Skip to main content

PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. The History, Culture and Sociology of Sports
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1490651

The Enhanced Games: A Timely Injection for the International Olympic Committee

Provisionally accepted
David Ekdahl David Ekdahl 1*Jörg Krieger Jörg Krieger 1,2
  • 1 Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Capital Region of Denmark, Denmark
  • 2 Lillehammer Olympic and Paralympic Study Center, Innlandet Business School, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Elverum, Hedmark, Norway

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Enhanced Games, a privately funded sporting megaevent aspiring to rival the Olympic Games, have garnered significant media attention since its public inception in 2023. This attention has primarily been driven by the Enhanced Games’ embrace of performance-enhancing drugs. Lost in the public fixation on the event’s green-lit drug-use, however, is the fact that the Enhanced Games distance themselves from current Olympic standards in numerous ways beyond drug-policies alone. More precisely, the Enhanced Games promote themselves as a more economically and ecologically sustainable alternative to the Olympics, as well as a megaevent that aims to put athletes and their safety front-and-center. With an eye towards current Olympic standards, we suggest that closer examination of the Enhanced Games offers novel perspectives on the future of the Olympics and global sporting events more broadly.

    Keywords: IOC, Enhanced Games, sustainability, sports governance, performance-enhancing drugs, Olympic Games, Megaevents, Athlete-centered

    Received: 03 Sep 2024; Accepted: 07 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ekdahl and Krieger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: David Ekdahl, Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, 8000, Capital Region of Denmark, Denmark

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.