Nearly 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) away from Washington D.C., one man in London was following last November's US presidential election with particular interest. When Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, it opened the door for Aron D'Souza's dream of an "Olympics on drugs."

"We knew that if the Biden/Harris camp won, America would not be a place for us. But if the Trump camp won, we knew that it was going to be a very successful first host country for us," D'Souza, an Australian businessman and founder of the Enhanced Games, told DW.

The Enhanced Games, where athletes are encouraged to take banned substances, have struggled to get off the ground. But that all seems to have changed since Trump's win. The latest investor of the Games is Donald Trump Jr., a sign that the Games could finally happen. 

'Technology, growth and innovation'

"This is not a joke because the Trump family has invested in us," D'Souza said. "I speak with his (Donald Trump's) senior advisors on a fairly regular basis. They love what we're doing. They believe in technology, growth, and innovation."

D'Souza says the first edition of the Enhanced Games will be hosted by a US city, and that the details will be unveiled in a few weeks.

So far only one athlete has publicly signed up, Australian Olympic medalist James Magnussen. But D'Souza said recruitment has picked up since the Paris Olympics.

"We have present world record holders, people who were at the Paris Olympics, who won medals."

D'Souza believes that traditional sports institutions, including the International Olympic Committee, are worried.

"They're in crisis mode ... because they know that we have the direct support." 

WADA condemn 'Olympics on drugs'

Both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) have condemned the Enhanced Games. For them, it goes against everything sports is supposed to represent.

"The Enhanced Games are a dangerous and irresponsible concept," WADA said in a statement to DW. "The beauty and popularity of the sport is based on the ideal of clean and fair competition."

But those behind the Enhanced Games claim that athletes are already secretly doping. The founder cites a WADA commissioned study at the 2011 IAAF World Championships that suggested that nearly 44% of athletes were already doping.

In its statement, WADA said D'Souza had "cherry picked" the data.

"The study he cites dates back nearly 15 years, was very narrow in its scope and controversial in its methods, as was later made clear in the scientific literature."

The Chinese swimming doping controversy months before the Tokyo Olympics and Russia's state sponsored doping scandal have raised concerns about the pervasiveness of the problem. 

Health and safety risks

Athletes have always sought to push the boundaries of performance, but how the Enhanced Games wants to do that is controversial.

They want to lift the entire stigma attached to doping in order to "unlock human potential." The organizers promise to monitor the health of all the athletes. Drugs, they say, will be administered under the supervision of doctors and athletes will be tested regularly.

"Individuals should be able to take risks for themselves with free and informed consent" said D'Souza.

For some, using anabolic steroids could come at a price. 

"Unfortunately, this whole thing is experimental. The only way that they will know where the limit is, is until after they've crossed the limit," Chris Raynor, a sports medicine doctor at Cornwall Community Hospital in Canada, told DW.

"There are always effects associated with these medications. It can lead to cardiac arrhythmias, a heart attack, sudden cardiac death."

The body is always striving for balance. That means there's an initial dramatic response to taking performance-enhancing substances that boost performance, such as muscle gain, or getting stronger and faster. But the body eventually adapts. 

"Over time, in order to get similar effects as to what you got when you first started using it, you have to use more," Raynor said. "If you're focusing on performance, you're not worrying about those other things. As you increase what you're using, you're going to be changing the balance of those other systems."

Would athletes risk their reputation? 

The Olympics don't pay athletes. Instead the IOC passes most of its revenue on to national Olympic committees and sports federations. 

Last year, World Athletics became the first international federation to award prize money at the Olympic Games, paying for gold medals. They plan on extending the prize money to silver and bronze medalists at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.

But can they compete with the Enhanced Games, which promises a base salary, prize money and nearly €1 million ($1.1m) for breaking a world record? 

Money talks

D'Souza said the potential financial gains had convinced some high-profile athletes beyond James Magnussen to sign on. 

"I was talking to one of the best swimmers in the world, in the top 10. His career has gone on for more than a decade now. He's earned $200,000 dollars. So he's averaged $20,000 a year" D'Souza said. "I said, 'Hey, you want to come to the Enhanced Games? This will be your annual salary, and he was like, 'Done.'"

Perhaps the identity of that "star swimmer" will be revealed in a few weeks' time. Finding out what kind of impact the Enhanced Games will have on mainstream sport – if they do indeed get off the ground – promises to take much longer.

Edited by: Chuck Penfold