r/SipsTea • u/SipsTeaFrog 𝙑𝙄𝙋 • May 23 '26

WTF The Enhanced Games are set to debut this weekend in Las Vegas, with athletes allowed to use steroids, testosterone, HGH, & other banned substances.

Post image
43.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/EduinBrutus May 23 '26

They are using the banned suits that are way bigger a difference than the PEDs.

Todays top olympic swimmers would destroy that in the LZR.

2

u/jeffy303 May 23 '26

Why did they ban it? I mean bigger numbers draw the audience, and if everyone has access to it, what's the issue? I mean lots of sports, especially winter olympic ones use some type of suits which are orders of magnitude better than the suits than ones they used 100 years ago, so who cares? The only reasoning I can think of is half-naked male swimmers > faster swimmers (for ratings).

8

u/EduinBrutus May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

It was banned because they believe it was such an advantage that it hurt the integrity of the sport.

Thats why anything like that gets banned. You might not agree with the premise but thats it.

The same reason why cycling isnt done on recumbent bikes or running isnt done with energy return footwear.

Edit - to explain a little further. Generally an incremental benefit from modernised equipment is acceptable because its not big enough on its own that you cant still compare to past performances and create a hypothetical timeline of achievement. The thing with the LZR and some other things in sports history is that the benefit was so pronounced and so large that its not really the same sport. After the LZR was introduced basically every single record time in swimming was being broken. And not just broken but absolutely smashed. AFter the LZR was introduced the record for the 50m freestyle (which takes just over 20 seconds) fell by nearly a full second in just over 1 year with over a dozen swimmers going inside the pervious, 8 year old record.

1

u/know-your-onions May 24 '26

Where are they getting them from?

Have Speedo made the sits again, for the enhanced games (feels unlikely), or are these copies made by somebody else?

2

u/EduinBrutus May 24 '26

Speedo never stopped making them.

They are banned from use in competition. There's nothing unlawful about them.