McEvoy laughs off Enhanced Games, but one key aspect has him concerned

Australian swimming star Cam McEvoy has laughed off the performances at last month’s Enhanced Games but admits he is concerned about an erosion of public confidence in clean sport after athletes using drugs failed to break world records.

Athletes competed for large sums of prizemoney in swimming, athletics and weightlifting at the inaugural Enhanced Games in Las Vegas while openly taking banned substances such as peptides and testosterone.

Enhanced Games organisers claimed Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev “broke” McEvoy’s world record when he clocked 20.81 seconds in the 50m freestyle, earning a $US1 million ($1.4 million) bonus on top of two $US250,000 race victories for a total payday of $US1.5 million for 67 seconds of racing.

McEvoy’s former Australian teammate James Magnussen finished last in the 50m and 100m freestyle races at the Enhanced Games. The 35-year-old’s 50m time of 22.35s in Vegas would have left him battling to make the final of the same event at Australia’s swimming trials.

Jamie Jack (21.60s), McEvoy (21.72s), Ollie Moclair (21.83s), Flynn Southam (21.97s), Isaac Cooper (21.98s), Ben Armbruster (22.02s) and Tom Nowakowski (22.12s) all swam faster than Magnussen in Wednesday morning’s heats in Sydney, despite several conserving energy for the evening final.

The Enhanced Games attracted widespread ridicule, with critics pointing out Gkolomeev was the only athlete to swim faster than an official world record despite having performance-enhancing substances in his system and wearing a banned supersuit that provided a significant advantage.

The money on offer would have been a bitter pill to swallow for McEvoy, who lowered the official 50m freestyle world record to 20.88s in March as a clean athlete.

“I was expecting faster,” McEvoy said after a heat swim of 21.72s on day three of the Australian swimming trials for the Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacific Championships.

“It’s like someone putting fins [flippers] on and doing a 50 freestyle. It’s an exhibition swim, very much outside the scope that is regular sport. It is marketing, so to speak.

“Across the sports, they didn’t have the top people there. It brought in a lot of views, it dominated the algorithm for a little bit of time, but largely the world of sport will move on. It is what it is.

“They shifted the way they portrayed it halfway through the competition. It went from world records to PBs [personal bests].

“I’ve just been trying to lock into what I’ve been doing.”

What frustrates McEvoy most is the suggestion that because multiple world records were not broken, clean athletes competing under anti-doping rules might not be playing by the rules.

“One thing I am disappointed in is that there was a lot of erosion of public confidence in the response to the Enhanced results when people outside of sport … make conclusions like, oh, they didn’t break the records. It’s a lot more nuanced than that,” he said.

“I think that erosion of the public confidence in clean sport … has been really disappointing to see.”

McEvoy, the reigning Olympic and world champion, has beaten Gkolomeev and Ben Proud, who also swam at the Enhanced Games, on multiple occasions in recent years.

Asked whether he would have eclipsed Gkolomeev’s 20.81s had he been allowed to wear a supersuit, McEvoy laughed.

“I’ve done a 25 [metre race] with that suit [in practice] and it was significantly faster with the suit than without,” he said. “I was too young and tiny to wear them in 2009 [before they were banned], but yeah, I’ll leave it at that.”

The Enhanced Games have also reignited debate about athlete compensation, particularly after IOC president Kirsty Coventry reiterated her view that it was not the organisation’s role to pay prizemoney at the Olympics.

“I don’t believe in paying athletes prizemoney at the Olympic Games, as this would benefit only a very small number of athletes,” Coventry said last month. “I do believe our role as the IOC is to find ways to directly support a large number of athletes on their journey to becoming Olympians.”

In a social media response to Coventry’s comments, McEvoy suggested a model featuring a $10,000 appearance fee and medal bonuses of $100,000, $60,000 and $25,000 for gold, silver and bronze.

“That would be around $180 million, which is only 1.5 per cent of the quadrennial revenue [$12 billion] the IOC generates,” McEvoy wrote.

The four-time Olympian hopes the discussion continues.

“I think it was definitely a silver lining that the conversation [is now in the public domain],” McEvoy said.

“It definitely opened up potential pathways of opportunity for things like the Olympics and Olympic sports in general to maybe have better pathways to earn more revenue or something like that. I hope that momentum doesn’t fizzle away. The timing of certain comments wasn’t exactly the best.”