An expert has explained whether Usain Bolt’s 100m world record could be broken at the Enhanced Games.
The Enhanced Games are heading by Australian businessman Aron D’Souza and athletes taking part will be allowed to take performance enhancing drugs without being subject to drug testing.
Originally, the event was planned to take place in 2025, with further updates set to be announced in the coming months.
According to the Enhanced Games’ official website, ‘44% of athletes already use performance enhancements’ and the event is designed to ‘safely celebrate science’.
With athletes allowed to use performance enhancing drugs, the attention will shift to whether any world records could be broken, especially the 100m record, which has been held by Jamaican legend Bolt since 2008.
Bolt first broke the world record when he set a time of 9.72 seconds at a Grand Prix meet in New York.
The Jamaican then went quicker at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, running a time of 9.69 in the 100m final.
A year later, Bolt broke his own world record again when he clocked 9.58 at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.
Speaking to The Guardian back in June, Dr Michael Sagner from King’s College London was quizzed on the possibility of a 60-year-old running faster than Bolt at the Enhanced Games.
He said: “His tendons would snap. The Enhanced Games won’t be as crazy as people assume.
“You can’t just inject yourself and turn into Superman. It’s very sad that someone has told him that.”
Sagner continued: “Because you can’t go back to your 20-year-old body. No drugs can do that.”
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In the report, it stated that one track and field agent (who didn’t want to be named) branded the idea of the Enhanced Games as laughable.
He said: “From what I’ve seen, this whole Enhanced Games is so non-credible as to beggar belief.
“Anyone with any understanding of sport knows you can’t just chuck PEDs at someone and make them into a world-class athlete.”
Apart from the 100m, Bolt also holds the world record for the 200m, which currently stands at 19.19 seconds.
During this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, the 200m was won by Letsile Tebogo.
When asked about breaking Bolt’s record, he told Forbes Betting earlier in the year: “We have a better chance in the 200, I want to believe. Usain Bolt himself said in an interview that the 200-meter record might be the easier of the two, and I concur.
“We will have to start with other records that come before the world records, like area records and maybe third and second-fastest times ever, and some meeting and championship records, before we can really start the world record conversation.”