Max, Christian, thank you so much for joining us today. For folks who don't know, Enhanced Games not just allows but essentially encourages performance-enhancing drugs. You have a competition coming up in Las Vegas at the end of the month. You also have a SPAC coming out tomorrow, but I just want to get a sense from you and for folks who don't know, how did this come about? Right? This sounds pretty scandalous, right? Doping for Olympics, right? That's what I think the perception is a lot of people have.
Yes, so it's very scandalous because over the past few decades people have been cheating, people have been caught cheating, gaining an unfair advantage, and still to date a lot of people are getting away with that cheating. And so when you look at a little bit more data underneath it and you on an anonymized basis ask athletes the question, 'Are you enhancing or not?' Roughly half of the athletes actually admit to using banned substances, while only 1% is getting caught. So what that means is that every other athlete is cheating and getting away with it. Now, how do they get away with it? By taking newly developed drugs that are not well researched and by taking additional drugs on top of that to hide what they're taking in the first place. Now, that lets them get away with the cheating. However, the price they need to pay to do that is their health, and this is completely unnecessary because all of the substances that would make you perform better, recover quicker, protect yourself better from injuries, are actually FDA-approved substances that doctors prescribe to patients every single day. And so when you look at Hollywood and Marvel superheroes, when you look at executives around the world and many other industries, people are openly enhanced and benefiting from it. And so the question is, why prevent athletes from these benefits from approved substances that are actually the people that need them most? Because being an athlete on such an elite level is so taxing on the body. And so these athletes actually benefit from it the most, which is why we said, 'You can have a different approach, a regulated approach, where you take out of what's happening in the shadows anyways, unsupervised and unsafe, put it out in the open, put the right clinical and medical regulatory framework around it, to make sure that people that choose to do it can do it safely.' And it's really about that choice, providing people with a choice and a safe pathway to do it.
And, you know, you touched on this, but I think a lot of people like myself kind of hear doping or performance-enhancing drugs and we think Barry Bonds or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but there's obviously a lot of variance to what is legal, what people are being tested for, what's actually beneficial. Can you just kind of walk us through, obviously we know about doping, but there's so much more to this landscape than just...
The word in itself is actually not a good word, because doping insinuates sort of forbidden. And what I want to make clear is at the Enhanced Games, we do allow medical performance-enhancing drugs. This means medical drugs which are approved by the FDA, which I believe my background is in biotech, this is the gold standard globally of how drug approval should be done. If a drug is FDA-approved, we know what it does, we also know if it has side effects, which ones and so on. So, FDA-approved drugs and you have to do it with a doctor together. So, short version, everything you can get in a pharmacy in America with a doctor prescription is fair game. Doping we call it when WADA and the IOC and other sports leagues say, by the way, kind of randomly, oh, this is allowed and this is not allowed. I give you one example, which is my favorite one. I'm personally extremely against alcohol. I've never tried alcohol in my whole life. I think alcohol is the devil spiritually and I think it's a poison factually. We don't need this negative energy. However, I don't have a problem, but I won't just as a benchmark. So, if I say at my home, I don't allow alcohol in my home, that makes alcohol banned in my home, but it doesn't make alcohol illegal. And that's what the IOC is doing, by the way, and rightly so, they can do it because it's their event. And while they say, 'Okay, we ban substances,' but it doesn't mean some of these substances are not medically available to people outside the IOC system. So, I want to make just a difference between what is illegal, what is banned. We allow whatever is legal and medically available.
So, could Barry Bonds compete in the enhanced games?
I don't know what this person took, but the second point you made or what I want to put is people a lot think, 'Oh my god, it's the more the merrier.' Because what they actually often think about is let's call it scandals like that, which a lot came out of the bodybuilding world. And that's not what we're doing. So, actually, if you look at the protocols of our athletes, they're doing fairly little. Why? Because they're 25, they're in their primes, they're already genetically blessed because otherwise they wouldn't be an athlete, and they're just doing sort of the icing on the cake. And by the way, what we did as well, which I'm very proud of, a lot of the science hasn't been explored because it was always like this sort of gray zone thing, and we structured our training camp with our athletes at the moment in our training camp in Abu Dhabi, we structured it as a gold standard clinical trial with government oversight, proper universities involved. So, we're going to deliver the very first broad deep data set ever on medical performance-enhancing drugs. What I can already see in the data is super fascinating because most of the add-on performance is not coming from more muscles because a swimmer doesn't want more muscles because it makes him or her maybe slower, but it comes from better regeneration, and better recovery, and better sleep.
Did you say most of these athletes then are focused on peptides? Or what is the, I mean, I know it's different for everyone because obviously you want to optimize for different things if you're swimming or a gymnast. What does an average protocol look like, I guess, for a runner? Is it mostly peptides? Is nothing illegal, it sounds like.
It's a combination of a variety of different things. I would think about it in four main categories of substances. One is anabolic steroids. Then another one is like hormone and metabolic regulators. Third one would be approved peptides, so the peptides that are FDA-regulated. And then lastly, stimulants. And within those, as you rightly suggested, every protocol is different. It depends on are you a swimmer? Are you a runner? Even within, for example, just running, think about the different skills that you need to run at the 100-meter sprint versus the marathon. Two very different skill sets required to actually vary two different physiologies of the athletes underlying that excel at each event. Therefore, also two very different protocols to help the athletes become the best at each. Second layer is also who are you as an individual, right? Some people might like milk, others may be lactose intolerant. So, these are really the core defining factors on how to personalize those protocols for athletes. And within the individual protocols, these are the four main categories of substances that the athletes are taking.
Okay, interesting. Now, I would imagine this would make it more conducive to breaking records. Is that what you're seeing thus far? You know, obviously the first games is coming up, but are you seeing sort of superhuman capacity in a way that we haven't seen before?
Yeah, we actually did last year. We had one kind of early event where we broke already a world record and we believe we're going to break a few, definitely. And that's obviously what people want to see and what we strive for.
Yeah, I mean and given that, it's interesting. You know, I've had some conversations with people who are just watching this from far and they're saying, 'Look, if you're obviously the Olympics is a historic, ancient ritual with kind of the best branding, huge market. But their theory is can a sporting event now that doesn't have access to this stand up long-term if you have competition with the enhanced games now where presumably you're going to see people who are faster, who are stronger. Is that in this day and age where people love drama? Is that going to supersede?'
Well, we love that what you're saying because that's what we believe. Like we're going to see, but we don't want to be like it's not an either or. There are so many sport events whatever. But one fun fact because as you said the Olympics are a very sort of ancient positive ancient traditional thing. Like if you go, I'm a big fan of ancient Greek and Latin. If you go in the old documents around the first Olympics in ancient Greece, they did use performance-enhancing drugs. Like what? They did like a lot of actually pain medication because they had marathons whatever. So and obviously the science wasn't there. So there was a lot of woo-woo. But what it shows me actually is like exactly what you say. We have a strive for ourselves but also to watch the best. I think that's what is a very primal sort of wiring. Okay, I want to know who's the fastest runner in the world whatever. And it's very unnatural actually to say oh, I'm banning things. If you go back in history to the ancient Olympics, people were like no like what can we take? Again, they didn't have the selection because science wasn't there. But what can we take to achieve really the best? And so I do believe we have an advantage because that's what people are wired to. They want to see the best.
What and what is your goal? Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
Sorry, can I add two things on that? On the best per se as Christian said, you'll have athletes that break records. What does it mean if you break a record? That means you're the only person amongst 8 billion people that is capable of doing that. Which is unbelievable, right? But enhancements are not just relevant for those super elite athletes. Enhancements are relevant for anyone. So, there's actually a second category of athletes which likely are not going to break world records, but their personal records that they've set in their prime. And that's what I'm super excited about as well. So, for example, one of our swimmers, Megan Romano, she was a two-time world champion when she was in her prime. She's now 35. She came out of retirement, is now back in the pool, and with the help of enhancements at 35 is swimming quicker than she ever has in her prime when she was a two-time world champion. And that is the power of enhancements, right? She's better than she's ever been at 35, an age where you're not supposed to be in your prime. She's healthier than she's ever been.
Women are definitely in their prime in their 30s, but I know. I think that's what it is.
Prime. In the Olympic world, I guess.
Totally. And that's really what's so exciting about this, right? Enhancements and science and how we progress as a society with those advantages are constantly improving our everyday lives. What we also always say, at some point we all started washing our hands. At some point we all started boiling water before we drink it. This is just scientific progress that we make as a society. And what we're doing is we're looking at the law at the utmost regulator of what we can and cannot do, and within those seeing what tools are available in a safe environment to help us become the best version of ourselves.
Oh, by the way, you have a good attitude. I want to say, I want to build on that is like when you say indeed like women are in their prime in their 30s, but I think everybody should be in their prime at any time. And what we actually want to show people is how no matter how old you are, if you're 30, 40, 50, 60, you can be the best version of yourself, and there is no shame at all. It's actually very positive to use medical performance-enhancing drugs. By the way, whatever it is for you. So, we have the support event, and as Christian said, like breaking a world record is amazing. That's what people want to see, but it's very unrelatable. Like one person will break a world record. But there is so many small things. Like think about a 75-year-old who has grandchildren and wants to take them to the park and maybe carry his grandson on his shoulders. That is for him more important than breaking a world record would be. And we want to help people sort of achieve these goals, whatever the goals subjectively your own goals are, with scientific driven medical performance enhancement.
Yeah. I want to get your view on sort of the IOC and some of these other sporting events, how they came to their standards, because it's been an evolution, right? It's changed over the years. So would love to get your thoughts on that kind of where it is now and then also just how you got this idea, how you thought, okay, this is what we're going to do.
Yeah. So it's been developing over time. Ban substance regulation is not the same that it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. It at times can even feel a little bit arbitrary, if you'd like. So for example, in the early 2000s, if you drank four cups of espresso before a race and you got tested afterwards, you would have considered to have doped. Why? Because of increased caffeine levels. Now, 20 years later, this rule does not exist anymore, but it just shows you how sometimes arbitrary these rules can feel. The list is roughly 4,000 substances long. Some get added every year, others get subtracted every year. Depending on which country you're from, you can for example get therapeutic use exemptions. So as an athlete from one certain country, you can get a therapeutic use exemption, which another athlete from another country cannot take. And so it's really there to promote fairness. But it's highly subjective.
But the question is, what is fairness?
So an athlete from the US could take a certain substance that an athlete from Germany might not be able to? So for example, the US athletes are governed by the US Anti-Doping Agency, whereas people from other countries in the world are governed by the World Anti-Doping Agency. They can, in the US particularly, the US Anti-Doping Agency can give to US athletes those therapeutic use exemptions, which other athletes from other countries are not able to obtain. And so while we would have to assume that this is obviously already regulated and not abused that system, it is just a difference in the system that doesn't exist everywhere in the same way. And so what was really important for us is to level that playing field, to give every athlete independent of where they're from, independent of what age they are, independent of their gender, the exact same access to any resource that we have. This is not just on the medical performance enhancement side. This goes to coaching, this goes to nutrition, this goes to physios, this goes to recovery access, therapists, sports psychologists, everything that an athlete needs to prepare holistically to become the best they can be, which is what we've provided and that's how we think we can make the playing field more level for the athletes.
And presumably there are things that you guys ban.
Yes, so everything that is illegal under the law, right? So for example, but it's very clean. The water is so arbitrary and we are very clean because it's not us making the decision, it's the FDA making the decision. Whatever is FDA approved is fair game, what is not FDA approved is not. It's so simple.
Yeah. I'm also curious too because there's been a lot of frustration with the Olympics about how things are enforced and who's tested and that can be another sort of arbitrary piece. How do you guys test? Is everyone tested? Is this enforced more unilaterally?
Yeah, everyone is tested. But what we've done is we changed the way we approach testing. The current testing system is a punitive testing system where you're only looked at to find out whether you're cheating or not. Your health is not of consideration in the current testing system. What we switched the focus to is to make medical screenings that are focused on the athletes' health and to figure out whether they're safe to compete. So, what we're doing is actually even before we sign athletes, they have their first medical screenings. The attention from a medical perspective that the athletes get from us is unmatched. And so, many athletes when they do their first medical screenings, what are we looking at? Images of the heart, the brain, the musculoskeletal analysis, other organs, blood, saliva, urine sampling, etc., to get a really holistic overview of the athlete and identify anything that could later even be a risk for them to not qualify them for the competition. And then those medical screenings happen over time as well. Just two up for the games where we then decide whether an athlete is safe or not. What's very important as well is these medical screenings apply to any athlete. What we said before is as an athlete you can choose whether you want to get enhanced or not. Even if you choose not to enhance, you still need to undergo and pass all of the same medical screenings that the enhanced athletes go through. Because even for example, at the time of the games, you have a flu, that might not make it safe for you to compete. 2024, the 200m final for the men, Noah Lyles, American sprinter, actually had COVID when he ran the race. After the race, he gave it everything, but after the race, he absolutely collapsed and had to get carried out on a wheelchair. Whether that was safe or not, from a medical perspective, we leave that up to the people that were treating him, but that is just what happens over and over because the current testing is focused on cheating, not on the athletes' health and their safety to compete.
Yeah. I want to get though into a bit of the founding of this because this has been an idea you've sort of been working on for quite some time. You have very interesting backers, Peter Thiel, Don Jr. What was the genesis of this? And I'm curious too, do you see this as sort of like the future of competition? Do you see this as sort of a way to prove something scientifically? Like what was your motivation? Why did you see the need for this?
So, first of all, we have to give credit to our third co-founder and founder like Aaron D'Souza. He came up with the idea, came to us, we were working together already, and I loved it from day one because when I thought it through, what I really love are ideas which sound to be very controversial at first, but where I know, and I say it really cockily, but I know I'm right because science doesn't lie. I have the scientific background, I love science, I love sort of data, and everything I believe, people can judge, but what we're doing is logical, makes scientific sense, is the best for the athletes, and when I have that level of conviction, then I like it that at the beginning people like, 'Oh, this is crazy. This is never going to happen.' I was like, 'Hey, we're going to prove you that you're wrong, that we're right.' Because I know we're right because we are sort of on the scientific side of the answer. So, that was what really I like. So, I like to change the zeitgeist on topics which I believe should be changed. And I would also like to change the zeitgeist on alcohol because like scientifically, it's such a bad thing. But it's a different topic.
And what year was that? Because this has been...
Okay. That's pretty fast to get to this point.
Again, and for like literally 99.9% of all people we talked to at the beginning were like, 'This is never going to happen.' Yeah, and here we are, May 24th. It's going to happen.
I mean, for some of these athletes, they're getting blackballed from other sporting events. What is the process of recruiting been like? Has it been a challenge? You mentioned you're obviously able to draw on folks who competed maybe in the Olympics 10 years ago and they're coming back because of these protocols. But what has that been like and kind of winning people over to your vantage point about how the science works?
Let's start with one thing we haven't touched on yet, which is, I think, the second big innovation we're very proud of. Like, we from the beginning said athletes have to be paid in a fair way. And it sounds normal, but Olympic athletes are not. Right. They're making zero money. Most of them literally live around the poverty line. Yes, there once in a while there's one superstar who gets some great sponsoring so whatever, but most of the average Olympic gold medal winner makes like maybe 30, 40, 50,000 a year. And these people are heroes. If they dedicate their life, because if you want to be on that level, you dedicate your life from your teens...
In America, I mean in some countries they do pay people.
