Max McCusker on joining the Enhanced Games: "Everyone thinks sport’s super clean... It’s just not like that, unfortunately"

On paper, the Enhanced Games sounds like something plucked straight out of a dystopian film plot: a company, bankrolled by billionaires, handpicking elite athletes to battle it out in Las Vegas for massive prize money – while openly under the influence of performance-enhancing substances, in an effort to transform ‘human potential into superhumanity’.

Described as the first event of its kind in the world, the competition doesn’t follow the rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). As such, participants are allowed to use substances that are usually banned in elite sports, across events in swimming, track & field, and weightlifting. As part of Enhanced’s business model, the events will serve as a way of promoting the company’s own line of “performance medicine products” – including “personalised testosterone treatments” – to the US public.

Unsurprisingly, the Enhanced Games – which is set to hold its inaugural competition on May 24, at a purpose-built complex at Resorts World Las Vegas – has been met with intense backlash from international sporting bodies. WADA has described it as an event that “risks athletes’ health by encouraging them to take powerful, performance-enhancing drugs without therapeutic need.”

“Over the years, there have been many examples of athletes suffering serious long-term side-effects from their use of prohibited substances and methods,” the organisation has also stated. “Some have died.”

In June 2025, meanwhile, World Aquatics became the first international federation to ban anyone competing in or involved in the Enhanced Games from its events.

But all of the surrounding controversy hasn’t stopped the Enhanced Games from attracting a multitude of elite athletes for its inaugural event, including two Irish Olympians: Shane Ryan and Max McCusker.

McCusker, who competed in the 4x100m medley relay at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, and holds the Irish record for the 100m butterfly, tells me that getting involved with Enhanced was “a no-brainer”.

3 August 2024; Max McCusker of Team Ireland in action during the men's 4 x 100m medley relay at the Paris La Défense Arena during the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France. Photo: Ian MacNicol/Sportsfile

“I was pretty much broke, swimming for Ireland,” the 26-year-old says. “The amount that I made over my career is embarrassing. I had been doing it for the childhood dream: to make the Olympics and represent Ireland on the international stage. But there’s only so long you can do that before you need to make a living. That’s why I went away from the sport for a year, to work in a corporate job.

“People think Olympic athletes get paid loads of money,” he continues. “But you could be an Olympic athlete, making world finals or world semi-finals, and the fastest in your discipline that Ireland has seen – and make no money. I’ve already made more money than I did my whole career swimming, and I haven’t even been on this team very long.”

Each individual Enhanced Games event carries a total prize purse of $500,000, with $250,000 awarded for first place. The company – which has been financially backed by the likes of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital –  also claims to offer appearance fees, and bonuses for breaking records. McCusker sees it as an opportunity to compete in the sport he loves, “to an elite level, in something that’s never been done before – and get paid a fair wage for it.”

As for the use of performance-enhanced substances to achieve that level of “superhumanity”, he also feels the need to clear up some misconceptions.

“Everyone just thinks it’s a load of athletes doing as much drugs as possible – as if we’re bodybuilders in the ‘70s, doing steroids in the changing rooms,” he remarks. “It’s not like that.”

According to its website, the Enhanced Games does “not endorse the indiscriminate use of restricted substances”, and instead advocates for “the safe, responsible, and clinically supervised use of performance enhancements”, overseen by both an independent medical commission and an independent scientific commission.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham, however, have argued that claiming you can take some of these banned drugs safely is “incorrect and misleading”, particularly when it comes to the “potentially slow onset and long-term effects”.

“We’re going to be given a recommended dosage, or recommended protocol, based on our physiology, and the type of races we’re doing, by experts in their field – leading doctors, with super close monitoring of our vitals,” McCusker says. “They’re seeing how we react to things, and how we feel about things. It’s a clinical trial, so it’s all tested.”

That emphasis on “scientific innovation” was a big draw for McCusker, he says.

“As an athlete, you want to see what you can get out of yourself,” he points out. “You want to push your body to your maximum potential. And with this, it’s like every single aspect can be enhanced.

“Also, it’s all completely our choice,” he adds. “They might suggest something, and I can be like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that.’ There’s full autonomy with what we want to do. I could compete completely unenhanced, if I wanted to.”

Would competing ‘unenhanced’ not put athletes at a massive disadvantage at these games?

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” he reflects. “I can’t comment on it yet, because we haven’t spoken to all the doctors, or had our major tests to understand our physiology. So none of us know what our protocol’s going to be.”

He also argues that thinking of “professional sport as a level playing field is just completely wrong.”

“People go, ‘Oh, it’s the Drug Olympics,’” he notes. “Maybe have a look at the Olympics – they’re not exactly clean!

“The more you get into sport, the more you can see these sorts of things,” he elaborates. “There’s so much out there that suggests that there’s athletes not competing clean, but they don’t all get caught.”

A major 2015 study found that between 14% and 39% of adult elite athletes had intentionally doped.

“Everyone thinks sport’s super clean, and they want to have this ideal view of what sport is,” McCusker says. “It’s just not like that, unfortunately. That’s my experience of it. And there’s this whole grey area in sport, with these things called TUEs [Therapeutic Use Exemptions]. These are helping people’s performance – things that some people are allowed to take, but other people aren’t.

“Now, for the first time ever, we’re actually on a level playing field. We’re all allowed to take whatever. People have been doing drugs forever, in the most unethical, unsafe, unclean ways. And now, because of the transparency [of the Enhanced Games], we can have leading doctors looking over us, giving us the best recommendations, based on us.”

At the time of our conversation, McCusker is training in Dubai, ahead of the main Enhanced training camp, which will take place in Abu Dhabi over the course of between 12 and 16 weeks. In the midst of all that, he’s enjoyed having “a familiar face” around, in the form of Shane Ryan – someone who’s gone from being his “main rival”, to a close friend he’s trained alongside, and been on relay teams with over the years.

 

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When Ryan announced that he was joining Enhanced back in October, two months before McCusker, both Sports Ireland and Swim Ireland released statements criticising his decision. Sports Ireland claimed that the event “sends an insidious message – especially to all young athletes.”

“Me and Shane, we’ve both gone through that field, of competing in professional sports, competing in World Championships, Europeans – junior level to senior level,” McCusker responds. “But this is something completely different.

“I don’t think it gives children or younger swimmers the message, ‘It’s alright to do drugs,’” he continues. “Because if you’re in professional sport, you’re going to get banned. And you’re not going to be as monitored as we are. We’re in our own completely different realm. So, for me, it’s chalk and cheese.”

When announcing his own involvement in the Enhanced Games in December, McCusker wrote on social media: “If you don’t get it, you weren’t meant to” – clearly anticipating that there would be mixed responses to his decision.

“Towards the start, when athletes were announcing, there was a lot more hate,” McCusker acknowledges. “But it seems that the narrative is changing a little bit. And I like to have a bit of fun with it, and maybe troll a little bit – it’s not all super serious all the time.

“But it is also true that people are going to have their opinions on it,” he adds. “People have always had their opinions on my swimming. But they weren’t there in the 5am mornings, since I was nine-years-old, doing those training sessions. My mentality was: ‘I’m telling my close family, and a couple of individuals who I think have the right to know that I’m making this change’ – and then I couldn’t really give a shit if anyone else had an opinion on it.”

 

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McCusker – who was born in Essex, but whose father’s family hail from Monaghan – also feels that his involvement in the Enhanced Games “doesn’t tarnish” all he previously accomplished as a swimmer.

“When I was 15, my dad was like, ‘I want you to swim for Ireland,’” he recalls. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, makes sense!’ My name’s Irish, and I look Irish. I know I don’t sound Irish!

“I get caught in that weird thing of ‘You’re not Irish’ – or, ‘You’re not English, because you swim for Ireland,’” he continues. “But I don’t care. It makes me super proud to say that I went to the Olympics for Ireland, with my family watching me, and having supported me over the years.

“And I don’t think this gets rid of that. They recognise my achievements in professional swimming – and now this is something different. I will always be an Irish Olympian.”