Las Vegas native Cody Miller wins Enhanced Games breaststroke events and $500K

Las Vegas native and Olympic medal-winning swimmer Cody Miller won the 50-and-100-meter breaststroke events at the Enhanced Games, netting him $500,000.

Miller, 34, won the 50-meter race with a personal best time of 26.55 seconds, besting second place Brazilian swimmer Felipe Miller’s 26.98 in the four-lane pool. Miller later won in the 100 meters with a time of 59.47, beating second place finisher Russian Evgenii Somov’s 59.61.

“This has been a childhood dream for me since I was 10 growing up here,” Miller said after winning in the 50 meters. “Having a competition like this. And I just shaved about seven tenths off my personal test at 34.”

Miller wasn’t impressed with his 100-meter winning swim and said there was room to improve upon that in future events.

Miller grew up in Las Vegas, attending Palo Verde High School between 2006 and 2010 and swimming locally for the Sandpipers of Nevada Swim Club, making the pair of wins all the sweeter.

“It’s way more than I’ve ever made in swimming before in one night,” Miller said. “Pretty cool to do it in front of a home crowd.”

Miller who won a gold and a bronze medal in the 2016 Olympic Games, said earlier this week that the substances he took in a eight-week period leading up to the event were testosterone, human growth hormone and oxandrolone, which is an anabolic steroid.

Miller said he would use the half a million dollars to ensure his family is taken care of in the future.

“That’s going to be invested in my kids’ future, that’s for sure,” Miller said. “I’m not going to blow it tonight on red, don’t worry.”

The Enhanced Games, being dubbed by some as the Steroid Olympics took place Sunday at Resorts World, with athletes who were allowed to use performance-enhancing substances vying to break work records in swimming, track and weightlifting.

Despite the goal being breaking world records Sunday, only swimmer Kristian Gkolomeev in the men’s 50-meter freestyle event at 20.81 finished faster than the world record of 20.88.

Of the 42 athletes participating in the games, just four of them opted to compete clean, without the use of banned substances. The athletes competing clean Sunday were tested during the week by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

The event was condemned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which called the event dangerous and irresponsible.

There was a $25 million prize pool for the event, with first place in each event winning $250,000, second place $125,000, third netting $75,000 and fourth place winning $50,000. Any athlete who broke a world record in men’s and women’s 100-meter sprint track event or the 50-meter freestyle swimming event would win a $1 million bonus. World records broken in the other events would win a $250,000 bonus.

The games took place in temporary, open-air venue that was constructed on the east side of Resorts World and stood 85 feet tall and is 251 feet across.

Enhanced Games co-founder, German billionaire Christian Angermayer, said ahead of the event that if no world records were broken Sunday that it would have been a disappointment.

“We need to break world records,” Angermayer said.

“My hope is we’re going to break two, three. … But it’s important.”