A top Mumbai bodybuilder has been left fuming after being turned away from one of the Indian city's leading gymnasiums.
Shashikant Hotkar, this year's winner of the Mumbai Shree
bodybuilding title in March, was stunned when he found that his membership of Gold's Gym had been cancelled without notice in the first week of this month. When he demanded to know the reason for his effective expulsion, he was told that it was because he was deemed a fitness industry “professional” and thus ineligible for membership of an amateur association.
Hotkar had been a member of the gym since June and was fully paid-up. He knew of the gym's enviable bodybuilding and muscle-building facilities and was anxious to make use of them.
For its part, the gym's management said that the decision was down to the fact that Hotkar was a “professional trainer” and was “training his friends and our other clients” on the premises. They also accused him of selling bodybuilding supplements, thus potentially harming their own “business prospects."
