FORMER Olympic hero David Wilkie cancelled his gym membership after being ticked off by a lifeguard for swimming too fast.
The 62-year-old who scooped gold in the 200 metre breaststroke in the 1976 Montreal Games, was told he was swimming too quickly and had “bumped” in to another swimmer.
The champion had been doing front crawl in the middle lane of 25 metre pool of the Royal Berkshire Virgin Active Club in Bracknell.
A fed-up Mr Wilkie complained to the club’s management and cancelled his £190 a-month membership fee.
He told the Daily Mail: “I was just swimming as normal in the pool, doing front crawl, and the lifeguard came up to me and said, ‘I think you banged into somebody’.
“I said, ‘It’s the fast lane you know, this is rubbish’.
“I think it’s just an over-zealous lifeguard.”
Mr Wilkie, who still puts in 60 lengths a day, said he did not think the lifeguard knew he was an Olympic swimming star.
He added: “You go to a swimming pool to swim – not to have lifeguards coming and telling you how to swim.
“It’s ridiculous.”
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A Virgin Active spokesman said: “We take any complaints we receive from our members seriously.
“We spoke with Mr Wilkie in 2015 to resolve his complaint and we were sorry to see him leave our club.”
Mr Wilkie learned to swim in Sri Lanka, where he was born.
He won his first medal in Munich in 1972 where he picked up the silver for the 200 metre breaststroke.
Four years later he won gold in the same event as well as silver in the 100 metres breast-stroke.
He is believed to be the only person to have held British, American, Commonwealth, European, World and Olympic swimming titles at the same time.
After retiring from swimming, he remained active and started a health business and Pets’ Kitchen, which provides nutritional food for pets.
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