Fred Kerley spent weeks promising he would destroy Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second world record at the inaugural Enhanced Games on Sunday night in Las Vegas. He did not come close.
His winning time of 9.97 seconds in the 100-meter sprint would have finished last in the Paris Olympics final two years ago, where he ran 9.81 and won bronze. It was still fast enough to win the doping-permissive event’s marquee race, take home the $250,000 first-place prize, and beat five rivals who had taken testosterone, human growth hormone or other banned substances. Original reporting via the Associated Press.
The Enhanced Games, held in a temporary stadium on the Las Vegas Strip and bankrolled by investors including Peter Thiel, was sold as a showcase for what athletes can do with pharmaceutical help. Three of the four athletes who said they were competing clean walked away as winners. Kerley took the men’s 100. Tristan Evelyn of Barbados won the women’s 100 in 11.25 seconds. Hunter Armstrong won the men’s 50-meter backstroke. Each was paid $250,000.
“This proves that winning takes more than chemistry,” Evelyn said after her race, as reported by The Guardian.
Only one performance over five hours of swimming, weightlifting and track came in faster than an officially ratified world record. The Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev closed the night with a 20.81 in the 50-meter freestyle, 0.07 seconds quicker than Cameron McEvoy’s 20.88, set under sanctioned rules in March. Gkolomeev was wearing a banned skinsuit and was doping, so the time will not enter any record book. He still collected a $1 million bonus.
“Another million, it’s not bad at all,” he said. “It’s going to change my life to the good, for sure.”
A messy 100 meters
The 100-meter sprint that drew the largest share of attention was a chaotic affair. The six runners had to be called out of the blocks three times before the gun. One sprinter needed to retie his shoe. Two false-start signals went off without anyone being disqualified, including one charged to Kerley himself.
Kerley, who signed on as the first track athlete to join the Enhanced Games, had pumped up the race for weeks. When he predicted Bolt’s 17-year-old record would get “destroyed,” Bolt himself responded on social media with a single word: “OK.”
The actual result was less dramatic. Behind Kerley’s 9.97, Emmanuel Matadi of Liberia ran 10.05 for second and won $125,000. Marvin Bracy-Williams, the 2022 world silver medalist who is currently serving a doping suspension and competed enhanced, ran 10.39 for third and took $75,000. The next two finishers ran 10.47 and 10.48. Many American high school state finals would have been faster.
Kerley made his feelings about the field clear on the livestream and again in his post-race interview.
“Man, they gotta do better than that,” he said. “Gotta train a little harder, train on that (expletive) a little more.”
Kerley is no stranger to doping questions himself. He is currently serving a two-year ban from international competition for missing drug tests, although he insists he raced clean in Las Vegas.
Bracy-Williams, who he beat by nearly half a second, did not take the comments well.
“I don’t like that,” Bracy-Williams told reporters afterward. “He’s disrespecting the whole reason we’re here. He didn’t do nothing spectacular. He’s been advertising for a world record. As a sprinter, I respect the hell out of him, he’s one of those people you gotta come out and do hard. But as far as his mouth, I’m okay with celebrating, that’s cool, but when you disrespect the rest of the athletes, I don’t vibe with that, and I got something for him when I see him.”
Asked again about the back-and-forth, Kerley dropped any pretense of friendliness.
“I’m here to disrespect the field,” he said. “I’m not here to be buddies. There’s money on the line. I’m here to disrespect the field. There’s nobody that’s going to take money out of my pocket. I got kids to feed.”
The women’s race was slower still
The women’s 100 was further off the pace of mainstream sport. Evelyn’s 11.25 was more than three-quarters of a second slower than Florence Griffith Joyner’s 38-year-old world record of 10.49. It would have placed 0.21 seconds behind the seventh finisher at the Paris Olympics.
Shania Collins, the only woman in the field with a sub-11 personal best and a competitor on banned substances, ran 11.43 for second. The sixth-place finisher, Shockoria Wallace, ran 13.30, a time slower than what many recreational track club runners hit on a Tuesday night.
Few records, much spin
The swimming and weightlifting events delivered most of the performances Enhanced Games organizers were counting on. The company said 14 personal bests were set by 12 athletes, all of them swimmers or lifters. Ben Proud of Britain came within 0.05 seconds of the 50-meter butterfly world mark of 22.27 and left Las Vegas with $375,000 after winning the fly and finishing second in the freestyle.
“When I heard about the Enhanced Games I felt I had got a lottery ticket,” Proud said. “I thought I could get a good life out of this. Boom! I’m here.”
The strongman Hafthor Bjornsson, known to many viewers from Game of Thrones, tried to break his own 510-kilogram deadlift mark. He flinched after taking smelling salts, lifted the bar past his ankles, and could not move it further. Beatriz Pirón of the Dominican Republic, scheduled to open the night by surpassing the women’s snatch world record at 100 kilograms, missed her attempts. Boady Santavy of Canada failed his three snatch attempts, then was given a surprise fourth attempt by the organizers. He missed that too.
A giant screen between events told the crowd of about 2,500 invited guests what the competing athletes were taking: 90.5 percent on testosterone esters, 78.6 percent on human growth hormone, 61.9 percent on stimulants and 40.5 percent on EPO. Around 250,000 people watched on YouTube, according to organizers. Tickets were not sold to the general public.
The chief executive, Maximilian Martin, made the wider business pitch. The Enhanced Games is now a publicly traded company that plans to sell performance-enhancing drugs and supplements through an online pharmacy under medical supervision.
“We have arrived in mainstream culture,” Martin said. “We are here to stay. We have changed the world tonight.”
Later, after Gkolomeev’s swim provided the only sub-record time of the night, Martin softened his pitch. “Tonight we did expect a few more world records but this is live sports,” he said.
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