Enhanced Games got its 'world record,' but felt more like a glorified infomercial

Six hours into the first sporting event ever to encourage athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs, a dwindling livestream audience finally witnessed the sort of never-before-seen feat that organizers had promised.  

Kristian Gkolomeev, a 32-year-old Greek who had previously competed at four Olympics without medaling, swam the 50-meter freestyle faster than any human in history. 

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Gkolomeev secured $250,000 for winning the most anticipated race at Sunday night’s inaugural Enhanced Games and pocketed a $1 million bonus for besting the current 50-meter freestyle world record. His time of 20.81 seconds was seven-hundredths of a second faster than the mark set by Australia’s Cameron McEvoy less than three months ago.

As Gkolomeev discarded his swim cap, flexed his artificially enhanced arms in celebration and unleashed a full-throated roar, viewers were left to contemplate how to properly contextualize his performance. The massive video board behind Gkolomeev declared him the new world record holder, as did the Enhanced Games broadcast, yet McAvoy will retain his place in the official record book. 

Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev reacts after beating the men's 50m freestyle world record during the Enhanced Games.ETIENNE LAURENT via Getty Images

It isn’t even just that Gkolomeev and the rest of Sunday’s 50-meter freestyle field were each openly using an array of PEDs banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and deemed unsafe by numerous medical experts. All four swimmers also donned high-tech, full-body supersuits more buoyant than the ones that helped shatter dozens of world records in 2008 and 2009 before the sport’s governing bodies jointly banned them.

When asked about the Enhanced Games earlier this month, McEvoy told Australian digital sports outlet CODE Sports, “It goes against everything that normal sport is supposed to be like.” As the Enhanced Games concluded Sunday night, McEvoy posted two photos to his Instagram stories, one of Michael Jordan preparing to face the Monstars in the original Space Jam movie and the other of Gordon Ramsey shouting at a Hell’s Kitchen contestant, “Seriously?! That’s all you got!” 

Official world record or not, Gkolomeev’s performance spared Enhanced Games organizers the embarrassment of their debut event not producing a single world record. After all, the venture capitalists who founded the Enhanced Games framed it as a showcase for athletes who sought to unlock new levels of performance and challenge the limits of human potential. 

The 42 swimming, track and weightlifting athletes who competed Sunday may have come to Las Vegas to chase personal records and millions in prize money, but the organizers of the Enhanced Games had greater ambitions than merely launching a new sports franchise. They sought to use the event to de-stigmatize the use of performance-enhancing substances and to entice consumers to buy them.

Enhanced, which went public earlier this month at a $1.2 billion valuation, is selling a range of performance-medicine products and longevity and wellness treatments to the public through its telehealth platform. What better marketing tool, organizers reason, than watching top athletes openly use some of those same products to help them perform superhuman feats of speed or strength? 

“The core strategic question is simple: which brand will consumers trust when it comes to human enhancement?” Enhanced Games co-founder Christian Angermayer wrote last month in a Substack post. “I believe consumers will trust the company that can show them — credibly, scientifically, and transparently — how elite athletes are using these protocols to safely unlock new levels of performance.

“I believe consumers will observe the tangible results our athletes achieve and seek to apply those enhancements to their own lives. Enhancements are not only relevant to breaking world records — (in my honest opinion) they can help anyone reach new heights: whether running a marathon faster, performing better as a business executive, or simply having more energy to spend time with family and friends.”

There were times where as many as 60,000 viewers tuned into Sunday evening’s livestream to watch the Enhanced Games, but the event rarely delivered any jaw-dropping performances to hold the audience’s attention. 

The letdowns started with the first participant of the opening event of the Games. Weightlifter Beatriz Pirón attempted to surpass a world record by lifting 100kg in the women's snatch, but the 31-year-old Dominican couldn’t quite hoist such a heavy bar over her head. Worse yet, the Enhanced Games livestream froze for more than 10 minutes immediately after Pirón’s record attempt narrowly failed.

For more than 10 minutes, the livestream of the Enhanced Games froze on Beatriz Pirón's failed attempt at a world record. (Screenshot)

When the stream returned, there was plenty more world record talk, some of it disingenuous. There was zero chance that the lackluster field in the women’s 100-meter dash was going to approach the untouchable time of 10.49 seconds run by Florence Griffith Joyner at the height of the steroids era in the 1980s. Nor were any of the male sprinters threatening Usain Bolt’s time of 9.58 seconds in the men’s 100-meter dash, especially with two-time Olympic medalist Fred Kerley competing unenhanced.

Tristan Evelyn of Barbados comfortably won the women’s 100 in 11.25 seconds, a time that scarcely would have been enough to advance out of the first round of heats two years ago at the Paris Olympics. Kerley, after a series of false starts, won the men’s 100 in a pedestrian 9.97 seconds, shouting at his artificially enhanced competitors when he crossed the finish line, “Y’all gotta do better than that.”

“They need to train a little harder, get on that s*** a little more,” Kerley continued in his post-race interview.

The swimmers often produced faster, more competitive races, assuming viewers could stomach a broadcast that too frequently felt like a glorified infomercial for Enhanced and its products. Cody Miller, 34, gushed that the Enhanced Games were “even better” than the Olympics after winning the 50-meter breaststroke and 100-meter breaststroke. Emily Barclay, 28, described the Enhanced Games as the future of sport after going from being out of swimming for four-plus years to winning the women’s 50-meter freestyle. 

At one point, swimming analyst Kurt Mills Hanson launched into an on-air sales pitch for viewers to check out the “enhancement protocols” that Enhanced sells on its website. 

“If you’re a youngster, go check them out,” he concluded. 

As the Enhanced Games neared their conclusion with plenty of personal bests but no world record, the broadcast crew seemed to move the goalposts. Out of nowhere, tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, brought on for his knowledge of longevity medicine, declared, “Whether a world record happens tonight, it doesn’t really matter. [The Enhanced Games has] introduced something new in the world of sports that had been taboo.” 

Hunter Armstrong, Wesley Kitts, Fred Kerley, Marius Kusch, Maximilian Martin, Co-Founder & CEO, Enhanced Games, Emmanuel Matadi and Denae McFarlane are seen onstage during the Enhanced Games at Resorts World Las Vegas on May 24, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada.Leon Bennett via Getty Images

Thankfully for organizers of the Enhanced Games, Gkolomeev came through in the final event of the night. He caught Benjamin Proud of Great Britain from behind and out-touched the 2024 Olympic silver medalist at the wall, not only winning the race by 17-hundredths of a second but also narrowly surpassing McEvoy’s 50-meter freestyle world record.

That historic swim from Gkolomeev was his second since leaving professional swimming behind to join the Enhanced Games. Last May, Enhanced released video of Gkolomeev touching the wall in a time of 20.89 seconds to unofficially break the 50-meter freestyle world record at a private event. McEvoy would go on to eclipse that time by one hundredth of a second earlier this spring. 

On Sunday night, when Gkolomeev went faster than the existing world record for the second time, Enhanced Games CEO Maximilian Martin got water stains on his tan suit from wrapping Gkolomeev in a post-race bear hug. 

It was hard to tell who was happier, the swimmer who had added $1 million to his bank account or the executive who avoided the embarrassment of having to explain how the inaugural Enhanced Games didn’t produce a single world record.

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