Innocent Egbunike


Innocent Egbunike is a former sprinter from Nigeria.
He studied at Azusa Pacific University, where he still holds the school record at 400 metres and the automatically timed NAIA meet record at 200 metres.

Medals

At the 1985 Summer Universiade he won the 400 metres. At the regional level he won the 1987 All-Africa Games as well as three gold medals at the African Championships.
He won an Olympic bronze medal in 4 x 400 metres relay in Los Angeles 1984. He finished sixth in the final of the individual 400 metres contest. Four years later in Seoul he placed fifth. In addition he won a silver medal in the 400 metres at the 1987 World Championships.
He also won the gold medal in the 200 metres at the 1983 Summer Universiade with a personal best of 20.42 seconds; he followed this by finishing 6th in a world class field in the 200 metre final at the 1983 World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki.
He also won the Soviet 100 metres in 1983.

Post athletics

After retiring from competition he became a coach.
He was coach of the Nigerian track and field team at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, and head coach at the 2008 Olympics.
He was coach of Angelo Taylor, the gold medalist in the 400m hurdles at the 2008 Olympics, coach of Chris Brown, the fourth-place finisher in the 400m at the 2008 Olympic Games. He is currently the head coach of Pasadena City College's track and field team.

Achievements

Personal bests

Egbunike is good friends with former Kansas City Chiefs' running back Christian Okoye and met him when they were both training for Nigeria's national track and field team. While at Asuza Pacific, he told coaches about Okoye's ability in the discus and they decided to offer Okoye a scholarship for track and field.