Changing Lanes
Swimmer Shane Ryan has become the first Irish athlete to sign up for the testing free Enhanced Games
“People’s opinions aren’t going to pay me. They’re not going to help me set up my future.”
These were the words of Irish swimmer and three-time Olympian Shane Ryan, as he defended his decision to cast aside a career of sporting integrity and enter into the highly controversial Enhanced Games effort, which is to go ahead some time in the next year.
His announcement was immediately condemned by Irish sporting organisations, Swim Ireland, and even Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
The move has brought several issues to the fore, not least the moral ethics of the entire endeavour of a doping-fueled sporting competition, but also the financial structures currently making it difficult for athletes to earn a reasonable living having committed their lives to Olympic sports like swimming.
It has also pitted Ryan against his home nation, the country he swam on behalf of throughout his career and represented at three Olympic Games.
Ireland is a deeply rich sporting nation, punching well above its weight on various fronts, and sporting integrity is woven into the very fibre of our makeup. When such a large part of our sporting identity is based around amateur sports, where financial incentives are put behind honour, integrity and community, the very contemplation of doping is scandalous. Two of the most high profile anti-doping journalists come from these shores in David Walsh and Paul Kimmage, whilst the nation outright shunned an Olympic Gold medalist swimmer who is suspected, but never proven of cheating at the 1996 Games.
So to contend with one of ours brashly casting aside all that we stand for, it for sure leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It also lands the Enhanced Games audaciously at our doorstep, something that until now seemed peculiar and alien and involving figures we needn’t spend much brain power caring about.
However, Ryan has proved to be a worthwhile addition to their ranks, speaking candidly and from the front foot over the past week across Irish and international media defending his decision, giving it an enormous amount of promotion, with the pointed angle that however we may feel about his move, it isn’t going to fill up his bank account.
To base his defence around financial incentive is a major middle finger to the sporting establishment, arguably more so than the “scientific” advancement the organisers purport it to be. It slots welcomely into where the Enhanced Games can pick at the scabs of genuine sporting competition, propped by a bottomless pit of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, led by Aron D’Souza, an Australian venture capitalist and tech entrepreneur, and financed by abominable characters such as Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr.
The social contract of clean sport is built on the idea that we compete on a level playing field and that victory is earned rather than engineered synthetically. But the notion of clean sport is, and always has been to a certain degree, partly fairytale. From Ben Johnson’s syringes to Lance Armstrong’s blood bags to entire Olympic teams juiced up under state-wide programmes, sporting history is riddled with pharmaceutical gremlins.
We yearn for sport to be noble, pure and romantic. Ryan is a reminder that it’s more often grubby, compromised, and transactional. The Enhanced Games are just taking that and stripping away the Omerta.
“Yes, the Enhanced Games are a bit controversial, but the Olympics aren’t that clean anyway. You’d be surprised at what some athletes get away with. They also make so much money off the participants, who live very basic lives,” said Ryan.
Across Olympic sports, athletes scrape by on crumbs while global federations pocket billions. The IOC is the world’s wealthiest multi-sports organisation, with revenues in excess of $7 billion per four-year cycle, yet athletes, particularly those from countries like Ireland, are funded on a sliding scale with government grants that are barely covering annual living expenses.
The Enhanced Games are exploiting that hypocrisy, offering prize money that some of these athletes are in dire need of, sponsorship opportunities, a little bit of notoriety and a cut of the profits. It’s easy to preach about morality from our vantage points, slightly less so when you’re choosing between competing in a sport and being able to pay the bills. As Ryan explains, he had to live on €18,000 a year whilst training for the Olympics. Now, he’s guaranteed $200,000 with potential earnings of over $600,000 should he succeed at the games.
Shane Ryan will be heralded as both a trailblazer and condemned as a cheat. He’ll be branded a traitor to true sporting values. But he’s also holding up a mirror to a sporting system that is happy to exploit athletes’ passion while preaching for purity and fairness.
The Enhanced Games, however, isn’t simply about profiting downtrodden athletes with a view into scientific and technological advancements. There is something much more sinister at play, in a sort of Black Mirror-like public testbed for human enhancement and biotech advancements.
Notably, nobody involved comes from a sporting background. One of the co-founders, Christian Angermayer, is a biotech billionaire described as a “psychedelics mogul” who takes several mushroom trips a year, and has planted the Enhanced Games as a “New Human Agenda”, which will “usher in true superhuman abilities through the seamless integration of technology into our bodies”.
Just like in most industries nowadays, these are the ultra-rich mushroom-addled minds shaping the future of life as we know it. They are venture capitalists and futurists using sport as a proving ground for their next frontier. But, it’s important to remember that this is still an extremely niche effort and far from the end of clean sport as we know it.
Unfortunately, with athletes like Shane Ryan on board, it is a warning shot across the bow for clean sport. I’m in no doubt that athletes do want to compete cleanly and fairly, but I’m also sure they want to be paid adequately. Organisations need to support them beyond podiums and Olympic cycles.
What could become a problem is athletes like Ryan approaching the twilight years of their careers and looking around to see meagre bank balances and finding it easier to throw off the shackles of clean sport and make easy, albeit tainted money. And if clean sport refuses to confront its own economic hypocrisies, it shouldn’t be surprised when they do.