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The heads of the US and global anti-doping bodies have traded barbs in an escalating war of words over the pro-steroid Enhanced Games, which are backed by Donald Trump Jr and due to be held in the US next year.
The two sides have been at loggerheads since it emerged last year — to US outrage — that the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) had allowed Chinese swimmers to compete in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics despite positive drug tests.
Wada chief Witold Bańka stepped up the tension this week, telling the Financial Times the Enhanced Games, which encourage athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs in order to break records, should be prevented and could be “embarrassing” for the US as an organiser of big sports events.
“We would like the Americans to return to the anti-doping family,” Bańka said in an interview, noting that the US is due to host the football World Cup next year and the Olympics in 2028.
In response to Bańka’s comments, US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) chief Travis Tygart did not condemn the Enhanced Games but told the FT they “have nothing to do with our athletes, the World Cup, or the Olympics”.
In 2023, Tygart had called the event a “dangerous clown show”, but Bańka said USADA had been silent since the Games gained powerful investors, including Trump Jr and tech billionaire Peter Thiel. At the time of Tygart’s initial criticism, “there was nothing clear about who was going to finance” the event, Bańka said.
Tygart accused Bańka of trying to “smear” the US and of using the Enhanced Games as “a telling smoke screen” for allegedly failing to stop doping in the 2020 and 2024 Olympics. “Certain athletes with positive tests were allowed to compete, win, and in a way, have their own Enhanced Games,” Tygart said.
Chinese authorities told Wada the 23 swimmers who tested positive for a banned heart medication during the Tokyo Olympics did so because of inadvertent contamination from a hotel kitchen. Due to pandemic travel restrictions, Wada was unable to conduct its own probe on the ground.
When the issue came to light last year, USADA also criticised Wada for not making the test results public at the time. Instead, it was revealed in investigations by the New York Times and German TV channel ARD shortly before last year’s Paris Olympics.
An investigation by a Swiss prosecutor found last summer that Wada had not shown bias towards the Chinese swimmers. Still, then-President Joe Biden’s administration withheld US funding for Wada over the scandal. Wada has since launched an investigation into how data about the swimmers was leaked.
The inaugural Enhanced Games are set to be held in Las Vegas next May, with competitions in swimming, track and field, and weightlifting.
But Bańka said USADA should explore “legal possibilities” to stop the games and “do a lot to convince Congress people and others who invest money in this event that this is dangerous”. He declined to directly criticise US President Donald Trump’s son.
Bańka, a former 400-metre runner and Polish sports minister, also criticised USADA for an alleged drop-off in testing since the Paris Olympics. It conducted 7,500 tests in 2023, he said, but only 308 in the six months after the Olympics.
Wada’s president also accused the US of failing to shut down enough doping laboratories. “We have had many cases in Europe [of lab closures] but in the US, where we know from law enforcement that it is the biggest market of illegal steroids in the world, I haven’t heard anything about US activity,” he said.
In response, Tygart said that Bańka’s “attempt to smear America and our US Olympic and professional athletes is a desperate attempt to divert attention away from his failure in allowing China to sweep 23 positive tests under the carpet”.
Additional reporting by Josh Noble
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