You are right to see the flaws, and I think we can take it one step further. On paper the purpose of testing is to create a fair playing field. In practice it also works as a tool of control for the people who run the sport: big sponsors like Nike, federation heads, World Athletics, the IOC.
I am not saying every positive test is fake or every ban is political. But look at how the system is set up. Vague wording, loopholes, delays in banning obvious substances, selective enforcement. That is not just incompetence. It creates leverage. If you are useful and play along, you somehow skate by. If you become a problem, suddenly the full weight of “clean sport” can land on your head.
Lance is the template. For years he was a global cash cow who made everyone money and gave the sport a heroic face. The red flags were there, insiders were suspicious, but nothing stuck. Then he turned from asset to liability. Almost overnight the tone changed, investigations sharpened, people who stayed quiet for years started talking, and he was tossed aside as the great villain. Did the science suddenly improve in one season, or did his value to the system crash?
Even LetsRun sits inside that ecosystem. How many clicks and page views come from endless “Is X athlete doping” threads and moral arguments that never really get resolved? The current half effective, half theatrical anti doping structure keeps everything murky enough that there is always another outrage cycle, but never enough clarity to actually clean house.
That is why I see the Enhanced Games as a kind of brutal honesty. I am not pretending they are a utopia or that they fix every inequality. But they strip away the regulatory theater and say out loud what everyone already knows: enhancement is part of elite sport. Make it explicit, make it transparent, and you remove one of the main tools of selective enforcement.
So when the powers that be line up to denounce it, is that really about fairness and athlete health, or about protecting a system where they control who gets protected, who gets sacrificed, and when the big, public bust gets staged to reassure everyone that “the system works”?