BODIES, BODIES, BODIES

Several dozen world-class athletes have spent the last four months in Abu Dhabi training to compete for millions of dollars in the Enhanced Games—a competition that is literally on steroids. And hormones. And Adderall. CLARA MOLOT talks to the people involved—and RFK Jr.—about the event that's backed by everyone from Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. to Saudi royalty

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“Just outside this window, here's the US base that they're targeting,” says Ben Proud, the 31-year-old British swimmer and Olympian. He turns his video camera around to show me the night sky above Abu Dhabi, where he's been watching Emirati defenses intercept Iranian missiles.

His phone dings each time one is incoming—an alert to stay inside. “This building used to be an air force base, so it's very sturdy,” he says of the Erth hotel, where the athletes competing in the Enhanced Games are currently training. “If you're inside, you're away from the danger. Pretty much.”

Proud had anticipated hurdles, though not necessarily bombs, when he signed on to the controversial sporting event birthed in the Thiel-verse, backed by MAGA, and christened the “steroid Olympics” by the press. After a 12-year career, which culminated in a silver medal at the Paris Olympics, he'd become accustomed to being told that performance-enhancing drugs were illegal, dangerous, and immoral. Now Proud was about to try several of them. Doctors in Abu Dhabi would compose an individualized concoction of enhancement drugs for him and many of his fellow athletes, selecting from testosterone, anabolic steroids, growth factors like HGH and EPO, hormone and metabolic modulators, and stimulants like Adderall. (Because of an ongoing clinical trial, the Enhanced Games says the athletes cannot share exactly what they are taking.)