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Ireland's unwanted Connection to the Enhanced Games - The Sport for Business Daily
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We examine Shane Ryan’s move toward the Enhanced Games and the strong backlash from Irish sport, exploring what this means for fairness, health, and the future of clean competition. We weigh the promise of transparency against the risks, legal hurdles, and the meaning of sport itself.
• Ryan’s announcement and Las Vegas timeline
• Immediate condemnations from Sport Ireland, Swim Ireland, and OFI
• WADA’s warning on health risk and youth influence
• The harm-reduction argument set against fairness and safety
• Governance fallout and career consequences for athletes
• The ethics of enhancement versus the level playing field
• Legal, insurance, and institutional barriers to the Enhanced Games
• Distinguishing Ryan’s clean past from his new direction
• Key questions about transparency, prohibition, and athlete welfare
• Brief roundup of other Sport for Business stories
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Hello and welcome to the Sport for Business Daily on Tuesday, October the 14th. I'm your host, Rob Hartnett, and today we are looking controversially into the connection that Irish swimming now has with the Enhanced Games due to take place in Las Vegas next year. The Sport for Business Daily is an audio blast of the content which we produce every day on sportforbusiness.com. If you want to find out more, please do visit us at the website or sign up, subscribe, comment, and share wherever you get your podcasts from. The Pennsylvania-born swimmer represented Ireland at three Olympic Games and won bronze at the World Short Course Championships. The 30-year-old is the first Irish athlete to announce his participation in the Enhanced Games. They are set to debut in Las Vegas in May 2026, positioning themselves as a revolutionary alternative to the Olympics, one that eliminates restrictions imposed by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Its founders argue it's about freedom, innovation, and, as they say, pushing human limits. But in the world of sport, where the phrase clean competition is sacred, it has been met with near universal condemnation. We are disappointed that any Irish high performance athlete, past or present, would support an event which is so at odds with our values, said a strongly worded statement issued last night by Sport Ireland. It is the absolute antithesis of our work on behalf of the clean athlete. We condemn everything that the enhanced games stand for. Performance-enhancing drugs aren't just banned because they give athletes an unfair advantage. Many are forbidden because they can seriously harm athletes' health. Some of these substances can cause severe, long-lasting medical problems. In extreme cases, athletes have died from using these dangerous drugs. At Sport Ireland, we remain committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in sport. We are dedicated to exercising the highest duty of care towards our athletes and to safeguarding the integrity of sport. We will continue to uphold the values of clean sport and are opposed to the enhanced games concept, continued the statement. Swim Ireland, which oversaw Ryan's international career, confirmed it will not provide funding or services related to his new venture, while the Olympic Federation of Ireland called the decision against our core clean sport values, echoing the International Olympic Committee's stance that the Enhanced Games represents a betrayal of everything we stand for. Globally, the Enhanced Games have provoked similar outrage. Wada described it as dangerous and irresponsible, warning that normalizing doping, even under supposed medical supervision, exposes athletes to serious health risks and sets a perilous precedent for younger generations. The Enhanced Games proposes a world where athletes can legally enhance themselves to achieve peak performance, provided they disclose their methods and do so under the guidance of medical staff. Proponents frame it as harm reduction, arguing that if athletes are already doping in secret, then why not make it transparent and safe? But on the other side of the argument, it is seen as a spectacle that commodifies human biology and discards decades of progress towards fairness and safety. It is about far more than the chemistry behind the enhancement of performance. It's about the meaning of sport itself. Once you take away the level playing field, you're no longer testing human performance, you're testing pharmaceuticals. While the level playing field is also altered by financial investment and the best coaching, none of those other elements risk the health and life of the athlete, which is where this becomes so much darker. From a governance standpoint, Ryan's move certainly does carry consequences for himself. As a water-aligned federation, World Aquatics may bar any athlete who competes in the enhanced games from future sanctioned events that would effectively close the door on Ryan returning to mainstream competition or taking up any official coaching roles. There are personal risks too. Even with, as they say, medical supervision, the long-term effects of sustained performance-enhanced drug use are well documented, from hormonal disruption to cardiovascular strain. For now, Ryan appears undeterred. While he has not spoken publicly in depth about the decision, those close to him suggest a mix of curiosity and conviction, a desire to stay involved in sport and to test the boundaries of human performance. We must state that Ryan has never tested positive for any banned substance and competed throughout his Irish career under strict water regulations. There is no evidence or suggestion that he ever used performance-enhancing drugs while representing Ireland. However, his new association inevitably creates a perception challenge, one that Sport Ireland and Swim Ireland have been quick to call out. Both organisations have drawn a clear line between his past as a clean Olympian and his post-retirement decision to enter a doping permissive event, emphasizing that his current activities fall entirely outside Ireland's high performance system. The Enhanced Games may still fail before it begins. It faces legal scrutiny over drug laws, insurance hurdles, and widespread institutional opposition. But its very existence forces sport to confront uncomfortable questions. If doping continues in secret, is transparency a lesser evil? Is prohibition sustainable in the long term? And what happens when athletes like Shane Ryan decide that the system no longer serves them? Once the anger subsides over Ryan's decision, care still needs to be taken over how these games, which look abhorrent right now, are continued to be treated as they pick up momentum. Elsewhere on Sport for Business this morning, we are writing about a charitable donation coming out of Boyle Sports World Grand Prix Dance Tournament. All you need to know about the 2025 Irish Life Dublin Marathon, Hisscox being named as title partners of the Paddle Irish Open, and the announcement of Playing for the Planet, a major new event on sustainable sport, which we are putting on in connection with the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport. Have a great day, and we'll see you back here again tomorrow.
