Two Percent with Michael Easter
The Steroid Olympics Flopped: Billionaires, PEDs, and a $1M World Record
16 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What are the Enhanced Games and how do they operate?
Welcome to 2%. I'm your host, Michael Easter. Here's an insane idea. What if we took a bunch of athletes, we juiced them to the gills with performance-enhancing drugs, and then we had them all compete? Now, this might sound like something someone comes up with in their dorm room while stoned, but it actually just happened at the Enhanced Games, which were held in Las Vegas in May.
So today we have Chris Gaimali and Sam Egan. They were on the ground before, during, and after the Enhanced Games. They were talking to founders, athletes, and scientists. They were there reporting their podcast, Superhuman.
And they're here today to talk to us about the aftermath of the games and the rise of websites selling us TRT, peptides, and other products that promise us better versions of ourselves with no effort, just the swipe of a credit card. We'll take a break, and then we're going to bring them on.
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Chapter 2: What was the initial public reaction to the Enhanced Games?
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Chapter 3: How did the Enhanced Games compare to traditional Olympics?
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All right, Chris and Sam, thanks for coming on 2%. Thank you for having us. Really appreciate it. So you guys are about to release the final two episodes of your show on the Enhanced Games. They might be out by the time this episode is out. But for people who have no clue what the hell the Enhanced Games are, explain it to us.
Yeah, so the Enhanced Games were originally billed as the sort of steroid Olympics, which, you know, is the kind of idea that, like, stone college students tend to have. They were like, wouldn't it be sick if we, like, had all these, like, PEDs and people could do whatever they want? But they actually made it happen.
It was founded by this guy named Aaron D'Souza, who is an associate of Peter Thiel's, who is most famous for helping bring down the Gawker website from many, many years ago. And yeah, we've just been embedded in this strange world where they convinced a bunch of former Olympians to take some PEDs and try to break some world records.
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Chapter 4: What were the unexpected outcomes during the competitions?
That's basically what this thing is. I was actually going to say, some people who aren't even Olympians, I think obviously because this was so controversial, they kind of had to widen their search. And they got some people who had never competed in the Olympics, but not to get ahead of myself, but actually ended up beating former Olympians. Yeah.
So with the word controversy, so when I first heard word of this, and I don't know when it was, probably a few months ago, you hear steroid Olympics, you hear like Saudi money, you hear we're juicing people to gills. And my initial thing was like, this just sounds like a giant grift. Like this sounds insane. What is this? What did you find in terms of that?
So what was your mindset entering doing this podcast? And like, where has it gone since then? And am I wrong that this is kind of insane? No. When I went in, I kind of didn't know what to expect. It just sounded so circus-y and like a big old sort of carnival sort of thing that I was like, dude, this could end up being a fire fest. This could end up being something stranger altogether.
But as we've been sort of embedded in this thing this whole time, I kind of realized it's basically just... you know, the website HIMS with a WWE component attached to it as the marketing apparatus, basically.
Yeah.
And so people who don't know, people who don't know HIMS, HIMS sells basically supplements, peptides.
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Chapter 5: How did non-enhanced athletes perform against enhanced competitors?
TRT. TRT. Yeah, I would say for me, I came on a little bit earlier to the project than Chris. I went to their initial event where they announced that this was actually going to happen at Resorts World in Vegas. This would have been May of 25. And it took me about...
I don't know what this says about me, but it took me about a full day of, like, attending these events and talking to people to be like, hey, I think that they're trying to sell testosterone to the wider public. This is an ad. Like, this is an ad for testosterone. It took me a full day to realize it. And I would say throughout the whole process of making this series that...
that suspicion was only confirmed. Yeah, so tell me what the business model is. Because when I first heard this, I was like, oh, they want to see what people can do if they're juiced to the gills. Kind of interesting to your point, Chris. Kind of sounds like something you'd come up with in your dorm room stoned. But there's a bigger play here because they are paying these athletes insane money.
So then the question is, well, where's the money coming from? And how are they actually going to make money? So tell us about that.
Chapter 6: What marketing strategies were employed during the Enhanced Games?
The Enhanced Games are funded, at least at the start, now it's a publicly traded company, by Christian Engermeyer, who is this sort of biopharma billionaire who's played in the psychedelic space for some time. And the business model, like we said, the way they kind of pitch it is that it is...
more bespoke version of telehealth that will give you access to both drugs that need to be prescribed like testosterone and also just a wider range of supplements. I think they sell like a sleep supplement for Chris. I think you said it was like 70 bucks. But on top of that, they're selling testosterone, they sell a whole list of peptides, they sell NAD.
And Chris actually went through the website and bought it. I have not done that yet, but as they pitched it, it was like, you're going to have to talk to a doctor and it's going to be more specifically suited to like what we think that you need. But as I understand it, that has not, that has not been the case.
It basically is just essentially the same website model as HIMSS or Rho or Keeps or any of these other, of these other companies. So when you bought stuff, Chris, so the idea going in is you're going to meet with a doctor. It's going to feel like just getting a prescription from a doctor, but that didn't happen. So what was that process like?
Yeah, it was basically like filling out a Google Docs survey of like, what are you suffering from right now? And I was like, anxiety. And it's like, great, prescription on the way. I actually ordered some semirelin that in true enhanced fashion hasn't gone to me yet because of some logistical holdups in their shipping process. Yeah. Pipeline.
But, you know, as soon as it gets to me, I'm eager to try it.
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Chapter 7: What are the ethical concerns surrounding performance-enhancing drugs?
But basically, the business model is they're using this, you know, this wacky sort of competition to sort of justify a framework that then they could, like... used to sort of normalize PED use. And that's kind of like the big overarching mission of this thing.
Like if we can provide a way where we can sort of do it, in their words, like safely and like rather conservatively, honestly, like in the public eye, then we can sell that to the masses. And that's sort of how they're building this whole operation. Yeah. So, Chris, your background is you were at GQ reporting on wellness quite a bit. Sam, you're a producer. Also, you were a D1 athlete.
You wrestled at Wyoming. Is that right? That's correct. Go Pokes. So how did how did you two get pulled into this project? I think for me, there's just, you know, there's not a lot of people who come from, like, an athletic background of the level that I guess I come from that also work in the journalism space. So I think that it was a natural fit. But I was also really curious.
Just from my own experience, I was fascinatedā by the idea of, I guess, just like the recovery part of PEDs. Because I just remember being, competing at Wyoming and I think people understand in theory the training regimen of like a division one athlete or Olympic level athlete, but like to see it actually put in front of your face and to actually do it is another thing entirely.
Chapter 8: What is the future of the Enhanced Games and its impact on athletics?
It's like an hour and a half in the morning, anywhere from three and a half hours at night, you're told when to go to class, you're told when to go to study hall. You have to go to recovery after practice, probably have tutors after that. So your entire day is built for you. Five hours of exercise, six days a week if you're not traveling.
And even at like 19 to 23, my body was messed up all the time. I still have like ā I mean like I still got like ā I got pinkies that do crazy stuff like, you know. Like I was beat up. And the question of like does this have to be this way? Like are we kind of closing ourselves off to ā
a realm of drugs and pharmacology that could make athletes' lives better without compromising their safety and health. I was really interested to find that out. I don't know if I think that the answers were satisfying, but I wanted to see what they were selling, you know? Yeah, you're going, look, I've been put through hell on the wrestling team. It's taken a toll on my body.
If there's this thing I could do that is not going to affect my long-term health, that seems like it would be interesting from an athletic perspective, just to make the lives of athletes not quite so hellish. Totally. And I think just because people don't realize how stringent the anti-doping sort of guidelines are on substances that you can and cannot take. That's what suddenly that came up.
like time and time again with the athletes we were interviewing um one one of the athletes megan romano who came out of retirement after like 10 years a swimmer um she was like i i was even i was afraid to take ibuprofen because you never know what's going to be tainted you never know what's going to get you banned like the list changes constantly the book of like wada guidelines is like a tome of different substances that you can and cannot take it changes it changes constantly um
And it was also just created without athlete input. So for me, I was just really interested in how this could affect the athlete experience. Yeah, that makes sense. So you kind of mentioned who is behind this, but how did this whole idea start to get legs of the enhanced games? Yeah, so Aaron D'Souza sort of like was kicking around a bunch of ideas post his Gawker project a couple of years ago.
And he presented this sort of idea to Peter Thiel, who's one of his buddies, and was like, hey, you know, what if we threw a sort of Stairway to Olympics that, you know, sort of allowed us to put on this big, big show. We'll create a lot of noise. It'll cause a lot of mischief. And from there, we can sort of develop and reverse engineer a sort of business plan.
So I think they kind of went in with the big, nasty, sort of like, you know, dirt-kicking idea. And then they sort of like, you know, we're building the plane on the way down to mix every metaphor possible to describe this. But... Yeah. So in a way, yes, it does have elements of the, this is an idea that you'd come up with in the dorm room while stoned.
At the same time, it's coming from two people that have billions of dollars and they're like, hey, we could actually figure this thing out. And then they also have the sort of gear in their mind going, all right, and then how do we turn this into a super profitable business potentially?
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