Paying athletes can undermine their autonomy

he Enhanced Games, a forthcoming international sporting event that permits the use of performance enhancing drugs, has reignited debate over athlete autonomy and the ethics of doping. While organizers emphasize safety and fairness, one underexplored bioethical issue is whether the $1 million prize and offer of a stable salary for enhanced athletes may undermine consent and, by extension, autonomy. Drawing on established bioethical literature, this article argues that participant payment can be coercive and threaten the voluntariness of athletes’ consent. It begins with a normative risk analysis of the Enhanced Games and then extrapolates this to sports more widely to highlight that concern for athletes’ consent isn’t unique to competitions which allow or encourage doping. The article concludes by advocating for the establishment of specialist ethics committees for sporting events to help safeguard participants’ autonomy. Rather than endorsing or condemning the Enhanced Games, the aim is to promote ethical due diligence and to draw attention to an overlooked ethical problem with the current anti-doping paradigm of the Olympic Games.