National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOCK) president Shadrack Maluki has revealed plans to establish the organisation’s first high-performance training centre in Nyahururu as part of a wider strategy to identify, nurture and develop talent across the country.
Speaking during the NOCK’s Extra General Meeting (EGM), Maluki said the committee had acquired a 42-acre piece of land in Nyahururu, which will host the state-of-the-art facility. “We have to invest in infrastructure that can help in nurturing the talent of our young athletes,” Maluki said.
He said the facility, located at a higher altitude than Iten, will give NOCK the capacity to accommodate and train athletes from different disciplines while reducing its reliance on external training facilities.
“This will be the first time for NOCK to own a state-of-the-art high-performance training facility. The piece of land sits on a 42-acre area and is at a higher altitude than Iten,” he said. Maluki said the project would also help make NOCK more self-reliant in its talent development programmes.
“We want to be independent in growing talent. We are being intentional because, as NOCK, our business is sports and we have no facility where we can put our athletes for all disciplines,” he said. The NOCK president described the project as a long-standing ambition, saying he had envisaged a centre where promising athletes can be churned out without placing an additional burden on the organisation’s budget.
“It was my dream to have a high-performance training centre where we can get athletes over the weekend without spending money in our budget, and we train them to conquer the world,” he said.
Maluki said the high-altitude location at the slopes of the Aberdares has a strong sporting pedigree, having produced athletes such as the late Olympic marathon champion Samuel Wanjiru and former world cross-country champion John Ngugi. “It is the highest altitude at the slopes of Aberdares.
The place has produced champions like Ngugi and the late Wanjiru. It’s up in the skies, and it’s a good facility,” he said. NOCK is also seeking partnerships with the private sector and other stakeholders to accelerate development of the facility. “We are involving the corporate world and other stakeholders to come on board so we can partner to make it a reality,” Maluki said.
He said the Nyahururu project would serve as a pilot, with plans to establish similar facilities in other regions during his tenure. “I am not just stopping there as president of the National Olympics Committee. This is a pilot project. I intend within my term to have similar projects in every region where we can be able to go and tap talent in each region as NOCK,” he said. New constitution adopted.
The EGM also adopted a new NOCK constitution, with Maluki saying the changes were prompted by disputes that emerged during the 2025 elections. “During the 2025 elections we witnessed a lot of back and forth emanating from a flawed constitution, and I promised that once I got elected we would never go back there again,” he said.
Maluki said the new constitution clarifies the roles and powers of the president and secretary general, including who holds a federation’s vote and who assumes responsibility in case of a vacuum.
With the constitutional changes now in place, Maluki urged the Olympic fraternity to shift its focus to NOCK’s core mandate of talent identification and development. “We need now to move forward to concentrate on our core mandate, which is nurturing talent and not politicising,” he said.
