Communityinterview

CYCLING’S DARK ERA IS BACK. IS IT BROKEN FOR GOOD?

Name: Cycling’s Dark Era Is Back. Is It Broken for Good?
Uploaded: 2025-05-09
Duration: 44 min 43 s
Description: Aaron Dza, president of the Enhanced Games, makes the case for a sporting future where performance-enhancing drugs aren't banned—they're the whole point.

with Aron D

44:43·9 May 2025

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TOPICS

CYCLING NUTRITION

Aaron Dza, president of the Enhanced Games, makes the case for a sporting future where performance-enhancing drugs aren't banned—they're the whole point. We dig into the philosophy of fairness in sport, whether consent can truly exist in a monopoly system, and what happens to human competition when we stop pretending enhancement isn't already everywhere.

Key Takeaways

Fairness in sport is defined by following the rule set—not by universal moral law. Just as amateurism was once considered essential to sport's integrity before being eliminated entirely, the ban on enhancement will eventually shift.
Current anti-doping systems lack the calibration data they need because elite athletes who use banned substances won't openly share their protocols—making testing fundamentally ineffective.
The Olympics faces an economic crisis: elite runners and swimmers earn ~$30K/year while football and basketball players earn millions. The Enhanced Games offers $1M for world records, making the choice obvious.
Clinical supervision and comprehensive health monitoring—not bans—are the actual way to keep athletes safe. The IOC prioritizes fairness over athlete welfare, which is why they won't invest in proper medical oversight.
A protected class argument for children falls apart when McDonald's and Coca-Cola are Olympic sponsors with documented public health damage exceeding that of anabolic steroids under medical supervision.
The real innovation wave won't stop at pharmaceuticals—it'll move to neural interfaces, genetic engineering, and cybernetics. Sport is the only field of human endeavor with a hard technological cap.

Expert Quotes

"If Lance Armstrong went out there and stood on the Champs-Élysées under the Arc de Triomphe and said 'I'm back here on the podium as the greatest cyclist in the world thanks to EPO,' it would have been the Olympic moment of the early 2000s."

"The IOC system is designed for the benefit of bureaucrats, not athletes. They're the ones who lose out from what we're doing."

"Society is always better off through technology, but there are always individual actors who lose out. Being open, transparent, and honest about usage is really important."

KEY QUOTES

“44% of elite athletes admit to using ban substances and only 1% get caught right That means 43% of them are lying”
Aron D — President of the Enhanced Games

“I'm paying a million dollars for a world record and the Olympics pay nothing right So there's going to be a competitive market tension there”
Aron D — President of the Enhanced Games

“Professor David Nod Imperial College London 2012 publishes a landmark survey in the Lancet right And it's the all cause risk associated with both recreational and performance drugs Highest risk alcohol number two heroin And at the bottom end of the spectrum anabolic steroids self-administered without clinical supervision”
Aron D — President of the Enhanced Games

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT8 SECTIONS

Origins of the Enhanced Games

Imagine a world where athletes don't hide their drug use They celebrate it Where performance-enhancing drugs aren't banned they're the point Today we're going to sit down with the man trying to make that vision a reality Aaron Dza president of the Enhanced Games a sporting organization where there's no drug testing and no limits Is this the future of sport or a dystopian nightmare or the most brutally honest competition the world has ever seen Get ready This is a conversation you do not want to miss It's Aaron Dza Dr Dza welcome to the Roadman podcast Thanks for having me on the show I'm really excited for this conversation Uh let's start by giving me a little bit of context to the Genesis moment When was the seed first planted for the enhanced games in your mind Well it really grew over nearly 20 years So when I was an undergraduate at Oxford University I wrote a paper by Professor Julian Savescu a prominent bioethsist who argued for the inclusion of performance-enhancing drugs at the Olympic Games I didn't really rate that very highly at the time Uh but then uh in in Christmas 2023 I was in a gym in Miami and I overheard some like bodybuilder types talking about whether they were natural or enhanced or natty or not And I thought this was a very very I had never heard this term and I think I probably looked it up on Urban Dictionary natty Um and then you know obviously my algorithms bombarded me on Instagram and Tik Tok and I saw more and more influencers being very open and honest about being enhanced Um and then I thought I think there's something really in this Uh and at the same time you know many of my friends who are multi-billionaires um take performance enhancements OMIC was rising and I thought there's something really in this And so Christmas 2023 uh I said I'm going to do what I do on my favorite kind of holiday which is I rent a beautiful house on the beach and I take my laptop and I write the business plan for a new company or new philanthropic initiative that I want to pursue and that year I did uh the enhanced games It's interesting because it's taken one of sport's longest held taboos and it's kind of turned it on its head and I'm excited to dive into that Maybe before we do just to ground a couple of terms How do you define fairness in sport That's a great question Fairness is following a defined rule set Yeah I think I think as simple as that I'm a lawyer right Uh by training and um you know uh what is legal right What is legal and what is just are two very different concepts One is a concept in law and one is a concept in morality and in philosophy And so I would say fairness in sport is abiding by the rule set um set by uh the governing body Right If you're going to participate in a sporting competition uh you are agreeing to abide by the rule set by the governing body Um there there's an interesting area of law which I'm sure you're familiar but possibly uh listeners aren't It arose post world war when they tried German senior command and they said to them like you're you know you're charged with mass killing of thousands of Jewish people How do you respond to this And the response was well I followed the law So from that arose a precedent that some things are so obvious that they should be above the law There's a hierarchy in law where God made law stands above legislative law Could you straw man the argument that even if performance-enhancing drugs are allowed in sport it's so obvious that they shouldn't be So that's actually a really interesting uh analogy that you use because I in fact wrote my PhD thesis on John Lo and the concept of natural law applying it in fact to the case of intellectual property law not to the question of sport Uh so yes so there is this question of like are there principles um that are universal in god-given law that are immutable and I would say in sport uh this abstraction is is not correct because if we were having this conversation 50 years ago it would have been about amateurism in sport and so from 1896 until 1992 the core touchstone of sport was that um being paid was ungentlemanly it was immoral it was somehow polluting the integrity of sport And the idea of the spirit of sport which is I think the natural law touchstone which you're drawing upon actually um relates to that concept of amateurism And now today amateurism doesn't even exist right It's been completely eliminated from from the lexicon Um and I think the same is going to be true of of of this notion of enhancement So we will get into stuff that's more user friendly for listeners but since we're on the the legal debate how do you how do you think about consent in this Because like is incent fully like so my masters is on the world anti-doping code and its conflict with natural law rights and one

Consent, Monopoly, and Upgrading Mankind

Of the criticisms of the world anti-doping code is if you're asking certain ethnicities to uh to comply with world anti-doping code measures it's potentially in violation of maybe their religious beliefs around bodily integrity or their constitutional uh beliefs to bodily integrity So yes they have to consent because they can't participate in the sport without that consent But is it really a full free and informed consent and I'd extend that argument to this is it really a full free and informed consent if you can't participate without taking enhancement So um I don't believe that free consent can be procured in a monopoly situation Right So the problem about the world anti-doping code today is that um effectively you cannot participate in elite sport without being in the water IOC system Yeah Right Um and so from a moral perspective uh I think choice maximization is a good thing uh and I think that's a and I think we can take that as an axiomatic principle that to have two choices it's better to have only one choice and so I believe giving athletes the choice to participate in an enhanced system on one side and a natural system on the other is more morally justifiable than uh a monopoly exercise of power You're challenging an entire value system here What's the what's the big vision Is it about athletic performance Is it about scientific freedom Is it a political resistance Is it a little bit of everything It's fundamentally about upgrading mankind Uh how can we um accelerate human progress So the core ethos of the Olympic world is to remind uh humanity about its past ancient Greek virtues the Corinthian ethics Um that is the central uh modus operandi of the International Olympic Committee We are actually the polar opposite We're about taking the world today and pulling it into the future Uh and and athletes and spectators can can choose Do they want to participate in the sporting world based on the past or one that is based on the future Which category do we put Lance Armstrong in Well Lance Armstrong to go back to your initial question wanted to believe in a world of the future while being stuck in a monopoly system of the past right And um you know I am a an amateur athlete but certainly not an elite one Um and but I am a uh a a philosopher a business person and uh someone who likes to drive cultural change And that's uh you know the unique skill set that I brought to this equation You know Lance could have broken out of the tour to France system and said you know what we're going to create the enhanced uh tour right he had the fame he had the power he had the money to do it and everyone was using EPO at the time Yeah I think that's more about getting an edge rather than it is about the philosophical pursuit of see exploring the limits of human performance And it's then if you come to the enhanced games that itch to create an edge happens again does that become neural link Does that become genetic It figures out where the limits of its category are and it tests those limits Absolutely right Right And I hope that happens because that's a market force that will drive human innovation Um so one day um pharmacological interventions like anabolic steroids and synthetic growth hormones will no longer uh allow us to break world records We'll reach the peak of human potential with version one enhancements And by that time we will have already built a technology pipeline of products whether they are brain computer interfaces artificial intelligence uh cybernetics allow us to push to the next level of human enhancement uh and we will be able to create a rule set where they can be used safely and under full clinical and scientific supervision I could definitely make an argument that there's something deeply human about the idea of limits and that struggling within those limits is intrinsic within the soul of sport Well I think that's that's an interesting question Well it's it's more of a comment right Um there is something intrinsically human about limits Yes But there's also something intrinsically human about looking beyond our limits For the totality of human history up until the last h 100red years um we believe that we were stuck on this earth right We you know the the Wright brothers first flew you o only more than a hundred years ago now And less than 50 years from when the Wright brothers flew you know um Yur Gagarin went into space and then Neil Armstrong landed on the moon right We we pursue beyond our limits as human beings And I think that this era that we live in is an era of great technological expansion Uh and that we have seen ourselves look beyond our limits you know we now have a a full-time intellectual sidekick in chat GPT in a world in a way that we could have never imagined previously And you know as far as I can understand um sport hitherto has been the only field of human endeavor that has a technological cap on it So the IOC and water have placed

Sport's Technology Cap Problem

This cap on technological innovation That doesn't happen in academia It doesn't happen in science It doesn't happen uh in in finance right Only in sport is there a hard technological cap Imagine if um at the time of Gutenberg right Um the the academy said "Oh no no we can't use the printed word It only has to be hand transcribed." And you read from that time in the 1500s about this debate between the printed word and the written word And there was seen as something very deeply spiritual and a connection with God about handtranscribing and how the printed word and the printed book was something less It was somehow adulterating the word of God But if somehow the powers of the beast said "You know what We can't allow the printed word." What would that have done to our society It would have fundamentally held us back in the greatest intellectual revolution ever Right Imagine today if Harvard University said we are not going to allow artificial intelligence at all because we believe in the purity of the human mind and that artificial intelligence pollutes the integrity of the academy Right It would be a ridiculous statement to make But this is exactly what the IOC does It says we have created these artificial rules and we believe that this narrow set of substances anabolic steroids are bad but creatine is not Pollutes the integrity of sport Uh and therefore there's a hard technology cap I think the assumption there is that all progress is good and that we should never be protected from it and that we never as a civilization made missteps Hey everybody let's take a quick break to talk about the bike I'll be riding this season Reap I've been lucky enough to ride all the top brands in the world over the past few years but these Reap bikes they're not the same And I'll tell you why Reap is the first company I've seen that isn't chasing sales targets and the mass market They're chasing something very rare perfection Every bike they make it's crafted in the UK factory And it's not about slapping a made in Britain label on a bike from a Chinese factory It's about control From the first sketch to the final build they're hands-on ensuring that every detail is dialed in That's very rare in an outsourced world of mass production What sets them apart is innovation While others pump out the same old designs reaps pushing boundaries They're not following trends they're setting trends Think precision and performance like an F1 car for the road Absolutely no compromises And it shows and you can feel it when you ride the bikes These bikes are built for riders who demand the best Whether they're chasing podiums or just want a machine that feels like an extension of your body a piece of art It's not hype it's substance Ride a Reap for yourself and you're riding something crafted with intent So if you're serious about cycling check them out It's reapikes.com I absolutely love my one and I couldn't recommend it highly enough Back to the show All technological advancements I believe are gross positive They're not that positive Um so a society is better off as a whole but individual actors will lose out Right And so this is the analysis of the lites um with the first invention of mechniz industrial production Right The Lites were these machine breakers who would break into factories at night to destroy the machines of Satan who were taking away the jobs of of of um factory workers and weavers So yes there have been leidites all throughout history but time and time again they've been proven wrong Whether it was the the printed word the personal computer industrial manufacturing right Society is always better off through technology but there are always individual actors who lose out And so in this situation who is going to lose out by the creation of the enhanced games Well the athletes are going to make more money right Because I'm paying a million dollars for a world record and the Olympics pay nothing right So there's going to be a competitive market tension there But who's going to lose out It's the fact that the IOC president flies around the world in a private jet He literally lives in a palace And the athletes of the world get paid nothing The IOC system is designed for the benefit of bureaucrats not the athletes and they're the ones who are going to lose on They're they're the ones who appear the most from what we are doing Yeah no doubt The economics of the IOC water model don't work for the many They work for the few But I don't agree that that's the only victim to it sport is are if you look at the masters the other day golf courses are flooded around Ireland with kids around Ireland thinking they can be the next Rory Mroy they can be the next Rory Mroy it's that can't see me can't be mess all around Ireland they're flooded on the into the streets riding their bikes when Ben Healey wins a bike race we've long in society realized there's a protected class and we don't allow underage to get tattoos to

Role Models and Men's Health Covers

Consume alcohol but we're putting them into in this We're holding our heroes up No one wants to watch the 100 meters been won in 9 seconds if it's been won in 6 seconds in the enhanced games So the enhanced games becomes our heroes And now we have children a protected class who is aspiring to be something that is not morally the equivalent of what our stars are now Yeah So the editor of Men's Health magazine asked me this question He sat out of my office in London and said "What about the children Don't you think you're creating a negative environment in the exact same way that you have described?" And I said "No you did it Men's Health magazine for decades has put these chiseled adamances on their cover and they said the secret is six-minute abs or it's eat chicken and broccoli." Never once have they said this model uses anabolic steroids And it's pretty bloody obvious that the majority of cover models on men's health have used enhancements Yeah Yeah Yeah But that but that's that's a little bit disingenuous because those physiques are very very achievable Like you can make the argument that to get to TA Patcha's level is you know there's a huge genetic component there That's not a realistic target for any kid to aspire to With a good strength training plan and a strict diet almost anyone with average enough genetics can get a physique similar to men's health Uh I don't think that's correct To be a men's health cover model um requires a very significant uh either genetic advantage or human enhancement Sure it will it will speed it but like the data doesn't support that Like it it's a very achievable physique to get to single digit body fat Uh I would disagree with that completely 6% of men in Britain and the United States admit to using uh anabolic steroids at some point in their life Um and uh you know fundamentally the uh what we what has been considered achievable has been distorted by the fact that the vast majority of elite athletes and fitness influencers have used uh substances on the band list at some point in their life and that it's backed up by evidence Yeah No nobody's saying that that those uh outcomes are easy to get but they're achievable because they're not you're not genetically limited to get there The band substances genetics will get you there faster but they're very attainable pathways Yeah So it's not impossible Uh are they easily achievable Maybe we're debating about semantics there Yeah Yeah But but what I would say is that the limitation that sports has their limitations today right I'm 5 foot 10 I will never play in the NBA But what if I could take a pill that made me taller right Why should why should I not be able to be allowed to overcome my genetic disadvantages Right Some people have won the genetic lottery And in the quest of equality should we not allow those who have not won the genetic lottery to level up No Be because we have we always have protected that minor class And unless we're saying it so the example I'd use at the moment is I compete in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and my entire life I've cycled Brazilian jiu-jitsu is as we would say not natty You can take whatever you want there my nephew now who is 2 years old I couldn't ethically encourage my sister to put him into Brazilian jiu-jitsu if he aspires to be the next Gordon Ryan We know it's associated we've seen enough longtail data on the effects of it We know it's associated with suboptimum health outcomes Brazilian jiu-jitsu is steroid use specifically the stack that the top fighters are using So so let if we want to talk about science and healthcare let's talk about it on a scientific level Professor David Nod Imperial College London 2012 um publishes a landmark survey in the Lancet right And it's the all cause uh risk associated with both uh recreational and performance drugs Highest risk alcohol number two heroin And at the bottom end of the spectrum anabolic steroids self-administered without clinical supervision And you know what's not on the list Sugar Ultrarocessed Food McDonald's Coca-Cola Two of the longest serving Olympic sponsors Two organizations that have done more damage to public health than any other entities in the totality of human history You know you want to talk about um health and sport Look at the principal sponsors of of of rugby uh in Ireland right They're alcohol companies right and the and the damage that has done to public health Well the poisons in the dogs Sure Right But do do you think that uh an organization like McDonald's should be allowed to promote its wares to children through Olympic sports sponsorship when it is when the known damages uh are are um among the most deadly toxins um available in the totality of human history tough to put together a compelling argument for McDonald's but education around macros is important A McDonald's hamburger has fewer calories and more higher protein content than your typical protein health bar Uh yes But you know a ask the question like should we be promoting McDonald's directly

Doping Stats and Kardashian Transparency

To children through Olympic sponsorship Yes or no Well again it's the poison is in the dose If you're using McDonald's as a post like it's like Coca-Cola it's one of the title sponsors Should we be promoting Coca-Cola to kids Well it's yes and no Coca-Cola at the wrong time to kids absolutely not Coca-Cola during the middle of a bike race Almost can't think of a better formulated bike drink to have Caffeine sugar easily accessible glucose The same drink in your glycogen re-uptake window straight after sport Amazing sitting at the cinema down two liters of it It's bad So it's a nuanced question It's not a yes or no Absolutely right And I think the same is true of performance enhancement So I like to analogize this to Hollywood So the Kardashians they are visibly openly uh and honestly enhanced right They use cosmetic enhancements on a regular basis They talk about it on their Instagram all day long right Children look at look up to the Kardashians but the guardian is clinical supervision right A a young girl might say "You know what mom I want to look like a Kardashian." A girl might be really persistent And that mother might take him to a um to to a doctor And doctor's going to say "Sorry you're not right for this treatment at this point in time Maybe at some point in the future." But being open transparent and honest about usage is really important Right Right When 44% of elite athletes admit to using ban substances and only 1% get caught right That means 43% of them are lying Where's that stat come from Like I've been around bike racing been a pro bike racer A lot of friends who are current active pro bike racers Anecdotally that stat is not close in one of the dirtiest sports in the world Ultra comtock journal of sports medicine 2012 It's getting massively skewed from somewhere though like weightlifting because that if you surveyed a thousand people ask them to name the dirtiest sports everyone's going to put cycling on their podium and I'm inside the loop and I can tell you that's that is not even close If it's 04% I'd be shocked in world tour highest level at the moment The guard rails are so high like whereabouts testing has changed the game Testing doesn't work Testing doesn't work Period Full stop Right Why Because the underlying what what WADA does not have and this is actually so important to realize is that WADA doesn't have the calibration data They don't have elite athletes who have used band substances openly saying what their stack is Right So they don't actually have the data to actually calibrate their tests And so leading a water scientists have come to my conferences come to conferences hosted by the enhanced games to say the Olympics cannot be clean unless there is an enhanced games because they need the calibration data Interesting Okay let let's run with this because I I am I am enjoying this a lot So we we slide into this world with the enhanced games Do you see this as athletes are going to be backed up by independent medical teams or is that responsibility for experimentation lie fully on them Uh so it's been very interesting over the last 18 months talking to hundreds of athletes and what I realize is that athletes are not influencers Athletes want to just be on the team They want to uh have all of their marketing physiootherapy travel everything taken care of and they just want to practice their craft Um and so the ideal configuration is something like the Premier League or the NFL where an athlete is signed and the team takes care of everything The least optimal configuration is like the Olympics where uh unless you're from a country like France or Australia uh you're effectively a free agent and you've got to sort of do everything yourself in addition to um practicing the craft of your sport And so the delivery model of the enhanced games is to be like the Premier League or the NFL When we invite an athlete to compete at the enhanced games we will sign them We will give them a comprehensive health checkup to make sure that they're safe to compete We will continue to monitoring but we will also pay for their travel their accommodation We'll support them in terms of their marketing and and messaging Uh and they will be a member of the team Yeah that that's nice to hear At least I still worry about the aspiring athletes who are trying to break into it because they're going to fall into the self-experimentation category Now look it's no different to you know so-called clean sport in the Armstrong era where we've seen probably the best case studies of how drastic it got with self-experimentation for lower level athletes to the point Ricardo Rico took out points of his own blood stored them in the fridge without an anti-coagulant agent and then just put them back into his system crashing his entire system and almost killing himself Yeah and and and and that's where being open and honest about all of this reduces information deficits So can I fix all the problems of economic

Would Athletes Die for Gold?

Inequality in this world No I cannot But certainly I want to create a system where proathletes are signed to the enhanced games and they are fully supported throughout the whole ecosystem uh and we can create uh pathways for uh you know amateur semi-pro where they are supported where there's good training facilities where there is great support uh networks available to them so that no one has to ever resort to you know the Lance Armstrong Balco methodology of what is effectively an underground laboratory and self-experimentation um and breaking down these barriers and publishing information hosting conferences having discussions like this um really reduces risk because we're openly sharing information in a way that has not been done for decades Have you seen this study It's it's a few years old at this point where they survey a number of Olympic athletes and they say "If I could give you a pill that would guarantee you an Olympic gold medal would you die 12 months later Would you take the pill?" and they surveyed a not insignificant number of athletes and 100% of them said they would take the pill So that's interesting So uh Professor Giannis Basaldis who uh is um a notable very notable sport scientist who's on the WA um scientific commission actually quoted this survey at a conference um we hosted at Oxford University in December and said that the data has been reviewed substantially several times and it has never been cooperated Um so I think that you know the original survey was made for let's say um comic effect comic effect and has never been replicated but it it is in the validity of it or not uh like we can't I can't verify it live but taking the sentiment of it as someone who spent a lot of time in elite sport and I can vividly remember coming down alpine or pyrene desense at the front of a bike race and having the thought process I don't care if I die I'm not breaking and getting dropped out of this group Elite athletes are slightly wired different Their riskto-reward perception is different than your typical human How do you think about that in terms of dosage amount of medication they're taking long-term health of the athlete like we obviously don't want to have an enhanced games where 100% of athletes die 12 months after the enhanced games So the key to this is clinical supervision and uh the the principal risk associated with performance enhancements is cardiac and cardiac risk is very knowable and very measurable Uh and let's be very clear the anti-doping system today is not about health It's not about safety It's about fairness Right The fair the fairness is the motus operandi of the system and if water and the IOC wanted to build a safety based system they would do what I do which is comprehensive full system health checkups of every athlete echo cardiograms MRI blood work uh prior to competition uh and ongoing throughout training based on clinical needs um and that would uh you know it's it's dramatically expensive right Tens of thousands of dollars per athlete per year Um but that is how we ensure that our athletes are healthy and safe to compete and the Olympics won't do this because it's too expensive for them What kind of athletes are being drawn to this at the moment Are they athletes on the fringe that never quite made it to top level sport Uh no It is ath you know the the issue for the Olympics is an economic one uh when you're an elite swimmer or runner or weightlifter and weightlifting probably is the worst of those three you know you're the best in the world at what you do and you might only earn $30,000 a year Um and you know you're looking comparing yourself against elite footballers basketball players baseball players who are earning tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year And you ask yourself why is it that in the principal areas of human endeavor like running and swimming two of the most basic things we do there is no money there is no money whatsoever in those sports compared to um uh compared to the American team sports or or European football And why is that is because of systematic corruption and dysfunction in the governing bodies and in the international Olympic committee Right they are still stuck in this amateurist ethos right Including many of the sporting federations still have amateur in their name Um like the amateur athletics union uh and and they refuse to create a system that pays athletes well And so when we're offering a million dollars to break a world record we're offering business class flights and fivestar hotels and saying I slept in a cardboard bed at the Paris Olympics it's not even a choice It's so obvious that we care about athletes and the Olympic system does not Road men Whether you're a weekend warrior or a world tour rider the right tools can make all the difference Enter 4's precision 3 plus power meter The latest innovation from 4i Designed to help you reach peak performance The Precision 3 Plus power meter is a compact yet 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Competing with the Olympics

It's packed with features that set it apart including integration with Apple's fine mind network giving you the peace of mind by letting you track your power meter wherever it is Plus you've got up to 800 hours of battery life We all know that accuracy is key and for Eyes delivers a groundbreaking plus or minus 1% accuracy thanks to their unique 3D strain gauge technology For those seeking even more data the Precision 3 Plus Pro power meter offers dualsided power meter metrics giving you detailed insights into pedaling efficiency torque effectiveness and left right balance For Eyes offers versatile product options to suit your needs Choose from ride ready parameters with pre-installed units on Shimano cranks or up for factory installed parameter where you send in your crank set for a custom installation Ready to elevate your cycling game Trust Forey Precision 3 Plus parameter Precision performance and peace of mind allinone Learn more by visiting fori Iii Iii Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.com That's fori Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii i i iii.com I'm going to put that in the description down below Do you see it Do you see an ability to attract the best of the best across like is Rashida Adeleke going to go across from 400 meters with a 15-year career ahead of her and you know the agilation that goes with winning goals hopefully in the next two Olympics for our country All that glitters isn't gold Um uh and all that's gold doesn't glitter Um and so I think it's actually like very simple and and and and members of the International Olympic Committee have come to my office and sat here and talked to me It's very good to have the dialogue And what the smart members of the IOC know is that as soon as we have the world records the 100 meter the mile the marathon the 53 in the pool we are the ultimate avenue of human competition and athletes viewers hosts are not interested in a second tier competition right And you think about the Commonwealth Games The Commonwealth Games as a concept are effectively dead Um because they are a second tier competition They were never able to attract the best athletes They were never able to attract the best media rights and and ticket sales and host cities And so ultimately uh they they have died as a concept uh and I think the Olympics will suffer from that because the best athletes in the world will say actually you know what I can make good money at the enhanced games and it is the ultimate avenue of human competition The test will be the viewership if I'm so conflicted because on the one hand I do agree with you We want to see the 100 meters going in six seconds But then on the other hand I've spoken on the podcast to cyclists who have set incredible times on clims like that no clean athletes are doing And I was like why does more people not care about that And overwhelmingly the feedback was no one cares because he's not compliant with WAD He's most likely lit Just don't care No I think I think that Do you want to be a human 1.0 know when you know humans 2.0 exist and people are proud proud to be a human 2.0 Yeah The the if I was to straw man the argument against it it's you can take so much of like the Armstrong hard work is real The sacrifice is real The training camps are real The altitude is real The night's going to bed with a pain in his stomach because of food deprivation is all real Nobody cares Nobody cares how fast he went up down climbs History's edited him out Well because because he broke the rules of the system He wasn't proud to be enhanced He was afraid But widely that's acknowledged that everyone who was doping then to go back to those years and try and find a clean tour to France you have to go so far down that GC But still nobody cares Nobody thinks he's the champion Yeah Because because they were lying right If if Lance Armstrong went out there and stood on the on the on the Shanzal under the arct trial and said you know two years ago I was dying of cancer and I'm back here on the podium as the greatest cyclist in the world thanks to EPO It would have been the ompic of of the early 2000s It would have been the category defining drug and created a trillion dollar market overnight Yeah OMIC has thrown up this philosophical debate because we all talked about wanting to get to the podium and that being the important thing Now we're left with a debate going Is it actually important to me to have a six-pack or is it the work that it takes to get a six-pack that's actually important Is the process more important than the outcome And I've enjoyed this conversation an awful lot and I'm gonna definitely be watching this space closely but I'm kind of left wondering with it when somebody breaks a 4hour iron man or a one hour 30 marathon Am I going to celebrate that or am I going to mourn it I I I I I I

Ozempic and the New Normal

Think it's going to be a mourning in some ways of a loss of humans 1.0 and a celebration of moving into the next version of mankind Um you know I was at dinner on Friday night here in Manhattan Every single person uh at this dinner party was on Ompic Every single person Yeah And and uh you know they were all wealthy image conscious people Uh but it has become normal Uh it has become celebrated and and almost to the point is to become expected But it's such a weird culture that that's normal and celebrated and like it's I I guess the people I've talked that have actually had the biggest push back against Oimp are probably people that are currently skinny because we had a very reliable signal indicator for a long time for people that were in shape I could go on a first date with someone and they'd show up and I'd be like "Oh she's in shape I've no data points on this girl only she's in shape." But now I can say "Hey there's someone who can delay gratification there's someone who can show up consistently without seeing immediate results That's thrown that whole signaling system on its head now and you don't know what to think Did they just take a pill or are they actually that type of person You could still now be the slot person who can't delay gratification who can't show up consistently but you've taken a pill It's going to take a while for us to figure out where to foil these people how we get a new signal Yeah And I you know it's like uh you can make the same argument about Botox right Yeah Uh it it it is uh you know it it changes the dynamics of what is beauty And maybe it's that um we don't need to rely on our natural predispositions winning the genetic lottery but also realizing that human beings were not did not evolve to exist in the world that we live in today right You know I was as as a CEO who sits in an office for 12 to 14 hours a day We were not designed to be in this sedentary world uh eating you know ultrarocessed foods that are being bombarded to us by highly sophisticated marketing algorithms and human enhancement technologies like Ombic allow us to uh counteract some of those negative forces that are um intrinsic to our society today Yeah I I don't we we won't kick off a new conversation but I don't agree they're intrinsic to our society today They're maybe intrinsic in the Manhattan circles but in the wider circles maybe Maybe not You maybe need a new circle Maybe I that's that's possibly correct right Uh and certainly you know I I I live between uh New York and London uh and just existing in the food system here in the United States is just oppressive Yeah Right It feels like everything you eat even if it feels like it's healthy uh or looks like it's healthy is just poison Um and it's basically impossible to eat good quality healthy food here even if you're you know in Manhattan shopping at Whole Foods and you know spending $200 on a bag of groceries like there's something fundamentally broken about American society uh that has led to the rise of things like Ozmpic but society changes right and I think that an ancient Greek ethos of sport does not fit in our modern world anymore and it doesn't mean there isn't a place for it but um it does mean that there is a place for an enhanced games and there might be a version three enhanced games a version four version five where we say you know what what kind of human am I Do you want to be a natural ancient uh paleolithic style human Do you want to be a 20th century human a 21st century human Um and we get to make that choice right And we might coexist I'm not sure it's a measure of health to be well adapted to a sick society but I think we'll leave it there Yeah exactly Well it's you know thank you uh for a very thoughtful and provoking conversation I've done probably close to a thousand interviews with some of the top publications in the world when I've not had a discussion about natural law So thank you very much for having me on the show Hon really enjoyed this conversation Thank you so much for giving so freely your time Thank you very much Thanks for watching Roadman Take one second Click up here to subscribe to the channel and click down here where there's another video I know you'll love See you next day

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What are the Enhanced Games and why are drugs allowed?+

The Enhanced Games are an elite sporting competition founded by Aron D'Souza that permits performance-enhancing drugs with no testing or restrictions. The premise is that open, regulated use is safer and more honest than the current system, where athletes dope secretly while governing bodies maintain a public ban.

Is cycling doping as bad as it was in the Lance Armstrong era?+

There is growing concern that professional cycling is returning to the widespread doping practices of the 1990s and 2000s. In the episode, Aron D'Souza argues the anti-doping framework never truly solved the problem and that the incentives pushing athletes towards EPO and other substances remain largely unchanged.

Why does WADA get criticised for its anti-doping rules?+

Critics, including Aron D'Souza, argue that WADA operates as an unaccountable monopoly that imposes rules on athletes without their meaningful consent, since there is no alternative competitive structure to opt into. D'Souza draws a direct parallel to the amateur eligibility rules that collapsed in 1992, predicting the current anti-doping consensus will erode in the same way.

Was Lance Armstrong cheating or just doing what everyone else was doing?+

The episode frames Armstrong as a product of a system where doping was near-universal but publicly forbidden, forcing athletes into dishonesty rather than transparent competition. Aron D'Souza uses Armstrong as a central example of why the prohibition model creates worse outcomes than an open, above-board approach to performance enhancement would.

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Key Takeaways

Fairness in sport is defined by following the rule set—not by universal moral law. Just as amateurism was once considered essential to sport's integrity before being eliminated entirely, the ban on enhancement will eventually shift.

Current anti-doping systems lack the calibration data they need because elite athletes who use banned substances won't openly share their protocols—making testing fundamentally ineffective.

The Olympics faces an economic crisis: elite runners and swimmers earn ~$30K/year while football and basketball players earn millions. The Enhanced Games offers $1M for world records, making the choice obvious.

Clinical supervision and comprehensive health monitoring—not bans—are the actual way to keep athletes safe. The IOC prioritizes fairness over athlete welfare, which is why they won't invest in proper medical oversight.

A protected class argument for children falls apart when McDonald's and Coca-Cola are Olympic sponsors with documented public health damage exceeding that of anabolic steroids under medical supervision.

The real innovation wave won't stop at pharmaceuticals—it'll move to neural interfaces, genetic engineering, and cybernetics. Sport is the only field of human endeavor with a hard technological cap.

Expert Quotes

"If Lance Armstrong went out there and stood on the Champs-Élysées under the Arc de Triomphe and said 'I'm back here on the podium as the greatest cyclist in the world thanks to EPO,' it would have been the Olympic moment of the early 2000s."

"The IOC system is designed for the benefit of bureaucrats, not athletes. They're the ones who lose out from what we're doing."

"Society is always better off through technology, but there are always individual actors who lose out. Being open, transparent, and honest about usage is really important."

KEY QUOTES

“44% of elite athletes admit to using ban substances and only 1% get caught right That means 43% of them are lying”
Aron D — President of the Enhanced Games

“I'm paying a million dollars for a world record and the Olympics pay nothing right So there's going to be a competitive market tension there”
Aron D — President of the Enhanced Games

“Professor David Nod Imperial College London 2012 publishes a landmark survey in the Lancet right And it's the all cause risk associated with both recreational and performance drugs Highest risk alcohol number two heroin And at the bottom end of the spectrum anabolic steroids self-administered without clinical supervision”
Aron D — President of the Enhanced Games

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What are the Enhanced Games and why are drugs allowed?+

Is cycling doping as bad as it was in the Lance Armstrong era?+

Why does WADA get criticised for its anti-doping rules?+

Was Lance Armstrong cheating or just doing what everyone else was doing?+

CYCLING’S DARK ERA IS BACK. IS IT BROKEN FOR GOOD?

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KEY QUOTES

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CYCLING’S DARK ERA IS BACK. IS IT BROKEN FOR GOOD?

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