于危险之中。
The open-air venue was compact and decked out in bright blue, with a six-lane, 100-meter track down one side, a four-lane Olympic-length swimming pool down the other, and a weightlifting platform and stage at the front. You could see the golden façade of the Trump Hotel looming in the background. The scene had all the trappings of an NFL game, with the too-loud music and crowd work on the big screen—a “flex cam” gave the well-muscled an excuse to unveil their biceps. 露天场地紧凑且装饰着亮蓝色，一侧是六条跑道的100米跑道，另一侧是四条泳道的奥运标准游泳池，前方则是举重台和舞台。背景中可以看到特朗普酒店金色的外墙。现场充满了NFL（美国国家橄榄球联盟）比赛的元素，震耳欲聋的音乐和屏幕上的观众互动——“秀肌肉摄像机”（flex cam）让那些肌肉发达的人有了展示二头肌的借口。
Between events, adverts flashed up for the line of performance products sold by Enhanced, the company behind the event: injectable peptides that supposedly support cellular energy and skin elasticity, daily supplement powders with names like “Stronger” and “Longer.” 在比赛间隙，屏幕上闪烁着赛事主办方Enhanced公司销售的系列性能产品的广告：据称能支持细胞能量和皮肤弹性的注射用肽，以及名为“更强”（Stronger）和“更长”（Longer）的日常补充剂粉末。
Australian swimmer James Magnussen was the first athlete to sign up with Enhanced but hasn’t broken any world records. He finished last in his two events in Las Vegas. The day started with the weightlifters, under the blazing sun. But by 4 p.m., only one of them had even attempted a world-record lift. Two had pulled out injured. Some athletes were competing without taking drugs because of the money on offer, and as the competition went on, they had the better of their enhanced peers: Hunter Amstrong, a 25-year-old American swimmer and triple Olympic medalist, won the backstroke by more than a second. 澳大利亚游泳运动员詹姆斯·马格努森（James Magnussen）是第一位签约Enhanced的运动员，但他并没有打破任何世界纪录。他在拉斯维加斯的两个项目中均排名垫底。比赛从烈日下的举重项目开始。但到了下午4点，只有一名选手尝试了打破世界纪录的重量，两人因伤退赛。一些运动员为了奖金在不服用药物的情况下参赛，随着比赛进行，他们反而表现得比那些“增强”后的对手更好：25岁的美国游泳运动员、三届奥运会奖牌得主亨特·阿姆斯特朗（Hunter Armstrong）以超过一秒的优势赢得了仰泳比赛。
In the men’s 100-meter sprint, the non-enhanced US athlete Fred Kerley romped to an easy victory. “Man, they gotta do better than that,” he said of his doped opponents in his post-race interview. “They need to train a little harder, get on that shit a little bit more.” 在男子100米短跑中，未服用兴奋剂的美国运动员弗雷德·克利（Fred Kerley）轻松夺冠。在赛后采访中，他谈到那些服用兴奋剂的对手时说：“伙计，他们得表现得更好才行。他们需要练得更刻苦一点，多用点那玩意儿。”
At the bar, bodybuilders swapped before-and-after pictures and talked about their stacks, and VCs and finance bros traded LinkedIn details. Lukas Lakutsin, a 6-foot-10, 354-pound Russian bodybuilder who was milling around the entrance to the VIP suites, initially told me he didn’t use any performance-enhancing drugs. Except testosterone replacement therapy, of course. But he didn’t think that really counted. “I’m almost 34 years old,” he said. “I need to do this to stay strong.” 在酒吧里，健美运动员们交换着“使用前后”的对比照片，讨论着他们的药物组合，风投人士和金融男们则交换着领英（LinkedIn）联系方式。身高6英尺10英寸、体重354磅的俄罗斯健美运动员卢卡斯·拉库辛（Lukas Lakutsin）在贵宾套房入口处徘徊，起初他告诉我他没有使用任何兴奋剂。当然，除了睾酮替代疗法。但他认为那不算数。“我快34岁了，”他说，“我需要这样做才能保持强壮。”
The “protocol” for Enhanced athletes only includes FDA-approved drugs. While Enhanced’s team might make recommendations, individuals have the final say on what they want to take, if anything. Enhanced运动员的“方案”仅限于美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）批准的药物。虽然Enhanced团队可能会提供建议，但个人对是否服用以及服用什么拥有最终决定权。
Jeremy Sigal, an influencer and author, wore a USA tank top that showed off hugely muscled arms adorned with prison tattoos. He told me he was proudly natural, in both his health and his personal life. “I’ve got an exceptional credit score,” he said. He has written 12 books on marketing and leadership. Later, I looked up his most recent book online. It’s called Simp to Pimp: 10 Steps to Fix Why She’s Not Banging You and lists AI as a coauthor. 网红兼作家杰里米·西格尔（Jeremy Sigal）穿着一件美国队背心，展示着布满监狱纹身的强壮手臂。他告诉我，他在健康和个人生活中都引以为傲地保持“自然”。“我的信用评分非常高，”他说。他写过12本关于营销和领导力的书。后来，我在网上查了他最近的一本书。书名是《从舔狗到玩家：解决她为什么不跟你上床的10个步骤》，并将人工智能列为合著者。
What I saw in Las Vegas probably wasn’t the future of sport. But it was a perfect encapsulation of our present moment, as Silicon Valley biohackers, alt-right looksmaxxers, Make America Healthy Again boosters, and longevity-obsessed scientists all vie to remake reality in their own image. For them, the Enhanced Games offered a glimpse of a future where medical advances push the human race to new heights, and where they never have to get old. 我在拉斯维加斯看到的可能不是体育的未来。但它完美地概括了我们当下的时刻：硅谷的生物黑客、另类右翼的“颜值至上主义者”、 “让美国再次健康”的拥护者，以及痴迷于长寿的科学家们，都在争相按照自己的意愿重塑现实。对他们来说，增强运动会提供了一个未来的缩影，在这个未来里，医学进步将人类推向新的高度，让他们永远不必变老。
I’ve tracked Enhanced’s journey from a crazy idea scribbled on a napkin to a public company valued at $1.2 billion. Behind the scenes, there have been power struggles, life-changing victories, and moments of total farce. As I recently, finally, watched the games unfold, two questions bounced around my head: Were they right? And what does that mean for the rest of us? 我一直追踪着Enhanced从餐巾纸上潦草写下的疯狂想法，到估值12亿美元的上市公司的历程。在幕后，这里上演过权力斗争、改变人生的胜利，以及彻头彻尾的闹剧。当我最近终于目睹比赛展开时，两个问题在我脑海中盘旋：他们是对的吗？这对我们其他人意味着什么？
In December 2022, the Australian entrepreneur Aron D’Souza flew to Miami to spend New Year’s Eve with his friend and mentor Peter Thiel. A decade earlier, D’Souza had helped Thiel orchestrate the lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker—a stunning revenge against the gossipy New York media blog that had outed him as gay. Now he was armed with a disruptive idea that he thought Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, would love. 2022年12月，澳大利亚企业家阿隆·德索萨（Aron D’Souza）飞往迈阿密，与他的朋友兼导师彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）共度除夕。十年前，德索萨曾帮助蒂尔策划了导致Gawker破产的诉讼——这是对那家曝光他同性恋身份的纽约八卦媒体博客的一次惊人报复。现在，他带着一个他认为PayPal和Palantir的亿万富翁联合创始人蒂尔会喜欢的颠覆性想法而来。
It was inspired by the buff bodies he’d been seeing at the gym, highlighting a disconnect between a workout culture where the use of steroids was an open secret and a sporting establishment where it was, at least on paper, an inviolable taboo. His initial pitch was provocative and confrontational: a grand sporting event to rival the Olympic Games, where competitors could take any substance they wanted—their body, their choice. 这个想法的灵感来自于他在健身房看到的健美身材，这凸显了健身文化中“使用类固醇是公开的秘密”与体育界“（至少在纸面上）将其视为不可触碰的禁忌”之间的脱节。他最初的推销极具挑衅性和对抗性：举办一场足以媲美奥运会的盛大体育赛事，参赛者可以服用任何他们想要的物质——他们的身体，他们的选择。
The first time I met D’Souza, in the spring of 2024, he had founded the company and attracted some initial investment but seemed obsessed with taking on the fat cats at the International Olympic Committee and reinventing sports (even though he didn’t seem to be a huge sports fan himself). On Enhanced’s Discord server, I found a folder full of memes with names like IOC Clowns.jpg. The whole thing felt very unserious. That would change. D’Souza told me that Thiel had previously introduced him to Christia 我第一次见到德索萨是在2024年春天，当时他已经创立了公司并吸引了一些初步投资，但他似乎沉迷于挑战国际奥委会的权贵并重塑体育（尽管他本人似乎并不是一个狂热的体育迷）。在Enhanced的Discord服务器上，我发现了一个装满表情包的文件夹，名字叫“IOC小丑.jpg”。整件事感觉非常不严肃。但这种情况将会改变。德索萨告诉我，蒂尔此前曾将他介绍给克里斯蒂亚（Christia）……