Sometimes, sporting events which are coincidentally juxtaposed provide a lesson in what kind of world we live in. Some achievements are to be celebrated as wonderful successes; others are deserving failures. There is absolutely no causal connection between the outstanding success of the Cape Verde soccer team, and the recently concluded Enhanced (read Steroid) Games.

Let’s jump for joy for the first time participants Cape Verde in the FIFA World Cup. As for the overhyped and underwhelming Enhanced Games in Las Vegas, I can only offer the following schadenfreude – kick them while they’re down.

No, I am not advocating individual violence or attacks on the athletes of the Enhanced Games. But I am not sorry that the Las Vegas spectacle turned out to be an abject failure.

The Steroid Games, as they came to be known, was heavily promoted by its gym-tech-bro advocates as the beginning of a new era in Olympics sport. Allowing athletes to take performance-enhancing drugs was the key feature of this supposedly new franchise. Rather than prohibit the use of such steroids, so the underlying logic went, allowing drugged-up participants would usher in an era of superhuman sporting achievements, and world records would come tumbling down.

The brain child of libertarian entrepreneur Australian-born Aron D’Souza, and supported by tech-bro billionaire Peter Thiel, the Enhanced Games reflected the winner-take-all ethos of its high profile supporters, an ostensibly market-efficient alternative to the traditional, stale FDA-tyrannised Summer Olympics. Surely the steroid athletes would stunningly outperform their unenhanced rivals?

What we got in Las Vegas was a spectacular flop. The non-steroided athletes not only did better than their enhanced counterparts, only one world record was overthrown by a drugged-up athlete. Swimmer Kristin Gkolomeev won his event, the 50 metres swim, with a record 20.87 seconds. His achievement is unofficial, because of his use of performance enhancing drugs.

In all the other events, the non-PED athletes defeated their steroid competitors.

Swimmer James Magnussen, touted as a potential world-record breaker on PEDs, came dead last in his events. He still earned a handsome pay packet of 140 000 dollars, the financial reward being the only outstanding feature of these games.

The Enhanced Games were a farce, hardly the opening salvo in a brave new world of pharmaceutically-driven competition achieving outstanding sporting results.

A nil-all draw in the soccer does not usually qualify as an outstanding achievement. However, that result in the matchup between newcomers Cape Verde and veterans Spain in the FIFA World Cup 2026 surely ranks as one of the most memorable accomplishments in the game.

Spain were expected to squash their Cape Verdean rivals like a bulldozer running over a caterpillar. Earlier in the competition, powerhouse Germany crushed lowly-ranked Curaçao 7 – 1. Spain is ranked 2 in the competition; Cape Verde 67.

Instead, what happened was nothing short of amazing. The Cape Verde team were not only equal to their Spanish competitors, their goalkeeper made seven remarkable saves.

A 40 year old player known as ‘little Granny’ by his teammates, Vozinha put his team, and the nation of Cape Verde, firmly on centre stage.

The goalie, Josimar José Évora Dias, known as Vozinha, has become an international sensation.

Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa, is a former Portuguese colony with a population of around 529 000. I am certain all of them were cheering on their team.

It is always exciting when a small nation excels in a global sporting competition. Cape Verde scored a rare moment of triumph. No, I am not Cape Verdean. No, I do not have relatives living there. But I am thrilled beyond words for them and their success. I am not ignoring the Socceroos.

While I am very happy that the Socceroos succeed in the FIFA World Cup, it is more heartening to witness the success of teams from the Global South. Australia, being one of the richer Anglophone nations, tends to view the world with a lens of solidarity fixated on other Anglophone and rich nations.

That is all well and good, but we have come to regard countries of the Global South as ‘problem nations’. We only ever hear about them associated with warfare, corruption and tyrants, or targets of regime change.

Cape Verde is thousand of miles away from Australia. Happiness for its success is not constrained by international borders or distances. Let’s cheer on the Cape Verdeans, and all the while hoping that the failed Enhanced Games are consigned into the ash heap where they belong.