The 30-year-old sprinter is the most high-profile signing for the start-up league, which also recently signed Paris Olympic silver-medal swimmer Ben Proud.
In a statement on the Enhanced Games website, Kerley says “This now gives me the opportunity to dedicate all my energy to pushing my limits and becoming the fastest human to ever live.”
Kerley won the 100 meters at world championships in 2022. He has two medals at the Olympics — silver in Tokyo in 2021 and bronze in Paris last year in an historically close 100-meter final.
The Enhanced Games is set to debut next May in Las Vegas, with track, swimming and weightlifting contests offering $500,000 per event, including $250,000 awarded to first place. There's also a $1 million bonus for breaking world records in the 100-meter sprint on the track or in the 50-meter freestyle in swimming.
Seb Coe, the president of World Athletics, said he had heard the Kerley news.
“We're in a championships,” Coe said. “There's nothing more I need to say. We'll look at it when we get out of here.”
Earlier this year, World Aquatics passed a rule to banish athletes who participated in the Enhanced Games. Enhanced Games then filed an $800 million lawsuit against the federation and others for what it said was an illegal attempt to get athletes to boycott its league.
In May, Kerley was charged in Florida with punching a woman, a hurdler who also competed in the Olympics. That came just a few months after he was arrested for allegedly punching a Miami Beach police officer on Jan. 2, an incident in which police used a Taser on him.
His lawyers say Kerley is innocent of those charges.
___
AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports