«Athletes decide about their bodies»- Corriere.it

Ben Johnson again record holder of the 100m with 9”79, the scepter of cycling returned to Lance Armstrong. It is the dream of Doping gamesas they will be called if their visionary creator, Aron Ping D’Souza, will be able to organize them according to the announcement made these days. It’s about the «
Enhanced Games
», Improved Gamespromoted by this businessman and lawyer born in Melbourne but operating in London, at the helm of an association of athletes, doctors and scientists that supports the legitimacy of the use of doping.

A minority. A madness. Even if D’Souza is determined to legitimize it: «We are morally honest». D’Souza told the Australian media, filmed by the British Guardian which tells the story including the reaction of the aussie sport. “It sounds like a joke, but it’s instead a dangerous and unfair idea”, said Anna Meares, Australia’s head of delegation at Paris ’24 and track cycling Olympian. But D’Souza insists, she tells that the participants in these pseudo games should be around two thousand, that the budget would be millionaires and not billionaires, and that therefore it would not be a problem to find a host city. There are five disciplines: athletics, swimming, weights, gymnastics and combat sports. Hopefully it goes unheard.

At the moment, they are announced for December 2024, a few months after the real Olympics in Paris. The theory of the legitimacy of doping sneaked around in the years of the Iron Curtain, when state and individual doping represented opposing recipes for a section of the cold war. But never had anyone championed it so clearly, net of marketing calculations. «The model of the Olympics has broken down – says D’Souza with conviction – The IOC has been a one-party state for over 100 years, and now has an opposition partyWe are ready for battle.”

Everything starts from the belief that «athletes are adults and have the right to do with their bodies what they want: my body, my choice; your body, your choice. No government, no paternalistic sports federation, should be making such decisions for athletes, especially regarding products regulated and approved by Food and Drugs.”

The goal of the Enhanced Games association is «to see a world record set at 40, 50, 60 years old. Performance medicine is the gateway to the fountain of youth. AND nothing will improve our society’s productivity more than preventing aging», while the World Anti-Doping Agency Wada would have – in perfect conspiratorial ideal «il task of halting scientific progress. But you can’t stop the future: look at artificial intelligence. And then I think of all those champions deprived of their records: it’s sad to see people who have reached the highest level of human excellence and live an objectively impoverished existence, while sports bureaucrats earn millions.