Athletes, Enhanced.

On a typical humid day in Las Vegas, a number of athletes were preparing to demonstrate the peak of human physical ability, and attempt to break world records in sprinting, swimming and weightlifting, while supported by performance-enhancing drugs.

Held at Resorts World Las Vegas on May 24, the inaugural Enhanced Games brought together athletes from around the world for an event that had been controversial almost from the moment it was announced. Performance-enhancing drugs have long existed in professional sport, but almost exclusively in the shadows, with athletes routinely tested, suspended and stripped of titles when caught using banned substances. The Enhanced Games proposed something completely different: allow athletes to use them openly, provide medical oversight, and see just how far the human body could be pushed.

It was an interesting premise, and one that had attracted a surprising number of accomplished athletes. Among them were Olympic medallists, world champions and former record holders, although not everyone competing had chosen to use performance-enhancing drugs. Some entered as non-enhanced athletes, creating the unusual situation where enhanced and non-enhanced competitors would line up alongside one another.

A purpose-built arena had been constructed at Resorts World, with a swimming pool, sprint track and weightlifting platform all sitting within the same venue. The relatively compact set-up meant the programme moved easily between the three sports, and compared with the sprawling scale of many international sporting events, you were remarkably close to the athletes competing.

There was also a considerable amount of money on offer. Athletes who managed to surpass an existing world record would receive a US$1 million bonus, meaning that behind each race or lift was the possibility that we were about to see something that had never been done before.

That expectation followed the competition throughout the day, although the results didn't initially suggest that the limits of human performance were about to be dramatically rewritten.

American weightlifter Wesley Kitts produced the strongest performances of the weightlifting competition, lifting 185kg in the snatch and 220kg in the clean and jerk. Both were impressive lifts, but neither threatened the existing world records.

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The sprinting attracted some of the greatest attention, particularly with American Fred Kerley entered in the men's 100 metres. An Olympic medallist and former 100-metre world champion, Kerley had previously spoken about challenging Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record, which has remained untouched since 2009.

The race itself took considerably longer to get underway than expected, with repeated false starts sending the athletes back to their blocks. When they were eventually released cleanly, Kerley crossed the line first in 9.97 seconds. It was a fast 100 metres, but still almost four tenths of a second away from Bolt's record, and perhaps more interestingly, Kerley had elected to compete without performance-enhancing drugs.

That wasn't an isolated result. Tristan Evelyn won the women's 100 metres in 11.25 seconds and had also competed non-enhanced. For an event largely promoted around the idea of removing restrictions on what athletes could put into their bodies, two of its major sprint events had been won by athletes who had chosen not to take advantage of that freedom.

As the day progressed, it became increasingly apparent that allowing performance enhancement wasn't necessarily going to result in world records falling one after another.

The performances were strong, but the enormous expectations surrounding the Games had set a particularly high bar. If the event was going to deliver the defining moment it had promised, it was increasingly looking as though it would happen in the pool.

Greek swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev had already offered some indication of what was possible. Prior to the Games he had recorded 20.89 seconds in the 50-metre freestyle, just one hundredth of a second outside the recognised world record of 20.88. In Las Vegas he would have another opportunity, this time with US$1 million attached to going just slightly faster.

When the men's 50-metre freestyle finally arrived, Gkolomeev needed to find less than a tenth of a second.

He did.

Gkolomeev touched the wall in 20.81 seconds, seven hundredths of a second faster than the recognised world record, giving the Enhanced Games the moment it had spent much of the day waiting for. After watching record attempts fall short across the other disciplines, seeing a time of 20.81 appear on the screen finally demonstrated what the organisers had been promising.

The result won't replace the official world record. The Enhanced Games sits outside the governing structures of conventional international sport, and its athletes are permitted to use substances and technology prohibited under traditional competition rules. That included the full-body performance swimsuits worn in Las Vegas, which have been banned from conventional swimming competition for more than 15 years.

But that distinction is also part of what made attending the Enhanced Games so interesting. It wasn't pretending to operate under the same rules as the Olympics, World Athletics or World Aquatics. The entire purpose was to remove some of those rules and see what happened.

What happened was perhaps less dramatic than many people expected.

There wasn't a succession of previously untouchable records being broken, nor did enhanced athletes simply dominate everyone who chose to compete naturally. Across sprinting, swimming and weightlifting, the differences were far more complicated than that, and by the end of the competition only one recognised world record had been surpassed.

There are of course much bigger questions surrounding the concept than whether somebody can swim 50 metres seven hundredths of a second faster. Performance-enhancing drugs have been prohibited in sport for decades for reasons that include athlete health and safety as well as fairness, and creating a competition where their use is permitted doesn't make those concerns disappear.

But watching the Enhanced Games in person also made it difficult to dismiss the concept as simply athletes taking drugs and trying to break records. There were enhanced athletes competing against non-enhanced athletes, technology that would be prohibited elsewhere, considerable medical and scientific involvement, and athletes who had already reached the highest levels of their respective sports before arriving in Las Vegas.

Rather than providing a definitive demonstration of what the human body is capable of when conventional restrictions are removed, the first Enhanced Games seemed to demonstrate just how difficult that question actually is to answer.

Athletic performance is influenced by training, genetics, equipment, nutrition, psychology, recovery, coaching and an increasingly sophisticated level of sports science. Performance-enhancing drugs add another variable, but if Las Vegas demonstrated anything, it was that they aren't a shortcut to rewriting the record books.

For all of the controversy that surrounded the event before it began, the most surprising thing about watching the Enhanced Games was perhaps how familiar much of it felt. Athletes still had to perform when it mattered, favourites didn't necessarily produce the results expected of them, and world records remained extraordinarily difficult to break.

The rules may have changed, but sport, it turns out, is still sport.