Reggie Alexander

Born in Nairobi, Reggie Alexander studied accounting in Great Britain and served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He returned to Kenya to pursue a career in commerce and tourism but soon entered politics, serving as Mayor of Nairobi starting in 1954. When Kenya became independent he spent four years as an elected member of parliament. He had been a rugby and hockey player as a youth and was a founder of the Kenya Commonwealth Games and Olympic Association in 1954, serving as President through 1968.

Alexander was co-opted onto the IOC in 1960 and soon chaired the Olympic Aid Commission, which became Olympic Solidarity. He was instrumental on the IOC ad-hoc commission that investigated apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s. He also served on the New Sources of Financing Commission.

Alexander was known for his significant opposition to what he considered the over-commercialization of the Olympic Movement and campaigned strenuously against it. At the 1986 IOC Session in Lausanne, which was choosing the host cities for the 1992 Olympic Games and Olympic Winter Games, he emotionally told the assembled members, “In my dream, I went to the grave site of [modern Olympics founder] Baron de Coubertin and there, I had a vision. The grave opened up before my eyes, de Coubertin’s hand reached out, grasped the Olympic Rings and pulled them down into the ground. Then the baron said to me, ‘You can have these back only after you have stopped misbehaving yourselves.’”