No doping control and new records

Busi­ness­man Aron de Souza crit­i­cizes mod­ern Olympic sports. He is con­fi­dent that the dop­ing ban does not work and ath­letes use loop­holes to take banned sub­stances. The Aus­tralian believes that it is nec­es­sary to use the achieve­ments of sci­ence and legal­ize dop­ing in order to set new records and increase the enter­tain­ment val­ue of the Olympics.

De Souza wants to orga­nize the Alter­na­tive Games — an ana­logue of the Olympics, where there will be no dop­ing con­trols. He is con­fi­dent that then new records will begin to be set in com­pe­ti­tions and old­er ath­letes will com­pete more often.

More shows, less sports

De Souza does­n’t want to copy the Olympic pro­gram. The first tour­na­ment, planned for Decem­ber 2024, will fea­ture ath­let­ics, weightlift­ing, swim­ming, gym­nas­tics and mar­tial arts. The Aus­tralian crit­i­cizes the IOC and accus­es it of cor­rup­tion: mon­ey ends up in the pock­ets of offi­cials, and out­stand­ing ath­letes live in pover­ty after fin­ish­ing their careers.

The idea was sup­port­ed by many ath­letes — for exam­ple, Olympic cham­pi­ons Roland Schu­mann and Brett Fras­er, who joined the Ath­letes’ Advi­so­ry Com­mis­sion. And also world indoor cham­pi­on Yolan­da Chen:

“I don’t think the Olympics would have become more dan­ger­ous with­out dop­ing con­trol. It seems to me that such Games could attract a large num­ber of peo­ple and become a great show. Peo­ple would find out among them­selves what the human body is capa­ble of.”

How will the Games be held?

For par­tic­i­pants in the Alter­na­tive Games, de Souza promis­es shares in the com­pa­ny that will orga­nize these com­pe­ti­tions, which will help the ath­letes pro­vide for them­selves after their careers. The busi­ness­man assures that inter­est in his ideas is being shown even in Sil­i­con Val­ley, where he has great con­nec­tions.

De Souza is a lib­er­tar­i­an. He is sure that sport is a busi­ness and a way to real­ize one­self. If an adult ath­lete is will­ing to take the risks of dop­ing, no one should restrict him from doing so.

“We believe that sci­ence makes human­i­ty, includ­ing sport, bet­ter and fair­er,” says the Aus­tralian.

Accord­ing to the orga­niz­ers of the Alter­na­tive Games, they already have more than a hun­dred appli­ca­tions for par­tic­i­pa­tion, main­ly from swim­mers. For now they are hid­ing their names, but assure that the com­pe­ti­tion will take place.