The first Enhanced Games happened, one world record fell, and Tony Huge is glad it exists. His problem with it is the rulebook. Athletes could only use FDA-approved substances, which he calls a gate that has nothing to do with sports performance and everything to do with insurance and the sick-care model. This video gives the facts first, the record, the near misses, the one headline that went the wrong way, and then his opinion: it was a half-natural games, it was still a step forward, and the next one should let more of the chemistry in.
Video: The Biggest Problem With The Enhanced Games. Published July 1, 2026. Watch on YouTube.
What the video covers
- 00:00 The mind bender: What if the clean athletes are on better chemistry than the enhanced ones were allowed?
- 00:47 Hard facts: May 24, 2026, a purpose-built 2,500-seat arena, a $25 million purse, $250,000 per win, $1 million per world record, a free worldwide stream.
- 01:42 The one world record: 20.81 in the 50-meter freestyle, beating the clean mark of 20.88 by 0.07 seconds, worth $1.25 million.
- 02:42 Near misses: A 50-meter fly 0.05 off the record, and two deadlifters who failed 515 kg after one pulled it to the knees.
- 03:40 What was allowed: FDA-approved substances only, and why Tony says that list is 46 years behind.
- 04:55 Why the limit exists: Insurance, disease-based approval, and off-label use as the only door.
- 06:05 Could they have done better? Tony’s estimate that 75% of available performance chemistry was off the table.
- 06:55 Tony’s verdict: Wonderful, a baby step, and the reason nothing going wrong was the best possible outcome.
- 08:30 The future: Each competition improving on the last.
The facts before the opinion
Tony structures the video the way he would want to watch it: the numbers first. The first Enhanced Games ran on Sunday, May 24, 2026, in a custom-built 2,500-seat arena, the first sporting event in history where performance-enhancing molecules were not just allowed but required disclosure. The purse was $25 million, with $250,000 for a win and a $1 million bonus for a world record, backed by billionaire investors and streamed free worldwide.
Across the whole event, one world record fell: the men’s 50-meter freestyle in 20.81 seconds, beating the clean record of 20.88 by seven hundredths, and paying $1.25 million in combined win and record bonus. The near misses were close enough that Tony lists them: a 50-meter butterfly at 22.32 against a clean record of 22.27, and a deadlift competition where the winner pulled 475 kg, roughly 1,047 pounds, then failed a 515 kg record attempt after getting it to the knees. A second lifter opened at 400, hit 440 and also failed 515.
The headline that cut the other way was the 100 meters. A former world champion and Olympic medalist won the enhanced race in 9.97, two tenths slower than his clean personal best of 9.76, in a race delayed by four false starts and an untied shoe. Tony notes that 9.97 would have finished last in the 2024 Olympic final.
The gatekeeper was the FDA list
This is the problem in the title. Competitors could only use FDA-approved substances, and the organizers’ reason was insurance. Tony accepts that this is true; no insurer will cover an event running unapproved chemistry. But he says it reads to him like mainstream gatekeeping wearing a sensible excuse, because the FDA test has nothing to do with sport.
His reasoning: the Food and Drug Administration approves medications for treating diseases, and sports performance is not a disease. Nothing gets approved for performance. Things get approved for a disease and then used off-label. So the allowed list was not the safest chemistry or the chemistry with the fewest side effects. It was whatever happened to have cleared a process designed for a different purpose, one that in his view profits the medical monopoly rather than the athlete. He puts a number on the gap: hundreds of performance-enhancing molecules exist that could have moved results, and the athletes had access to perhaps 25% of them. In his framing, they were competing with roughly the chemistry available in 1980, 46 years behind what exists today.
“They approve chemistry for a disease, which is then used off-label for sports performance. They’re not giving the most powerful chemistry.”
Tony Huge, 04:55
Why the critics have it backwards
A lot of commentary after the event ran the same way: the enhanced athletes had access to everything and still barely broke records, so enhancement must not do much. Tony’s answer is that the premise is wrong. They did not have access to everything. They had access to a quarter of it, and more records would have fallen with the rest. He also raises the mirror image that he finds genuinely funny: what if Olympic athletes are already using chemistry beyond what the Enhanced Games permitted? If so, the “clean” records are not the clean baseline anyone thinks they are.
Why he is for it anyway
Tony calls the Enhanced Games wonderful, and his reasoning is about normalization rather than results. For the first time, billionaire investors and mainstream media backed performance-enhancing molecules for something other than treating a disease. That is the door he has been pushing on for years: the idea that medicine can take you from normal to superhuman, not just from sick to normal. He thought the athletes looked healthy and well-monitored, and he is honest that he wishes the other 75% had been allowed.
Then he argues against his own impatience. The mainstream is not ready for the other 75%, and if anything goes wrong at an event like this, every form of biohacking looks bad. So the fact that nobody was injured, nobody showed side effects and every athlete was medically cleared is, in his view, the best result available. The message the public takes away is that the substances cannot be that bad if the athletes on a mainstream stream looked like that. You do not go from zero to a hundred against a belief system people have held their whole lives. You take a baby step, remove some taboo, and let the next competition improve on this one.
Cheat Sheet Pivot
What Tony reported about the event and what he argued, not instructions.
- Event facts as Tony gave them: one world record (50-meter freestyle, 20.81), three near misses, a $25 million purse, and a $1.25 million single payout.
- The allowed list was FDA-approved substances only, for insurance reasons; Tony’s position is that approval measures disease treatment, not performance or even relative safety.
- His estimate is that roughly 75% of available performance chemistry was excluded, which he offers as the reason more records did not fall.
- He treats the absence of injuries and side effects as the event’s most important outcome, because a bad outcome would set the whole field back.
- His ask for the next edition: get an insurer and the nerve to expand the list.
The compounds Tony has in mind when he talks about the missing 75% are catalogued in the Miracle Molecules Cheat Sheet. For the pre-event framing, read Enhanced Games ‘Steroid Olympics’ Challenges Sports Status Quo, and for why enhancement does not automatically produce a shredded physique or a record, see Steroids Ruined These Bodybuilders? What the Montage Left Out.
Where the evidence stops
The 25% and 75% figures are Tony’s estimates, not a published count of substances. The claim that more records would have fallen with broader chemistry is an inference, and the suggestion that Olympic athletes may already be using more advanced chemistry is posed as a question, not asserted as fact. The health outcomes he praises come from the event’s own medical monitoring as reported publicly, not from independent data. His argument about FDA approval measuring disease treatment rather than performance is accurate as a description of what approval is for; whether an approved-only list is the right safety line for a competition is the debate the video is having, not settling.
Keep going
For the cellular reason a period of enhancement can leave a lasting advantage, read The Hidden PED That Stays in Your Muscles for Life. Companion articles reach the tonyhuge.is email list first, and the rest of the archive is on tonyhuge.is.