Clubindustry

One fitness club leader not only was at the Barack Obama rally last week at Grant Park in Chicago, but he got up close and personal with the president-elect in a VIP tent after Obama’s acceptance speech.

Steve Schwartz, president and CEO of TCA Holdings (Midtown Athletic Clubs) was on hand for the historic event. Schwartz, a contributor to the Obama campaign, took a trolley to Grant Park from campaign headquarters at the Hyatt, then had dinner with other honored guests and VIPs at Grant Park. Rapper will.i.am, who later was featured in a hologram during a CNN interview, had dinner at a table next to Schwartz.

After his acceptance speech, Obama thanked campaign contributors in a special VIP tent, and Schwartz was right there to snap some photos, including the one shown here in this post.

“I was proud of Chicago and I was proud of our country,” Schwartz says. “It was a great night.”

Schwartz also says he spent a weekend with Obama two years ago, and that Michelle Obama and the Obama daughters play tennis at Midtown in Chicago every Sunday morning. The Obamas play in a separate building guarded by some 15 Secret Service agents, Schwartz says.

With Barack Obama as our president-elect, it will be interesting to see what his presence in the White House will mean to the fitness industry. Early indications are that he not only will be the consummate fitness president, but the fitness club president.

As Town Sports International points out on its Web site, Obama is a regular at Washington Sports Clubs (when he’s in Washington) and saluted his win last week. Obama’s penchant for playing basketball the morning of election day is well known, but I’ve also got tons of articles somewhere on my desk of Obama—on the campaign trail—making an unannounced trip into a 24 Hour Fitness or another club or a local YMCA to work out. A club staff member in Hawaii got Obama to autograph the local newspaper after his surprise appearance there.

An article on Politico.com discusses presidential exercise through the years and mentions Obama’s workout regimen. The Washington Post offers a little more detail into Obama’s routine. Even the British press is taking notice of his fitness prowess.

At our Club Industry show last month in Chicago, Dr. Kenneth Cooper praised the fitness level of one of his famous patients, George W. Bush. Will Bush’s successor take fitness—and fitness clubs—to a higher level of importance? We’ll find out soon enough.

I’ll have to admit, I didn’t see the “resignation” of Gold’s Gym CEO David Schnabel coming. If things worked out a little better at our Club Industry show last month in Chicago, I might have had more of a clue.

Let me explain: At the Club Industry reception, we met up with our friends who do public relations work for Gold’s Gym out of Chicago. At kind of a spur of the moment, I got invited to a late dinner with Gold’s corporate executives (Schnabel was not one of them) who just got to town that day. We had some cell phone issues, so I ended up laying low at the hotel that night. The dinner was at 9 o’clock (who eats dinner at 9 o’clock?), so even if we had made a connection, I don’t know if I would have followed through with the invite. It had already been a long day of travel, seminars and hobnobbing, and furthermore, who eats dinner at 9 o’clock?

Had I gone, perhaps I would have had a better idea about the direction of Gold’s. Maybe after a few drinks, I could have pried some valuable information out of the Gold’s folks. Maybe after a few more drinks, they might have been chirping like canaries.

Oh, well. We’ll see if they’ll talk next year. That is, if I get invited again.