Angermayer backs 42 athletes at Enhanced Games 2026 debut
enhanced games 2026 begins Sunday with 42 athletes and a study showing 36 of the 42 competitors have taken banned performance-enhancing drugs. Christian Angermayer, the German billionaire backing the event, says the project represents the future and wants medically approved drug use treated more like routine care than a taboo.
Angermayer’s $40m dinosaur
Angermayer also owns the largest triceratops skull ever discovered, a detail that fits his taste for extremes. He said, "I have bounty hunters who do that" when asked how he obtained the fossil, and added, "I really don’t want to say what my costs are." He said the triceratops head is in London and, "I’m actually getting it put in my apartment."
The billionaire made fortunes from biotech, bitcoin and psychedelics, and he said he has a T-rex he plans to sell for around $40m. That kind of wealth helps explain how he can back a controversial sports project that would be hard to finance anywhere else.
42 athletes, 4 drug classes
Enhanced said 91% of the athletes are using testosterone, 79% are using human growth hormone, 41% are using EPO and 29% are using anabolic steroids. The inaugural program includes the 100m sprint, several swimming races and weightlifting events, which gives the event a conventional sports frame even as the drug profile pushes it far outside elite anti-doping rules.
Angermayer said people may start thinking about spending $209 on testosterone cream and $119 on GHK-Cu Copper, which he described as the peptide behind collagen, elasticity and real skin quality. He also said, "I don’t understand why people limit medicine only for treating an illness," followed by, "Should we, as a society, think about how not to get sick in the first place?" and "Why not use medically approved drugs, with a doctor, to help you to achieve your goal?"
Guardian accreditation reversed
The accreditation fight around the event has already been messy. ’s application was originally rejected before organizers changed their minds and granted accreditation, a small but telling sign of how tightly the event is being managed as it heads into its first weekend.
Angermayer said, "I know I’m right," and that is the real commercial bet here: whether a public audience will accept a competition built around drugs banned in elite sport and sold through the Enhanced website. If millions of people do watch, the question stops being whether the event exists and becomes whether it normalizes a market for enhancement products that the sport world has spent decades trying to keep out.
