By EDDIE PELLS, Associated Press
A group led by Donald Trump Jr. is infusing funding and some political muscle into the Enhanced Games, a sports festival that would hold track, swimming and other events free of anti-doping measures.
Trump’s group, called 1789 Capital, is bringing what Enhanced Games founder Aron D’Souza said was “double digit millions” to a project set to kick off with an event in the United States next year.
As much as for the money, D’Souza says he’s connecting with the Trump family because of its history of disrupting the status quo. Enhanced Games features a video of President Trump on its website announcing Thursday’s rollout of the partnership, in which Trump gives a speech declaring “the impossible is what we do best.”
“We are in an age of disruptors, and disruptors are in the White House,” D’Souza said in an interview with The Associated Press. “There are people like Elon Musk, front and center, in the administration, and I think this is a time where new ideas, front and center, can come to be.”
D’Souza portrays the Enhanced Games not as a doping free-for-all, but as a “celebration of humanity at large, and a celebration of science.”
He’s offering a $1 million bonus for the first sprinter to break the 100-meter world record or swimmer who breaks the record in the 50-meter freestyle. He says he has a list of athletes who are ready to compete in the Enhanced Games, but did not divulge their names.
Trump Jr., in a statement accompanying the announcement of the funding, said: “This is about excellence, innovation, and American dominance on the world stage — something the MAGA movement is all about.”
The International Olympic Committee has dismissed the idea as one “that does not merit any comment,” though there are some with international sports bona fides who increasingly view it as a realistic path in what they believe is a broken world anti-doping system.
D’Souza sees room to move given the U.S. government’s years-long scuffle with the World Anti-Doping Agency, which has stretched across the Trump and Biden administrations and has resulted in the government refusing to pay its dues to the watchdog agency.
Trump has been keen on influencing sports. In the past three weeks alone, he has shaped policy on transgender sports and Title IX and held meetings to broker a deal between the PGA Tour and the Saudi backers of LIV Golf, a major disrupter in that sport that the president has backed.
D’Souza also sees Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation Thursday as health secretary as a positive. Kennedy has said he uses testosterone replacement therapy as part of an anti-aging regimen.
“That would get him banned from Olympic competition,” D’Souza said. “And he has spoken very openly about the need to bring disruption and reform into the healthcare sector, which is very aligned with the philosophy of the Enhanced Games.”
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