These are the questions I would ask the Enhanced Games … if they would let me | Sean Ingle

They added: “We are also now starting to see some serious long-term effects from steroid use in the research. Things like reproductive function or libido just being killed off with no real clear understanding of why.”

Question three. Can athletes sue the Enhanced Games? This is not a purely theoretical question. In 2005 the Guardian reported that 190 former East German athletes had launched a case against the German pharmaceutical company Jenapharm and said that steroids had caused infertility among women, embarrassing hair growth, breast cancer, heart problems and testicular cancer. What is to stop the current crop doing the same in 20 years’ time?

Question four, to the athletes. Many of you have stressed the benefits of taking banned drugs. But have you experienced any side-effects?

Question five. I spoke to one former international athlete, who said you are a dangerous influence on kids because they would be attempting to follow in your footsteps. What is your response?

Question six, to Ben Proud. What were you thinking when the first needle went into your vein, and you went from clean athlete to pariah? And while we are here, one for Sam Quek, who won hockey gold for Team GB at Rio 2016 and is now an Enhanced Games commentator: was the TV fee worth it?

Question seven. Will there be drug testing at the Enhanced Games? It sounds like a stupid question. But you say only FDA-approved substances are permitted, so what happens to those who cheat your rules?

The hockey gold medallist Sam Quek has been announced as a commentator for the Enhanced Games. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Question eight. The Enhanced Games also claims that “the future of the human body has arrived – faster, stronger, and enhanced”. But your swimmers will also be wearing banned supersuits, which decrease drag and increase buoyancy and studies suggest improved performance by 1.5% to 3.5%. So how much of it is the body? And how much is the suit?

Question nine. You say your “new model could change sport forever”. But we have already seen what happens when an Enhanced Games athlete breaks a world record … nothing. Last year Kristian Gkolomeev swam the world’s fastest 50m freestyle time, aided by drugs and a supersuit, and no one batted an eyelid.

Finally, what next? Enhanced Games organisers have suggested the event could become like Formula One for the biotech industry, with drug companies pumping top athletes full of their latest drugs. Do you really believe that?

Personally, I believe such talk is nonsense. But I don’t dismiss the Enhanced Games out of hand. I spoke to one person in the health-tech space, who has dealt with its founders, and he pointed out they are smart people and billionaires who tend to get what they want. While they won’t change sport much, they will claim something that has infinitely more value to them: a bigger chunk of the growing anti-ageing market.

In the future, don’t be surprised if you see adverts for peptides with names that sound like distant planets: CJC-1295, Ipamorelin, Thymosin Alpha-1, TB-4, GHRP-2/6, Kisspeptin-10, Semax and Selank. Because we now live in a world that isn’t just about faster, stronger, higher, but living longer too. And that is something the Enhanced Games knows better than most.

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