{"id":36392,"date":"2025-12-10T01:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T01:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/enhanced-games-max-mccusker-becomes-second-irish-swimmer-to-join-controversial-event\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T01:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T01:54:12","slug":"enhanced-games-max-mccusker-becomes-second-irish-swimmer-to-join-controversial-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/enhanced-games-max-mccusker-becomes-second-irish-swimmer-to-join-controversial-event\/","title":{"rendered":"Enhanced Games: Max McCusker becomes second Irish swimmer to join controversial event"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Max McCusker has become the second Irish Olympic swimmer to join the controversial Enhanced Games. <\/b><\/p>\n

In October, three-time Olympian Shane Ryan confirmed he had signed up after announcing his retirement from swimming, a move which was condemned<\/a> by Swim Ireland.<\/p>\n

McCusker, who represented Ireland at the 2024 Paris Games, has followed Ryan’s decision to join a competition that will allow athletes to use performance-enhancing substances without being subject to drug tests.<\/p>\n

Team GB Olympic swimmer Ben Proud, four-time Greece Olympian Kristian Gkolomeev and US sprinter Fred Kerley are among those set to compete.<\/p>\n

The first Enhanced Games are due to take place in Las Vegas in 2026 with each event awarded a total prize purse of $500,000 (\u00a3375,000) and $1m (\u00a3750,000) on offer for competitors who break world records.<\/p>\n

McCusker, 26, competed in the men’s 4x100m medley relay in Paris alongside Ryan, Conor Ferguson and Darragh Greene.<\/p>\n

At the 2024 World Aquatics Championships in Doha, McCusker broke the Irish 100m butterfly record twice in one day with times of 52.52 and 52.31 seconds.<\/p>\n

The former Arizona State University swimmer also set an Irish 100m butterfly record of 51.90 seconds during the Irish Open in 2024.<\/p>\n

American Caeleb Dressel set the 100m butterfly world record in a 50m pool at 49.45 seconds in 2021, while in October 2025 Canadian Josh Liendo broke the short course record with a time of 47.68 seconds in a 25m pool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Max McCusker has become the second Irish Olympic swimmer to join the controversial Enhanced Games. In October, three-time Olympian Shane Ryan confirmed he had signed up after announcing his retirement from swimming, a move which was condemned by Swim Ireland. McCusker, who represented Ireland at the 2024 Paris Games, has followed Ryan’s decision to join […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36394,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36392\/revisions\/36394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}