The High & the Mighty

By BRUCE LOWITT

The Enhanced Games have shifted into high gear now that the world has begun paying attention to those other Olympics, the competition in which athletes will be forced to rely only on their determination, their endurance, their skill.

You know, the boring ones.

Unlike the Summer Games scheduled for July 26-August 11 in Paris, which allows only those competitors who have tested negative for performance-improving substances, the Enhanced Games might better be described as a proposed no-drug-testing free-for-all; you could look it up.

They’re planned for December on a yet-to-be-determined southern United States university campus or similar facility not allowing cops or feds within a mile of the property.

The University of Florida is bidding to host the games, guaranteeing that Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general and official quacksalver, will be the Games’ medical director.

“The first rule of our games,” Australia’s Aron D’Souza, president of the Enhanced Games, said, “is ‘To hell with the World Anti-Doping Agency.’ Although the use of performance-enhancing drugs will not be required, we assume that athletes who don’t use them just don’t give a shit how badly they lose.”

The Enhanced Games stress “performance therapy,” with a scientific and medical advisory commission including Dr. Julia Cooney, M. Phil., M.B.B.S.; and Dr. Katherine Zagone, N.D.

“I don’t know what the hell any of those letters mean,” said Brett Fraser, Enhanced Games Chief Athletics Officer and three-time never-got-close-to-a-medal-because-he-wasn’t-juiced Cayman Islands Olympic swimmer. “But I know that if an athlete’s heart rate exceeds, like, two-hundred beats per minute, maybe they should sit down and rest for a while.”

D’Souza said that unlike the competitors in Paris this summer, “everyone in our games gets paid. Remember when the Olympics were strictly amateur? Yeah, neither can I. But why should some athletes make money from endorsements or winning a medal while others get bupkes? With us, everyone cashes in. Plus, each competitor gets his or her own free supply of mirrors and straws.”

The Enhanced Games also wants to change what it calls “harmful and discriminating language” from sports’ lexicon. For example, athletes aren’t “steroid abusers,” they’re “enhanced.” Thoroughly enhanced athletes are “pharmacies in motion.” They’re not “cheating,” they’re “demonstrating science.” And if they’ve excessively demonstrated science, they’re “cadavers.”