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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Martha Gill

Women aren’t always safe, even in gyms. But fear is a good way of reining them in

Video grab of fitness model Nashali Alma taking on an attacker while alone in the gym of her Florida apartment building.
Fighting back: The moment Instagram fitness model Nashali Alma takes on an attacker while alone in the gym of her Florida apartment building. Photograph: YouTube/Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office

I was utterly transfixed last week by a moment captured on CCTV in a Florida gym. A woman – an Instagram fitness model called Nashali Alma – sees a man waiting outside the door and interrupts her workout to buzz him in. It is evening. The two are now alone, sealed inside the empty room.

After a few minutes the man approaches her and then, shockingly, starts to chase her around the machines. Then he catches her. You think: that’s it, she’s done for. But like one of those dramatic sequences in the very best David Attenborough films – a hatchling iguana evading a nest of snapping snakes, perhaps, or an impala struggling clear of a crocodile death-roll – it is not over. She fights and, eventually – unbelievably – she wins. The exhausted predator has been outdone by his wily prey.

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