Pythagoras, he of the triangle, was an avowed vegetarian as a matter of principle. He believed in the transmigration of souls and so the idea of eating another soul was anathema to him. But he knew something about nutrition. Favorinus, the Roman sophist and sceptic philosopher who flourished during the reign of Hadrian and the Second Sophistic, records that a heavyweight boxing champion named Eurymenes of Samos was the very first athlete to train on an almost entirely meat-based diet. Ironically, the athlete was acting on the direct advice of his trainer, Pythagoras, who was also from Samos.
The diet for athletes and almost everyone else was pretty much akin to a Mediterranean cocktail party snack table — lots of figs, cheese, nuts and wheat-based products with watered-down wine thrown into the mix. So the whole protein maxing thing was pretty innovative.
Pythagoras apparently recommended the diet for its superior bulking properties and for endurance and strength building for all the heavy combat sports at the Olympics — boxing, wrestling and pankration, basically ancient MMA — a total no-holds-barred barrage of hand-to-hand combat that mimicked the battlefield and had only two rules — no eye gouging and no biting. It was introduced to the roster at the Olympic Games in 648 BCE and Pythagoras’ diet worked like a charm to give the athletes a massive advantage.
Milo of Croton in Italy where Pythagoras ran his philosophy school dominated the wrestling at the Olympics for six consecutive games. He invented progressive overload by carrying a newborn calf on his shoulders during training every day until it had grown into a full-blown bull. One year at the Olympics, he carried a four-year-old heifer around the stadium and then proceeded to kill it with one blow and eat the whole thing in one sitting. Historians claim he ate 9kg of meat, with 9kg of bread and washed it all down with 10 litres of wine on the daily. He held a pomegranate in his hand as people tried to pry it out – and would not bruise it whilst standing on a greased iron shield from which no one managed to push him.
Athletes have always looked for that one thing that will give them the edge. A diet, as recommended by the guy who invented the term “philosophy” was clearly the way to go. Once word got out, everyone was doing it. It’s been an arms race for strategic advantage ever since, and there’s always a fine line between what counts as legitimate practice and what is plain cheating.
Russians have been milking the supplementary enhancements for almost as long as the modern Olympics have existed. Some of those bearded lady athletes were on much more than a high protein ingestion of muscle stimulating morning shakes. The good shit was coming through a hole in the wall and you dare not argue with the coach lest you find yourself splitting tree stumps in Siberia for the rest of your artificially foreshortened life.
But last week’s Enhanced Games, held in Las Vegas, the gaudy epicentre of global fakery and the lure of instant riches, were meant to prove the perfectibility of human athletic endeavour by way of a free-for-all binge on the craziest combination of the most advanced banned substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list – growth hormones, testosterone and any other number of bizarre compounds on the ever-growing arms proliferation race to the bottom. Everything, except street drugs not approved by the FDA.
The brain behind the operation is an Australian, Dr Aron D’Souza, who matched his cynical “human enhancement manifesto” with the misanthropic worldview of his overlord [PayPal founder] Peter Thiel and several other dodgy biotech and techno billionaires including Donald Trump Jnr.
Together they sought to prove that the only thing preventing superhuman performance is the ban on substances designed to enhance us... and the lure of easy money. They offered huge purses to the 40 athletes who participated just for signing up. Many did, despite the lifetime ban at the actual Olympics. The hope was that they would break official world records by the dozen and thereby create a shopping frenzy for all the snake oil and longevity supplements they’re shilling off the back of this circus tent in Sin City central.
I’ll admit that the premise was compelling. When I first read about it, I wondered how many of the athletes who run endless circles around the WADA to get some juice in their veins would simply drop the pretence and go for biotech gold? It wasn’t the rush D’Souza expected, and the handful of clean athletes who decided to pit themselves against the artificially enhanced came out smelling like roses and pocketing the big money purses these okies were dangling. They kept winning against the dopers and the only record to be broken (by 0.07 seconds) was by a Greek swimmer, Kristian Gkolomeev, who swam the men’s 50m freestyle in 20.81 seconds, prompting the official record holder, Australian Cameron McEvoy, to quip “Is that all you’ve got?” It wasn’t entirely unjustified, given that D’Souza had fallen on his knees in front of the giant Gkolomeev whose Bulgarian father was also an Olympic swimmer and had clearly bestowed the genetic swimmer’s build advantage on his son.
D’Souza gushed “We’ve changed the world … With the power of enhancements we can prove we are the best we can ever think of and you are living proof of that.”
Quite. What Gkolomeev proved was that the $1.5mn pay packet for this 0.07-second win showed up some pretty challenging issues with most Olympic sports. Unless you play some kind of telegenic professional game and you make it into the teeny tiny elite pool of sponsored athletes with global clout —you’re abiding in penury, training your heart out in a relentless slog and living off the fumes of Olympic gold and the glory of having your name in a brief flurry of lights.
I, for one, had never heard of Gkolomeev before this moment of his tarnished but sadly brutally real glory and, frankly, I hope never to hear of him again.
I wondered why the performances were so lacklustre and disappointing for the money guys. Perhaps the inherent cynicism of the entire operation recast as a tech bro, immortality-seeking wet dream is like a bad hit of a supposedly life-enhancing drug. You think you will always get the same high you got the first time, when you broke the rules and snuck a win, but the thrill wears off and now you’re left chasing the chimera of your reputation.
Yes, the Olympics may be tarnished by so many interests but there’s always that elusive but compelling Olympic ideal that prevails. It may be a thankless task of endurance and suffering to get to the games for most athletes who dare to venture the gold. But you do it day in, day out for years because you’re ultimately not competing against the others, your nemesis from Poland or your mate from Trinidad and Tobago. You’re really competing against yourself — so make sure you can respect that self the morning after.
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