Faster, higher, stronger – the Olympic motto that inspires the best athletes to push themselves to the limit. But what if we changed where those limits are? What if we allowed humans to not just rely on good genetics and intensive training, but also on chemical, medical, and biomechanical enhancements?
The team at The Enhanced Games is aiming to answer this question in a few weeks in Las Vegas – see enhanced.com for details. Is this the future of sport? Or are we crossing a line we should not cross?
Maybe a more important question is what sorts of human enhancements might be valuable and useful in your life and work? And are there any legal and ethical limits you should be considering?
TRANSCRIPT
How far can we push the human body? How fast can we go? How strong can we get?
That’s the question that the Olympics always tries to answer. This year, we’re witnessing the Olympic spectacle out of Italy during the Winter Olympics. And as always with the Winter Olympics, it’s craziness as we see how fast people can throw themselves down a snowy, icy hillside, and a few other sports as well.
Way back in episodes 41, 42, and 43, a few years ago in ThrowForward Thursday history, we had a look at three different ways in which the Olympics might dramatically change in the future. The one was climate change and the impact that that might have on both the Summer and Winter Olympics. We looked at the impact of gender and gender identification, and that has become more true than we thought it would. The third implication was bionics.
Would we pay to watch enhanced human beings show us what they can do beyond just the limits of the genetics of Olympic bodies? What happens if we allow Olympians to take more enhancing substances or to put on exoskeletons or enhance and modify their bodies in ways that push themselves beyond human limits into machine and human bionic limits?
Well, here we are in 2026, and we’re about to find out the answer to that question that we asked a while ago, because in a few weeks’ time, after the Winter Olympics is over, the Enhanced Games are coming to Las Vegas. Have a look at enhanced.com. It’s the brainchild of a rich guy who is interested in seeing what would happen if we took away some of the restrictions on what people are allowed to do to enhance themselves and see how fast, how far, how strong people can actually get.
There are only a few sports, some power lifting, some swimming, and I think a speed session on the track. But the idea is that there are no limits as to what the participants can do in order to prove that they are the strongest and the fastest.
Of course, there are huge ethical conversations to be had, and there are amazing conversations to be had about whether this should even be allowed in terms of maybe how people are going to mess up their bodies. But it’s going ahead, and we are going to be able to watch the next level of human athletic enhancement and see where it takes us.
I think it’s an interesting experiment, and as long as everybody involved knows exactly what they’re getting into, well, let’s give it a go and see what happens. Is this the future of sport, or is this another entire category of sport that we can look forward to in the future?
As always, a ThrowForward Thursday, we throw you into the future, sometimes the very near future, and see how the world might change.
And then, of course, the question is, well, what would that mean for you? And if you, in whatever industry you are in, were able to enhance the human potential of the people in your industry, in what ways would you enhance them? In what ways might that bump up against an ethical or a moral limit? And in what ways might we unlock endless possibilities if we become bionic in different ways?
All good questions. All eyes on Vegas in a few weeks with the Enhanced Games. I’m going to be watching. I’ll be interested to see what you think as we watch it together.
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For the past two decades, Graeme has worked with some of the world’s most recognised brands, travelling to over 80 countries in total, and speaking to around 100,000 people every year. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, and on faculty at 5 top global business schools.