{"id":36809,"date":"2025-12-20T02:06:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T02:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/max-mccusker-swimmer-defends-enhanced-games-switch-as-a-no-brainer\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T02:06:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T02:06:04","slug":"max-mccusker-swimmer-defends-enhanced-games-switch-as-a-no-brainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/max-mccusker-swimmer-defends-enhanced-games-switch-as-a-no-brainer\/","title":{"rendered":"Max McCusker: Swimmer defends Enhanced Games switch as a &#8216;no-brainer&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Swimmer Max McCusker said joining the Enhanced Games was &#8220;a no-brainer&#8221; in order to compete in something &#8220;that no-one&#8217;s done before&#8221;. <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 26-year-old, who represented Ireland at the Olympics last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/olympics\/articles\/crl9517l16zo\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">announced earlier this month that he was joining the Games<\/a>, a new multi-sport competition that allows athletes to use performance-enhancing substances.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McCusker, who was part of the Irish men&#8217;s 4x100m medley relay team in Paris, defended his position, pointing to the financial attraction of making the switch and the excitement of being involved in a new venture as the main reasons for his move.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The butterfly specialist, whose talents were honed at Millfield School in Somerset, told BBC Radio Somerset: &#8220;Post-Olympics, I essentially had no money.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m not a Premier League footballer. You don&#8217;t make a lot of money in swimming. I guess, as a professional swimmer for four-ish years, I probably made less than \u00a310,000.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McCusker said he worked outside of swimming and had support from his parents to fund his dream of reaching the Olympics. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He retired following the Paris Games and went into corporate work before being approached by the Enhanced Games about their inaugural event, due to take place next May in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The winner of each event will pocket $500,000 (\u00a3375,000) and there will be $1m (\u00a3750,000) for those who break a world record.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was just an absolute no-brainer. Not just the financial side. It was out of interest,&#8221; McCusker said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;d done an Olympics &#8211; and barely anyone&#8217;s done that &#8211; but this is another great opportunity. A great experience to do something that no-one&#8217;s done before.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/olympics\/articles\/c20g39g13lgo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swimmer Max McCusker said joining the Enhanced Games was &#8220;a no-brainer&#8221; in order to compete in something &#8220;that no-one&#8217;s done before&#8221;. The 26-year-old, who represented Ireland at the Olympics last year, announced earlier this month that he was joining the Games, a new multi-sport competition that allows athletes to use performance-enhancing substances. McCusker, who was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36810,"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\/36809"}],"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=36809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36811,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36809\/revisions\/36811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}