Sean Ingle Denied Access to Enhanced Games in Las Vegas
Sean Ingle was denied a media credential for the enhanced games in Las Vegas after asking to report on the event on 24 May. The rejection cut off access to a project that is selling itself as the "next frontier of human performance" while paying six-figure salaries, $250,000 to win a race, and $1m to break the world record.
Ingle’s rejected request
received the refusal email at 7.02pm on Friday. It said: "After careful consideration, we are unable to approve your media credential request for this year’s event" and added: "Due to the high volume of applications and limited media capacity, we could not accommodate all requests … thank you again for your interest and understanding."
A few days earlier, a PR man had called Ingle after the event’s pre-screening process for media applications. He pointed to ’s negative coverage of the enhanced games, then repeated two lines from that coverage: "Grotesque" and "showcasing so much of the wrongness of the age."
Questions at Las Vegas
Ingle said he wanted to do a proper reporting job on the event and speak to athletes, billionaire backers and scientists involved. His practical questions were blunt: whether the tracks were legal, whether the timing devices were reputable, and whether the officials were properly appointed.
He also raised the issue of how a race time gets treated as a record. In 2016, Justin Gatlin ran 9.45sec for 100m on the Japanese TV show Kasupe! with a 20mph tailwind from a giant fan, a mark that was not treated as a world record.
Enhanced Games scrutiny
The access decision lands alongside the event’s own claims and rules. The enhanced games allows athletes to use banned performance-enhancing drugs, and it is offering six-figure salaries, $250,000 for a race win and $1m for a world record.
That mix leaves outside scrutiny carrying more weight, not less. Ingle said he wanted to know whether athletes can sue the event, and he pointed to research discussed by Prof Ian Broadley and Martin Chandler at the University of Birmingham, who said claims that banned drugs can be made safer under medical supervision are "incorrect and misleading."
They also said research is starting to show serious long-term effects from steroid use and that things like reproductive function or libido can be "killed off" with no clear understanding of why. In 2005, reported that 190 former East German athletes had launched a case against Jenapharm, saying steroids had caused infertility among women, embarrassing hair growth, breast cancer, heart problems and testicular problems.
For Ingle, the credential denial means the reporting has to be done from outside the fence rather than inside the room. With the event still selling itself through money, science and performance claims, the gap between access and accountability is now part of the story.
