Nock boss Kipchoge fully paid for use of his HPTC camp

National Olympics Committee-Kenya (Nock) chairman, Dr. Kipchoge Keino has acknowledged receiving full payment amounting to tens of millions of shillings for use of his High Performance Training Centre in Eldoret that hosted Team Kenya’s track and field athletes ahead of Rio 2016.

At the same time, the Nock chief declared he would not issue his statement on Tuesday as earlier promised on the Rio 2016 fiasco since the matter was now under investigation by State authorities.

“I cannot complain. Athletes came, stayed at my place and I got paid. I cannot confirm the total for now until I travel back to Eldoret. I had 105 athletes including the officials.

“I shall give you a full detailed account on how many days and what they spent while in camp. All I wanted is to see the team being taken care of and relaxed. I was in the business of making money.

“We did not charge them a lot of money we gave them the same rates as IAAF and IOC and we were given a down payment of Ksh 1.5 million,” Kipchoge said.

Kipchoge refuted claims that hosting Team Kenya at his camp betrayed a conflict of interest or was profit oriented with reports saying the bill ran to over Ksh100m.

A number of elite athletes and coaches were against decision to camp at the HPTC with allegations that some only made technical appearances despite the fact the full costs were met by the County Government of Uasin Gishu.

Earlier, the Nock boss who has served in the capacity since 1999 and refused to quit in the aftermath of the Rio 2016 mess that has seen five of his colleagues arrested and two brought before court, had vehemently defended taking the camp to Eldoret.

“When I was running I used to train at high attitude areas which were influential to my performance in low attitude areas. For example before I went to Mexico Olympics, we trained at Nyahururu and I brought home gold and silver medals, same case with Naphtali Temo and Amos Biwott in the steeplechase event, Jamaica is also a hot area and I brought home two gold medals,” he said before the July 1 Olympics Trials in Eldoret.

Following the Rio fiasco that saw the arrest of Chef de Mission, Stephen Arap Soi, his deputy James Chacha, Nock Secretary General Francis K Paul, Pius Ochieng’ and Resham Bains, Kipchoge says a full report will have to wait until his officials are released.

“Nock was paying for accommodation and the fuelling of the mini bus and the pick up that were being us by athletes to access their various training grounds.

“The full statement will be given later. However, we got a problem in writing the report since most of my management was arrested plus I’m still waiting on others who were in charge of the team to give me their reports, ranging from the coaches and team managers.

“I’m also waiting the rugby team report which was hosted in Nandi and was sponsored by the Nandi County Government, the marathon team which was in Kaptagat, boxing, swimming and many others. I was not dealing with payment hence it will be a bit of a challenge for me,” the two-time Olympics champion and first Laureate maintained.