Las Vegas just hosted a 50-meter swim faster than any the sport has ever officially seen, only it likely will never be official. Greek sprinter Kristian Gkolomeev, a four-time Olympian who's never medaled, clocked 20.81 seconds in the 50-meter freestyle at the inaugural Enhanced Games on Sunday, edging past the 20.88 world mark set in March, reports Wired. The catch: Gkolomeev did it in a banned "supersuit" and under a competition model that not only permits but structures performance-enhancing drug use, meaning record books won't recognize Gkolomeev's feat.
The invite-only event, staged in a $50 million temporary facility with a pool and track on the Las Vegas Strip, offered up to $1 million for world records but produced just this lone, unofficial one in what the AP describes as "four hours of swimming, weightlifting, and track." Organizers pitch the Enhanced Games, backed by investors like Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., as a medically supervised, transparent alternative to what they say is already widespread secret doping, per Wired.
Yet most athletes refused to say exactly what they were taking, and critics highlight serious health risks and conflicts of interest: The Games' parent outfit also sells PEDs via a telehealth platform. Supporters see better pay and longer careers; skeptics of what Wired calls the "Steroid Olympics" see a glossy, high-risk commercial experiment that could normalize doping far beyond a Las Vegas one-off. "We have arrived in mainstream culture," Enhanced Games CEO Maximilian Martin said after Gkolomeev's win, per the Guardian. "We are here to stay. We have changed the world tonight."
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