Donald Trump Jr. appears to have acquired his father’s business acumen when it comes to the world of sports. Don Jr. is a co-organizer of the inaugural “Enhanced Games,” which took place in Las Vegas over the weekend and was ignored by almost everyone, becoming the most pathetic new sports venture since the XFL.
An event that promised world record-breaking performances and never-before-seen performances turned into a wet fart, the Temu version of the Olympics, that completely stunk. Don’t just take my word for it, because the event’s early returns were so spectacularly bad that the share price of Enhanced Group, the games’ parent company, is in free fall.
The main event was to be the men’s 100 metres, in which Frank Kerley, bronze medal winner at the Paris Olympics, boasted that Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 would be “destroyed” if he ran on performance-enhancing drugs. Instead, he ran at a ridiculously slow pace of 9.97, slower than his time at the Olympics. After failing to “destroy” Bolt’s record, Kerley turned on his fellow competitorssaying they needed to improve their game.
“They have to do better than that,” Kerley said in a post-race interview. “They need to train a little harder, try a little harder and try a little harder.”
It wasn’t just on the track where things were sad. In the pool, Hunter Armstrong won the 50-meter backstroke as not improved athlete, destroying the entire premise of the games. Then retired Australian swimmer James Magnussen, who came out of retirement for the event, promised that he would be “excited to the gills” and break his own 100m freestyle record. He finished two seconds slower than his record mark.
There was a pattern throughout the weekend. Time and time again, athletes who were on drugs recorded times much slower than anything that could be considered a record, or were beaten by athletes who were not doping.
None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the genesis of this ridiculous event. It was an idea hatched by technicians and idiots with no athletic experience, working under the assumption that performance-enhancing drugs could turn any moderate athlete into a superhuman. Not only was there nothing compelling about the games, but apparently no one cared that they were happening, especially with the competition taking place during the NBA and NHL Playoffs, the MLB season, and a jam-packed weekend of motorsports with the Indy 500, F1 Canadian GP, and Coca-Cola 600 in NASCAR.
Enhanced Games CEO Maximillion Martin said the event is “here to stay,” making The Enhanced Games the herpes of the sports world. We will see the occasional unwanted flare-up and will be happy when it goes away.
