by Jamie Bullen

A former Olympic athlete who now runs a gym in Canterbury has spoken of his shock after he discovered he illegally used the Olympic rings as part of a summer promotion.

Weightlifter Karl Grant, 42, has been managing the Ladies of Leisure gym in St Dunstans Street for the past 12 years and represented Great Britain at Athens in 2004.

Looking to cash in on the London Games as well as encouraging more women to join his gym, he splashed out £2,000 on leaflets, banners and A-boards with a cut-price membership offer which included the five rings.

However, after a conversation with a city shopkeeper who said Canterbury City Council asked him to remove a poster with the five rings Mr Grant discovered he was breaching trademark laws.

He said: “It all seemed to be going fine - the first week went past but then I had a phone call from a member of the public who received one of these leaflets.

“He was a shop owner and it was a very caring phone call - he told me he had tried to put an internal in his window.

“I then investigated it over the next couple of days and found what he was saying was perfectly true, in that apparently we are not allowed to use a number of things, there is no trademark sign on the Olympic rings that makes you aware of this.

“The council haven’t actually made anybody aware of this and they are going round to local businesses to do things to promote their businesses and we seem to have come out the other side of that.

“It is going to hit us quite hard, it has cost us about £2,000 to run a non-campaign: that is £2,000 we have just let go. There is no way we can recoup that.”

Mr Grant said he spoke with two friends and fellow Olympians who were also unaware of the rules and believe businesses are at risk by a lack of information stating you cannot use the rings.

He added: “How much did it cost us to bring the Olympics to this country?

“You would have thought there would have been a clause that says if we are paid all this money local businesses have the right to use the images for a set period of time, but there’s nothing like that.”

A spokesman for Trading Standards said they were unable to comment on individual cases.