2004.12.11

Athens Paralympics men's marathon champion has been forced to turn down membership of a prominent sports gym because of "unreasonable" conditions applied to his application apparently as he is blind, the Mainichi has learned.

Officials at Konami Sports, the sports gym chain sponsoring the Japan Olympic Committee, initially gave a verbal refusal to a membership application made at the club's Ginza outlet in February by Yuichi Takahashi, the marathon gold medallist.

When 39-year-old Takahashi asked for an explanation, the sports gym told him its clubs were not equipped to cater for the blind and asked him to wait.

Upon remaining silent for months, Konami came back to Takahashi after he had won his gold medal and presented him with a long list of conditions to meet before it would allow him to join the 860,000 members it boasts of having at its 205 gyms nationwide.

The furious national hero turned down the offer in disgust.

His treatment has sparked a series of complaints about sports clubs' discriminatory treatment of the disabled.

Among Konami's conditions for Takahashi's membership were:

LIMITING use of the gym from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.;

DEMANDING he be accompanied at all times by at least one male helper: and,

INSISTING he agree not to ask instructors for any assistance he required in connection with his blindness.

Takahashi, who works during the days, was furious.

"Under these conditions, there was no way I could use the facilities," he said. "I was shocked. I can only think it must have been a way to discriminate against the disabled."

Konami doesn't have formal regulations about refusing membership to the disabled.

"We've never refused anybody's membership," a Konami spokesman said. "We made the conditions because our prime concern was for the safety of Mr. Takahashi and for other users. It took us seven months to come up with some conditions for membership because we wanted to closely check safety conditions at the facilities."

Toshihiro Higashi, a lawyer who was involved in the formulation of the U.N.'s treaty on human rights for the disabled, was scathing in his criticism of the club.

"Doing this to an athlete having no trouble leading a normal life and perfectly capable of traveling the world to take part in major competitions is totally lacking in rationality. I'm sure there are plenty of other similar cases that have yet to surface," the wheelchair-using lawyer said. "Rather than any concern about safety or facilities, I think the club's prejudices run deep and that national guidelines need to be drafted for more disabled members to be admitted by sports clubs."

Photographer Seiichi Motohashi, whose daughter was refused a sports club membership apparently because she has Down's Syndrome, concurs with the view that some gyms discriminate against the disabled.

"Four or five years ago when they turned down my daughter's membership application, we were told things like, 'we don't want to alarm other members' and 'we'll make a special class for her, so give us some time to come up with the details,'" Motohashi said. "But, what my daughter and I wanted was for her to be able to get in and get all sweaty with all the other members of the club. Simply isolating people is absolutely meaningless." (Mainichi Shimbun, Dec. 11, 2004)