Tentatively Tasmanian

I’ve often wondered why, if athletes insist on trying new ways to make themselves stronger and faster and better by using banned drugs and other substances, we don’t just create an Alternative Olympics that allows any form of performance enhancing pills and anyone to enter?

If people are competitive and crazy enough to risk their health and life span by injecting, inhaling, eating, sniffing, buttering and buffering themselves to earn that extra centimetre or shave off that extra second, why not let them?

There’s no doubt it would be extremely entertaining for those watching from the stands or at home on television, as long as annoying things like strokes, heart attacks, seizures or death doesn’t occur. What size shoulders would the swimmer have when sinister serums are added?

Unlawful liniments in the long jump?
Shotput serums?
A pilled-up pentathlon?
Adderal-enhanced athletics?
Tablets for track and field?
Heroin hockey?
Cocaine curling?
Marathon on mushrooms?
Benzo basketball?
Fentanyl fencing?
LSD luge?
Ketamine karate?

Presumably sponsored by drug companies and recovery centres, with doctors and ambulances waiting on the sidelines.

All athletes could still be subjected to a urine test immediately after they win a medal and have it taken to a world-class laboratory. You never know, there could be a future cure for cancer in those pots of opiate-infested urine.

Wouldn’t you know it, but a man has already come up with this idea. No, he’s not from Florida, he’s an Australian.

Aaron D’Souza is his name, but I’m hoping that he’s NOT the guy working at the hospital in Launceston. A google check says that the real Aaron is definitely an Aussie but based in London. He calls himself the President of the ‘Enhanced Games.’

His website is a rather lurid place to visit, no doubt written by someone under the influence of something. Loudly insisting that his heart is in the right place, good ‘ol Aaron proclaims, “Olympians Are Not Paid Enough for What They Do. Despite training for years, dedicating their lives and their bodies to the Olympic mission, most Olympians are not given a salary.

“Instead, they are driven into debt. The IOC doesn’t provide monetary rewards to Olympic medalists; the prize money comes – if at all – from the Olympian’s country. American Olympians aren’t even provided with a salary. Comparatively, the Wimbledon tennis competition offers millions to each singles tournament winner, with the athletes who lose in the first round taking home double the amount of prize money that gold-medal-winning US Olympians receive.”

He’s got a point. The poor sod who trains for four years just to throw a javelin whilst holding down a day job and be forgotten the moment he or she steps off the track does deserve to be paid something for their hard work. We all become armchair experts sitting at home stuffing our faces with Tim Tams and tut when the high jumper (who really could be high if Aaron has his way), knocks the bar off and wince when a gymnast lands ghoolies-first onto the balance beam in a humiliating puff of chalk dust.

But what sort of money or fame would the medicated competitor gain from participating? El Presidente has left that question unanswered.

However, it’s not just the athletes’ financial security that concerns our Aaron. He says that the real Olympic games waste taxpayer’s money spending billions constructing arenas, villages, stadiums, media centres and tourism spots, only for everyone to bugger off after the fortnight and leave the host country with a stack of hastily-built ovals and running tracks left to fall into ruin. Instead, he proposes using the same host city over and over again. I guess if the participants and their coaching teams are always on drugs, they won’t notice.

To be fair, he’s starting off modestly, proposing the use of an existing university sports stadium to avoid building new infrastructure. OK, so that will involve significantly smaller crowds, but he might be able to make it up with television and broadcasting rights.

He’s not afraid to wade into the political arena either. “Because the Enhanced Games are for-profit, we are responsible to our shareholders – and are incentivized to run efficiently and treat our athletes – the backbone of our movement – properly. The Olympics, however, is a not-for-profit run by Swiss aristocrats. Bribery, corruption, and exploitation are ingrained in Olympic culture – with each Olympic Games revealing another instance of backroom bids and palm greasing. The Olympics props up dictators like Xi Jinping and Putin, legitimizing their authority in the wake of human rights abuses, such as the genocide of the Uyghur population, and the invasion of Ukraine. The Olympics is set on becoming chummy with dictators and seeks to drive Western democracies into debt. It is high time for this behavior to be called out – and canceled.”

Oh lordy, he just had to try and be trendy and put the word ‘canceled’ in, didn’t he?

Tragic attempt at being hip with the kids in the streets notwithstanding, he might have a point. I’ve often queried just what the International Olympic Federation, based in Lausanne Switzerland, does with all their cash, despite proclaiming a ‘non-profit’ status. Surely those little wooden podiums and medals don’t add up to billions?

Returning to the idea of coked-up competitors, Aaron the (drug) baron describes them as ‘brave,’ with the ability to set new world records. He thinks it’s terribly unfair for these pioneering pill-poppers to have their medals snatched away and ‘names dragged through the mud’ just over a pesky pee test result.

But he’s not into discrimination, no sirree bob. “We want natural and we welcome enhanced athletes, and I hope that the bold, natural athlete shows up to the games and says, ‘Hey guys I’m natural, I’m still WADA compliant and I’m going to beat all you guys’ which is going to be great television.”

Perhaps weightlifting on weed might not work…..