Jess & Ducko - Hit Breakfast - BONUS | The Olympics if doping was allowed...

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

The President of the Enhanced Games, Dr Aron D'Souza zooms in with Jess & Ducko on how this new event will take over the Olympics!Subscribe on LiSTNR: https://play.listnr.com/podcast/nick-jess-and-duckoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jess and Dukko. Jess, we've been chatting about this for a while on the show. It's been building momentum, the enhanced games. That's right. I'm not going to explain it, Dukko, because I know it's been circulating the media. There are headlines. There are conversations happening on both sides of the fence. So I think the Olympics, if doping was allowed.

We have important allies in our battle for bodily freedom as we build the first sporting event that allows performance enhancements and pays all athletes. When we first announced the Enhance Games, the Olympic Committee said we were a joke, an idea that couldn't be taken seriously. But venture capitalists know that the future isn't a joke. Yeah, that's right. Enhancing athletes scientifically with medicine

to show what the human body is capable of. And essentially they're on a mission to break every single world record out there. That's right. The founder, the president, Dr. Aaron D'Souza. We're really lucky to squirrel away a bit of time with this man because you're trending, Aaron. You're trending.

You are everywhere and everyone's talking about the enhanced games globally, let alone here in Australia. So good morning to you. Good morning to you. Thanks for having me on the show. I suppose the first question Aaron, and you probably get asked this a lot is, why did you want to start this? Where did this come from? This idea from you? Well, I'll always credit it. It's not my idea. It's actually the idea of a prominent bioathlete from Oxford University, Professor Julian Savarescu, who first argued for the inclusion of performance,

enhancing drugs in the games almost 20 years ago. I just took his idea and I made it a reality. So when he first pitched this 20 years ago, he was condemned. And now you're facing the same condemnation from anti-doping agencies around the world and athletes alike. What do you actually say? What's your response to your opponents? Well, I would say that the taxicabs criticized Uber, the hotels criticized Airbnb, and that

innovation is always hard because innovation disrupts long, tired, broken incumbents. And the International Olympic Committee president lives in a palace, flies around the world in a private jet. The Olympians of the world on average in rich countries like Australia earn only about $30,000 a year, and we're shaking up that whole system. So let's get into it, how it actually is going to work. Because we know James Magnuson, the missile from Australia, he recently did the trials with you.

He didn't break the world record, but the swimming world record was broken. We'll get into that in a little bit, but how does it work? If I say, yep, I'm an athlete, I want to do this. Where do I go from here? You guys have a team of doctors around me and we do it safely? Yeah, so we have a whole medical commission

that ensures that athletes are safe to compete. And that means doing echocardiograms, blood work, MRIs, whole medical commission that ensures that athletes are safe to compete. And that means doing echocardiograms, blood work, MRIs, make sure that they're healthy to compete. And then we have the best scientists in the world working on this project, including the chairman of genetics at Harvard university, professor George Church and 38 other members of my scientific panel. What are they taking? They're taking FDA or TGA approved substances.

So I would note of all the banned substances by the Olympics, virtually all of them are legal. And actually, if you walk into your local GNC, 25% of the goods on the shelf there would get you banned from Olympic competition. So don't don't conv't conclude illegality with banned. They're two very different things. Although the Olympic committee would like to make you think it's the same thing. Imagine that Aaron, you have to strip someone from the enhanced games because they're actually taking a substance you've banned. It's funny to think. Is anything banned from the enhanced games? Illegal stuff.

Nothing is banned. But athletes have to comply with their local and national laws. So for example, in Australia, you couldn't do heroin. Um, uh, in, uh, Saudi Arabia, you might not be able to use anabolic steroids, for example, but in the United Kingdom and Portugal and Italy, they would be allowed. That's interesting. Isn't it? It is fascinating.

And I saw a wild stat. I was watching an interview, Aaron, with you yesterday, and there was a stat that you said that 44% of Olympians have come out saying that they did dope, that they were on these banned substances, and that's just the ones that we know about. So is the trade-off of this for people that aren't happy, because a lot of people are saying,

this could ruin sport, how could they do this? Is the trade-off off everyone's cheating, let's just give cheating in inverted commas, let's just give those people who are cheating or doping a place to do it safely. Yeah, and it's even more important than that, because the same compounds that allow athletes to run faster or jump higher will allow all of us to live longer, healthier, and happier lives. Like look at Lance Armstrong. You know, the guy was dying of cancer. Then he won seven Tour de France's.

Why? Because he was using EPO. And if we were able to use EPO back then, it would be the ozempic of this, of the era. Right. You know, it would have been a wonder drug that every middle-aged man would be taking. And so performance medicine is really crucially important to making us a better, stronger and faster human population. This isn't just about sport.

This is about humanity writ large. Some of the people I've seen who've come out against the enhanced games have talked about lifelong effects and that there hasn't been enough studies, longitude, like longitudinal studies that have done 20, 30 years down the track to safely say what this exposure at this level would do. What, what do you say back to that? Is that true? I would say that they actually haven't read the science. So, you know, uh, let's not base this on personal anecdotes,

but let's base this on scientific evidence and the synthesis of testosterone, for example, was awarded the 1939 Nobel Prize. The major compounds that we're talking about, like synthetic growth hormones like testosterone that James used, or anabolic steroids, or EPO, have all been around for nearly 100 years. They have very known drug on drug interactions and toxicologies. And ultimately, nearly two and a half percent of men in the United States are present users of testosterone. Six percent of men in the United Kingdom have used anabolic steroids at some point in their life. And there isn't a population wide epidemic here, right? You know, there isn't, you know, strings of bodybuilders and power lifters showing up to the ER or showing long-term complications.

So the epidemiological evidence is actually very supportive of us. So with things like testosterone, I've never taken it with my understanding. I do know people who have taken it and they preach it. They'll absolutely love it. And I know lots of people even in local gyms just taking it to look and feel good.

I'm fascinated by it, particularly as you do get older and the body doesn't back up as well and you get a bit sore in the morning, it's hard to train, etc. With something like testosterone though, is it like your body will then stop producing a certain amount because you ultimately, the endogenous production of testosterone can be surmounted by synthetic production of testosterone, but it's only a temporary effect. These interactions are very well known. And according to our research, 85% of men in the United States want to use performance enhancements if they were doctor prescribed and used by champion athletes.

And I would note a comparison in cosmetic enhancement. We feel it's a very normal thing in our society for people and women in particular to become cosmetically enhanced. These are non-therapeutic procedures. There's risk associated with them, but you know, breast augmentation or botox is something that you can get anywhere.

So why don't we have the opportunity to use performance medicine in the same way? Is there an argument around children, Aaron? Are you worried about having this conversation with youth who might see, let's for example, say a father does it, who's tried to be an Olympian and always fallen short, starts taking the performance enhancing drugs, can enter the enhanced games. His 14 year old son who hasn't actually tested his body starting straight away on performance enhancement drugs. Do you feel the ethical pull when we come, when we talk about children? Yeah, so let's talk about MotoGP.

So motorcycle racing is extremely dangerous. Riding a motorcycle on the streets is extremely dangerous. 237 times more likely to die driving a motorcycle than driving a car on a per-kilometer basis. Yet we don't view that as somehow sitting as a bad example to children. Many things in our society are age regulated, alcohol driving a car, for example. Yet what are the largest sponsors of sport in Australia?

Betting and alcohol companies, right? To age gated industries. So performance medicine should be age gated in the same way. Okay. So the sports you've got going, you've got track, you've got gymnastics, swimming, and some combat sports like boxing's in there, I believe MMA and a few things like that. How will this work? So next year we have the Enhanced Games in Las Vegas. Is it going to be like an Olympics where it's one week and every day it's televised and we can sort of watch it and you'll even see the athletes when they're taking these supplements or will it just be the races? No, it will be a whole journey of education. Okay.

So that everyone understands what is necessary and what the scientific and medical procedures are. And actually you can go onto YouTube right now and look up the Enhanced Games documentary about James Magnuson and Christian Colonna's attempt to break the 50 freestyle world record. There's a great one hour documentary that really outlines all of the trials and tribulations, right? Because it's not straightforward to break a world record. And you know, we really want to educate the public on the promise of science and of medicine. And beyond that, the prize money. Yes, yes.

At the top of this, Aaron, you talked about these Olympians who train for their whole lives. They get one shot every four years and might only walk away with, you know, quite meagre salary, possibly not enough to support themselves, let alone a family. Whereas what are you offering? We're offering a million dollars to break the significant world records, half a million dollars in prize money in every event, uh, plus appearance fees. So, um, you know, we awarded a million dollars to Christian Coloma for breaking

the 50 freestyle world record. That's 10 times more than any other swimming prize ever awarded. Um, and Christian, you know, who was one of the best swimmers in history, um, in total in his entire 10 year career, only earned $200,000. So he, you know, he was in tears. He said, Aaron, you're giving me five lifetimes of pay for a 20 second swim. Well, and so every, you're planning to do these games every year until they'd have appearance fees and those fees every year?

Yes, every year. And the way we can pay for it is that unlike the Olympics, we don't build dozens of stadiums and throw them away after two weeks. The Olympics are one of the most wasteful exercises in human history. Brisbane is going through that right now. It was promised at zero net cost to the taxpayer. They've already flushed, I think, $7 billion of public money into it. And it's a huge waste. And I think there's a better way to do it rather than moving cities And it's a huge waste. And I think there's a better way to do it rather than moving cities every year where we pick Las Vegas as our semi-permanent host city. Okay.

Did you approach sponsors or did people come to you once they started gaining traction on a global scale? People came to me and I'm very proud that some of the biggest venture capitalists in the world, Peter Thiel, Christian Engelmeier, Balaji Srinivasan, the Trump family are all investors of ours, right? Because they believe in the future. They know what it takes to change the world. And will you, will this be sort of broadcast on free to air? Are you, are you imagining an online YouTube sort of set up or you haven't got that far yet?

We're intent on making this available and accessible to everyone because we want to educate the world on our scientific mission. So it will be available on all the major streaming platforms. We don't want it paywalled or hard to access. We want to make it accessible to everyone. Beyond the million dollar prize, so now I just want to make comparisons to the Olympics because it's just what we've grown up. The elite standard of competition, right?

Do they get a medal? Well, what's your ceremony at the end where that old bloke comes out and awkwardly puts the medal over the winner? What will the enhanced games be? We're hoping for something more creative. I take inspiration from the Masters Golf Tournament. They got a cool green jacket. I love the Super Bowl ring. Yeah, I want something that our athletes can wear every

day. An Olympic medal is kind of weird. You wear it just at the games, but I want something that our athletes can take every day and wear with pride to show that they're the best in the world. I think that's a really important point to underline, which is that the Olympics were the ultimate avenue of human competition. But now we have the preeminent world record in swimming. We only need to break the world record in, in, on the hundred meter in the track, the mile and the marathon. And then I think we're the ultimate avenue of human competition. And who's going to want to watch the old slow Olympics when you can watch the fast modern enhanced games. Well, it's that movie with Ewan McGregor and it's like, he's the human and

everyone's enhanced, but then he races the enhanced guy. Can you get Usain Bolt to race your guy? Yeah, can you get that? And we can do the side by side. The comparisons. Yes. Well, I actually would like to see someone like Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps or Ian Thorpe come back 20 years later and break their own records.

Oh, interesting. Right. Cause that, that, that will say so much more about what it means to be enhanced and who's going to want to be a human 1.0 when human 2.0 exists. So would you say this could either destroy the Olympics or can they both live in the same sort of ecosystem where the Olympics is the non enhanced games and that's the best of the best non-enhanced and then yours aims to be the fastest the best in the enhanced games? I don't think they can

actually coexist because as humans we only want to watch the very best. No one watches minor league ball, everyone watches major league ball. No one watches F2. Everyone watches F1. And so if we're the fastest competition, the viewers, sponsors, the broadcasters will all gravitate towards us. And the Olympics will become like the Commonwealth Games. It'll be this niche kind of interesting thing that was important in the past, but is just too expensive to put on. And we know this, you know, with Premier Andrews in Victoria, the Commonwealth Games don't exist anymore just because they were not a very good business model. Yeah. Now, on the Olympics, I mean, you're saying they are very wasteful

and Brisbane is going through that now and there's all sorts of issues. They are trying to reuse stadiums and now they're going to have to make another one, blah, blah, blah. I understand how much it costs, but the one thing that the Olympics does do well for cities is the tourism and the eyeballs it puts on that city, albeit only for a couple of weeks or a month or so. If the games are only in Vegas, would you say, because Vegas doesn't need help tourism wise, would you say that's one area you're losing out or would you look at if it does get big enough moving it city to city if capable? Yeah. So we've had a lot of interest from other cities of the world, particularly in

the Middle East, who are very interested in hosting us. However, the economics that are presented for hosting the Olympic Games aren't actually true. You only need to look at Athens 2004 that bankrupted the country of Greece and effectively started the 2008 financial crisis. Rio 2016, it's actually, you know, when Sydney bid to host the Olympics for the 2000 games, there were nearly 20 cities in there running to host and now there are virtually none. Yeah. And that's why Brisbane, you know, just not even.

That's why Brisbane got it. Brisbane got it. Like Brisbane got it without anyone wanting it. Brisbane got it without anyone wanting it. No one else wanted it. Interesting. Yeah, I'm just so fascinated. I'm so, because I'm so intrigued by this and I will watch it. Do not get me wrong, I'll watch it.

But the part of you still can't sort of comprehend it. Yeah. When you've got all these antidoping and anti, and I probably am doing that, Aaron, sort of comprehend it. Yeah. When you've got all these antidoping and anti, and I probably am doing that, Aaron, blurring the line of what's legal, criminally, and what's legal in a sporting world. And as someone who's on the periphery of the sporting world

as these, I've blurred those two. It feels so hard to comprehend. And you've obviously been working on this for so long, Aaron, you're like laying out all the facts so elegantly, but it is hard to wrap your head around, isn't it? For something we've been told for so long, Aaron, you're like laying out all the facts so elegantly, but it is hard to wrap your head around, isn't it? For something we've been told for so long, we'll strip your reputation, get your gold medal taken off you, you'll be slammed in the media, you're not a role model anymore. Now you're saying we're building a million dollar competition

around all those things. It is, it is hard. It's a hard pill to swallow. Pardon the pun. Yeah. But just think about Airbnb, right? We take Airbnb to be such a sort of common thing these days. We don't even question it. Imagine the concept just 10, maybe 15 years ago, you said, instead of staying in a hotel, you're going to stay in a stranger's house. I know, but I'm not putting that stranger's stuff in my blood. Yeah, yeah. It's not injecting yourself with it. It came pretty close. I appreciate from a business understanding. It came pretty close.

I appreciate from a business understanding. Yeah, it's hard to grapple with. All great visions of the future are a little bit challenging at the start. And Uber, the same thing. You would get into a stranger's car instead of taking a safe, legal taxicab. Remember, Uber was illegal practically everywhere in the world for its first few years of operation. So then if we go to athletes you're going to target right? Do you approach athletes and say hey this is happening next year like let's go right to the

Olympics let's look at the 100 meter winner the American his name's lost me right now. Noah Lyles. Noah Lyles yeah Noah do you look at Noah and go, hey, come over or is he approaching you? Because you'd need some big ticket names in order to sort of start this up. Well, you know, we do have the 50 freestyle world record now, the most important record in swimming. And it's really, the only question is, you know, the hundred meter world record. Noah, for example, ran a very quick time in Paris, but he's nowhere near the same Boltz world record. You couldn't even, ran a very quick time in Paris, but he's nowhere near Usain Bolt's world

record. You couldn't even remember his name, right? He's not even in the same realm of fame as Usain Bolt. So what if he could enhance, break, Usain Bolt's world record? And I would note of the top 10 hundred meter times ever, eight of them have had a doping violation attached to them. So effectively, eight of them have had a doping violation attached to them. So effectively, every 100 meter champion bar is same bold has been doping. What's been the split of interest from women, Aaron? Has it been mainly men? I imagine.

Oh, it's interesting. So younger men are very interested in what we are doing, but older women are fascinated by our endeavor because they see, you know, maybe getting close to menopause, having gone through aging challenges in a different way. And hormone replacement therapy is much more normal among women than it is among men. So the demographics are important to look at. And then sports like running, swimming, races, no one's getting physically harmed when you're doing it.

But then sports like MMA and boxing, where people are enhancing, I know they're all enhancing, but then is there another level of- Oh, damage that could be done? Correct, yeah. If you've got a supercharged kick, could you kill me? And I know, yeah, who else? But I know your enhance is different to mine, but could that could that then literally get in the ring and actually kill someone with that level of damage that they can inflict? Well, I would say that in the first year of the enhanced games were not including combat sports that's aimed to be included in future years. Okay. But I would note that UFC for the first decade of its operations did not have any drug testing. It was only until it was acquired by, by IMG that it was, that drug testing began,

because it was, the goal was to find the ultimate fighter. No, no rules, no weight classes, no drug testing. Find the best fighter of all time. Okay. All right. Well, there you go. Well, it's fascinating. Dr. Aaron D'Souza, president of the Enhance Games. This is happening next year in Vegas. I'm intrigued to see it all unfold and what athletes you get across as well. Totally. And as you said, those names that potentially come across to break their own records, maybe someone who comes out of retirement, or this next generation of athletes.

They'd be banned from the Olympics, right? If they go, if they do this and they're a current Olympian, they're not allowed to then go back to the Olympics? In fact, not. banned from the Olympics, right? If they go, if they do this and they're a current Olympian, they're not allowed to then go back to the Olympics? In fact, not. So an athlete could retire from Olympic competition, compete in the enhanced games, and then go back into Olympic competition. However, I would also note that natural athletes are very welcome to come and compete. I think it would make for great television if a natural athlete said, Hey, I can beat all these enhanced guys, just like in the, uh, in the Gregor movie, Katika.

Katika, that's the one. Thank you. That would have bugged me the whole time. So do you not compete under your country's flag, Aaron? Do you compete under a natural flag or an enhanced flag? You know, that don't play, that don't play your answer. If you win, you get to pick a song. Well, I know we're on radio, but you can see I'm wearing an enhanced jumper. Yes, the E with the plus. That'll be the fan. Oh, that's very good. However, we believe that nationalism is a bit of a dying concept.

If you're walking down certain streets in Melbourne or Sydney, I don't think you can wear an Australian flag in the same way you could 20 years ago. You know, here in New York city, uh, wearing an American flag would make you very Republican. Uh, so our aim is to be more like tennis. So instead of team USA and big letters, it's, you know, sort of Novak Djokovic of Serbia, small flag. I see. There you go.

Okay. You've just taken every concept. How can we flip that? How can we flip that? How can we change it? I'm intrigued to see where it runs. Yeah. Sorry, one more question before we let you go. Have you tried any of the stuff that your athletes are on? every concept, how can we flip that? How can we flip that? How can we change it? I'm intrigued to see where it runs. Yeah.

Sorry, one more question before we let you go, have you tried any of the stuff that your athletes are on? Like have you sampled it or are you doing it yourself? Yeah, so I've used a great many substances and procedures that are on the water ban list. I always say, you know, I don't give clinical advice, go talk to your own doctor, but just one example I would give is, you know,

I often suffer from jet lag and I would get an IV drip, intravenous saline injection. And I get a stunt at Harrods in London, you know, the fancy department store. So buy a blazer and get an IV drip. Yeah, why not? Exactly. Yeah. And I was talking to one of my medical commissioners and he said, oh, that's actually a banned procedure under the World Anti-Doping Code, because it's used to mask the use of performance enhancement.

So even something that's so simple and commonplace that you can get it done at the Herod's can get you banned from the Olympic competition. That's banned and then it's banned, isn't it? Yeah. It's different levels't it? Yeah. There's different levels of it. And like a former rugby team sport now moving forward probably opens up more questions about

the level everyone does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, there's so much to it. But Aaron, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. It really, really interesting. We could keep you on for another half an hour, but you've probably got another 15 interviews lined up today.

I do. Thank you very much for having me on the show. Appreciate it, Aaron. Thanks, mate, good luck with it all. Bye bye.