Gym that accidentally advertised classes in response to a Taliban exercising video says there was ‘an error’

A popular gym chain has confirmed its response to a video of the Taliban exercising, advertising its classes, was an “error”.

The video of Taliban militants exercising in a deserted gym had gone viral as people paid attention to the group’s activities after they seized Afghanistan causing many to flee the country.

In a now deleted tweet, PureGym replied to someone apparently ironically tagging them in the footage and asking “what time is the spin class?”

They chain responded: “You can get a full list of the classes and the times they commence at on the homepage of your gym! If you are unable to find this then please drop us a DM with the gym you are interested in can advise you further on this!”

According to its website, PureGym is the second largest gym and fitness operator in Europe, with approximately 1.7 million members at the end of 2019 and over 500 sites across the UK, Denmark, Switzerland and Poland. They do not appear to have any branches in Afghanistan, or put on spin classes for members of the Taliban.

How surprising.

A PureGym spokesperson told indy100 that the tweet was an innocent mistake that was deleted as soon as possible. They said: “PureGym receives thousands of enquiries from members and the general public on Twitter each week.

“In this instance a member of the PureHelp team replied to a video unrelated to PureGym having mistaken it as a question about class timetables.

“As soon as the error was identified the tweet was deleted.”

Still, a lesson in learning to look before you leap if we ever saw one.