Gold's Gym: Tucson 2009, Daytona 2024

In 2009, Pima County health inspectors documented mold in a Tucson Gold's Gym men's locker room. In 2024, a member had to test a Daytona Gold's Gym sauna himself — because in Florida, no inspector was coming.

Tucson, Arizona — 2009 Reported

The Tucson Citizen, reviewing Pima County health-department gym inspection and complaint records from 2005–2009, reported that inspectors found mold, damaged ceiling tiles, and rust in the men’s locker room of a Gold’s Gym East Side club, and that the Northwest club’s pool and spas were briefly closed by the health department.

The detail that matters for this site is not the mold — it is that an inspector was there at all. Pima County inspected gyms on complaint, so a public record exists. In most of the country, the same conditions produce no record, because nobody’s job description includes walking into the locker room.

Source: Tucson Citizen — Complaints against local gyms triple since 2005

Daytona Beach, Florida — 2024

Fifteen years later and across the country, the Daytona case is the mirror image: visible mold in the men’s sauna, three named mold species from the member’s own test kit, serious illness — and no inspector, ever, because Florida’s health department told the member it has no mandate over gym saunas, and the agency that registers the gym (FDACS) regulates contracts and money, not sanitation.

The full record is our founding story: The Gold’s Gym Daytona Sauna Case.

The pattern

Same chain, two states, two decades. In one, a county health department created a paper trail. In the other, the only paper trail is the one a sick member created by hand. Gym Watch exists so the record does not depend on which county a gym happens to sit in — and the petition exists to make the Tucson route the normal one.