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The 2026 Enhanced Games are just around the corner, and Australian former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen looks more than ready and an unreal body transformation. Magnussen, a three-time Olympic medalist, has openly used performance-enhancing drugs to pack on muscle ahead of the PED-encouraged event.
The 34-year-old has tracked his journey on Instagram along the way. And new side-by-side photos show just how much larger he’s become while preparing for the inaugural Enhanced Games in Las Vegas.
James Magnussen looks unrecognizable after preparing for the Enhanced Games. Contests are encouraged to use performance-enhancing drugs to break world records. If they break a record, they get $1 million. pic.twitter.com/2uX8yP1ehx
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) May 29, 2025
The Enhanced Games were first created in 2023 by Australian businessman Aron D’Souz. The premise of the games is to see just what athletes can accomplish with the full backing of medical science. If athletes break a world record at the event, they will be given a $1 million bonus.
“Fundamentally, the Olympics are broken,” D’Souza told the New York Post. “The Olympics are bloated and over-bureaucratized. The many layers of organizations and committees and subcommittees and federations are an alphabet soup that has created an unbridgeable gulf between the athletes and the Olympic apparatus that is meant to sustain them.”
D’Souza claims that his event gives power back to athletes.
“We believe that individuals are best placed to make decisions about their own bodies, in consultation with their doctors. Therefore, we would welcome all performance therapies that are done under medical supervision,” he stated.
Magnussen is undeniably much larger than he was in London in 2012 and Rio De Janeiro in 2016 for the Olympics, where he claimed two bronze medals and one silver. But the question is whether that added mass will lead to faster swimming.
Notably, Greek former Olympic Kristian Gkolomeev swam 20.89-second 50-meter freestyle time trial in the US in February. Gkolomeev, who is also training for the enhanced games, “broke” the 2009 world record set by Brazil’s Cesar Ciello by .02 seconds.
Notably, however, Gkolomeev wore a full-body suit that was banned by World Aquatics shortly after Ciello’s record-setting swim. So it’s hard to say how much is attributed to the PEDs compared to the suit.
However, one thing is certain: for better or worse, the Enhanced Games will be quite the spectacle.