This weekend in Las Vegas, the first edition of the highly controversial Enhanced Games gets under way.
The competition, which takes place in front of 2,500 spectators in a purpose-built arena in Nevada, allows athletes to take performance enhancing drugs that are outlawed in official competitions.
Two Irish athletes are among the 42 participants who will compete across three disciplines: men's and women’s 100m sprints, 50m freestyle swimming and weightlifting.
Organisers are calling it the "first international sporting event at the intersection of elite athletics and modern medical science", but World Athletics President Sebastian Coe has taken a dimmer view of the event, describing it simply as "a clown show".
Former Irish Olympic swimmer Nick O’Hare joined Fran and Eamon on Behind the Story to give his view of the competition as a whole:
"It’s probably the most reprehensible, disgusting event that could ever be associated with sport. I know that's very, very strong, but I think the message it's conveying to younger, aspiring athletes, is completely wrong.
"1988 was a watershed moment, the dirtiest race in history, with six of the eight guys in 100 metres testing positive. Obviously then WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) came in and everything has been about clean sport since then, but now we've got this."
One aspect of the tournament that Nick is particularly sceptical about, is the motivation of those behind the event:
"It's the brainchild of a guy called Aron D'Souza. He's an Australian entrepreneur and has teamed up with a guy called Peter Thiel. Thiel was one of the first investors in Facebook and PayPal and so on. These guys would be libertarians.
"So, they basically believe that you can do whatever you want to your body, so long as you're not doing any harm to anybody else. They also believe in transhumanism, which means they want to ultimately reverse aging.
"I know that sounds outlandish, but this is really where these guys are coming from in terms of their views. But if you dig deep enough, and you don't have to dig too deep, you’ll find they've all got links to biotechnology companies. So, this is essentially a very, very glamourised clinical trial."
Nick then outlined his belief, that the true purpose of the games is to market performance enhancing drugs to aspiring athletes:
"This is a marketeer's dream, because you have these elite athletes at the peak, or just off the peak, of their prowess and performance. For example, Ben Proud is going in the swimming, he got the silver medal at the last Olympics.
"The organisers belief is that Ben Proud will do a lifetime best, he may break a world record. And when you look at elite athletes, they've got very little headroom to improve. So, the marketeers will pull all this data together and say, this guy, he'd no room to improve, but because of the drugs he was taking, he has improved 5% or 10%.
"If you look up the website, you can see the products for sale like human growth hormone, testosterone and so on. They (the organisers) want them readily available on supermarket shelves and pharmacy shelves without prescription. And then the positioning will be for much lower-level athletes; if you take these drugs, you have huge, huge headroom to improve. But the reality is, you're cheating."
You can listen to Behind the Story on the RTÉ Radio Player.
You can also find episodes on Apple here, or on Spotify here.
