We were promised world records, freakish performances, a new era of sport that would redefine human potential. Instead, we got an Enhanced Games that somehow gave athletes a boatload of drugs and didn't enhance much of anything. Which, if I'm honest, is quite the feat. The East German regime of the 1980s would be disappointed. But that's the larger point. The Enhanced Games is a sports story. But more so it's the latest entry in a larger pattern: a tech culture that tries to convince us to "hack" everything without really understanding what drives actual performance whatsoever.

Coming Up Short

First, let's get to the lack of enhancement. There was a single world record that was barely beaten in swimming. And the star of that show was almost certainly the banned super suits, which previous research shows gave up to a 5.5 percent boost in performance on elite performers. In other words, the thing that 'broke' the record wasn't the drugs, it's that they used banned tech.

In the track sprints, the results were much more grim. In the men's event, despite promising world records, every man that was enhanced in the final was closer to the women's world records than to the men's. On both the men's and women's side, athletes ran on average about a half-second slower than when at their peak. And more concerning, significantly slower than they did their most recent season of competition in either 2024 or 2025.

In both cases, the final results were slower than the Texas high school state meet. The 6th place finisher who scored a $20,000 payday would have been beaten by over 700 high school boys this year alone. It's hard to convey to a non-track person how slow this meet was. Even for people past their prime.

What happened? How in the world do you take near world-class athletes, give them drugs, and see little to no improvement?