Charles Mukora

Charles Mukora was a long jumper, triple jumper, and then a decathlete, before becoming a prominent coach in Kenyan athletics. He was the coach of Kip Keino, Kenya’s first great international distance runner. He also coached Naftali Temu and was head coach of Kenyan teams at the 1968 and 1972 Olympic Games. Mukora later went into sports administration and became an IOC Member, but his tenure was checkered.

Mukora studied at Loughborough College in England and on return joined the Coca-Cola Company in Kenya. He rose to external affairs manager and contributed greatly to Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of Kenyan athletics. In 1990 he retired from Coca-Cola and became an IOC Member. He also served as vice-president of the Commonwealth Games Federation. Mukora was a close ally of then Democratic Party leader, Mwai Kibaki, and was elected as Laikipia East Member of Parliament serving from 1992-97.

Mukora served as chairman of the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK), named to that post in 1989. In 1976 he had been elected to the council of the IAAF. He led the Kenya Amateur Athletics Association from 1972-74, and was later chairman of the Kenyan National Sports Council.

In January 1999 Mukora was named with several other IOC Members in the Olympic Bribery Scandal that started with investigations into the workings of the Salt Lake City 2002 Organizing Committee (SLOC). The IOC Board of Ethics report revealed that Mukora had been paid $34,650 directly by the SLOC, purportedly for a Kenyan NOC program. Mukora always proclaimed his innocence and that the money was used to finance Kenyan sports development but he was eventually forced to resign from the IOC.