Maestro of Speed
NESTLED UP A DRIVEWAY from Boronia Street in Kensington, ES Marks Athletics Field (the home of track and field in Sydney’s East) peacefully exists. It’s early on a Tuesday afternoon and the track is empty except for a man laying hurdles out for a young athlete at the southern end. A strong Pacific Islander wearing Randwick Rugby shorts appears from around the shed and strolls across the field. The compact build of a fit, young girl follows. A small man with a bicycle hastens from behind to catch them. Slowly more and more athletes appear, their muscle definitions become clearer as they approach the group meeting spot. This is the Roger Ramjet Track Club. A group of talented athletes pursing their passion for sprinting, established, led, and coached by Roger Fabri. For Fabri this is where it all began. Always on time, Fabri parks his car in the prime spot and joins his crew on the other side. Clothed in 2XU and wearing a San Francisco 49ers cap, he walks confidently with a cheeky smile and carries a box of stopwatches. Fabri has a tall, lean yet burly physique and olive Italian skin.
From humble beginnings as a sprinter and founding his track club as a hobby in 1995, Fabri has built a ‘kingdom’ by coaching speed. His business, the Speed Agility Academy, established in 2009, sees him today advise many of Australia’s biggest sporting names, including Jarryd Hayne, Todd Carney, Shaun Kenny-Dowell, Sonny Bill Williams (NZ) and David Warner. I meet with Fabri at ES Marks track on a humid Tuesday afternoon before his squad training. He was too busy during the day to meet elsewhere. A storm is brewing. Like coaching, the interview is business for Fabri and after a friendly welcome we start matter-of-factly.
Born in 1967 in Sydney, Australia, Fabri grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional Italian family and lived in Randwick, Vaucluse and later Maroubra. Naturally ‘fast’, Fabri competed in athletics as a young boy and earned himself a sporting scholarship at Sydney Grammar School. Being of ethnic background family values were important and it was expected that Fabri would follow in the family business. However, when his family experienced some issues, Fabri was forced to find another career. He started in sales.
A natural salesman with a sharp eye, business acumen and excellent communication skills, Fabri has forged success through persistence just as much as talent. Whilst working in car sales, Fabri maintained his passion for sprinting through his track club and his yearning to educate himself. Fabri never thought he would make a career out of coaching speed, but that changed when some professional athletes from other sports showed interest.
Fabri’s education involved self-funded trips to the United States where he “learned the ropes” of sprint coaching and crossed paths with former world track stars. Fabri quickly identified that to make a profitable career out of sprint coaching in Australia, he needed to associate himself with other sports. With this in mind Fabri created the Speed Agility Academy, a performance body which specialises in speed that is specific to sports. As Fabri explains, “Most people have general speed, but to have speed specific to a discipline or sport, and to make it more advantageous to that sport, that’s the area that I specialize in”. Fabri has worked with athletes across rugby league, rugby union, cricket, soccer, netball, surf lifesaving and even ice-skating. Basically any of the national codes, Fabri looks after the marquee athletes.
Fabri hungry for a sprinting education in the United States.
Fabri had, and still has, an insatiable ambition to learn. “I thought the NFL holds the benchmark when it comes to athleticism, so I went to America and started knocking on doors”. As a novice Fabri got a rude shock when doors kept closing on him, but Fabri was persistent. “The coaches kept saying, ‘gee, you’ll never go away’. In those four or five years that I kept getting rejected I attended as many workshops by as many speed authorities in the world as I could”. As he racked up the experience, Fabri was soon a step ahead. The next door he knocked on he was given an opportunity to ‘run water’. It was his foot in the door. “If you can take no for an answer, then you will succeed”, he says.
Fabri’s affinity with America led him to work with NFL powerhouses, the Dallas Cowboys, New York Jets, and San Diego Charges, where he impressed the coaching staff on several occasions. He attended elite workshops, including at the Michael Johnson Performance Centre in Dallas. Exposed to the most sophisticated methods and technologies in the world of speed, he returned to Australia as a coach hard to beat.
Fabri boasts a remarkable sprint coaching history. In the NSW Athletics League, part of the Professional Running League in Australia, Fabri has won Trainer of the Year the past three years consecutively. The fact that Fabri can’t remember how many Female and Male Athletes of the Year he has trained is supported by the verity that it is in the double digits. He also won National Track and Field Coach of the Year in 2012. General Manager of the New South Wales Professional Track League, Andrew Muhlan said, “Roger is a colourful character. He’s very likeable and it’s no wonder when people join his group they stay”.
Fabri’s coaching portfolio extends to stints with Sydney NRL clubs, the Sydney Roosters, Penrith Panthers and Cronulla Sharks. Fabri recalls the first professional athlete he started working with, Anthony Minichiello. Struck down with back problems that kept him off the field, Minichello met Fabri and they began correcting his issues by working on ‘technical execution’. When Minichello introduced Fabri to the Roosters coaching staff, they decided to take him on board in 2010. That year the Roosters went from ‘wooden spooners’ to grand finalists and eyes were on Fabri that his specialist clinics had played a big part in the turnaround.
After the 2010 NRL final, Fabri privately coached the Dally M Player of the year, Todd Carney and became a friend and mentor of the NSW playmaker. Roger has the ability to forge close relationships with his athletes. NSW and former Roosters’ halfback Mitchell Pearce said, “Roger’s great, a good friend of ours and very smart in his field”.
However, not everyone warms to Roger’s style and in November 2012 the Roosters controversially sacked Fabri for being the “scapegoat” when Todd Carney went off the rails. Fabri holds his head high knowing that he maintained loyal to his athlete. “I was employed as a speed coach, certainly not as a detective. I would never go out of my way to do something that would hurt my athlete”. The Roosters made a statement and for Fabri it’s just all water under the bridge now. “If I had my time again, I would not have changed one thing”.
Coffee in Coogee with the NRL Players. Roger can’t help but make friends with his athletes.
Fabri is suave and hard, charismatic and calculated, unpretentious, yet smart. When he is not in his sports gear, his eccentric persona can be reflected in his fashionable Italian dress sense, usually jeans and a white shirt. But perhaps what really sets Fabri apart is his ability to get the best out of the athlete. He tells all his athletes he will give them 10% more than what they give him. “Loyalty, commitment, attention to detail, application; that’s my prophecy. I need that. Without that then you’re wasting both our times”.
DOWN AT MCKAY OVAL in Centennial Park under a warm spring sun, Fabri is putting Australian Cricketer, David Warner through his strides. “Hands up, yes, keep them up, and go, good work, much better, that’s great”. Later Warner tweeted, “Serious as always when it comes to mechanics and teaching technique. Best in the business thanks RF”. Fabri’s ethos and charm is complemented by his superior technical knowledge. “I have a very trained eye to be able to diagnose very quickly small imperfections in movement patterns. And when you’re talking about a sport when a thousandth of a second may make a difference, you need to have that type of training”.
Another telling endorsement for Fabri was his role as ‘speed and multi-directional movement coach’ of NSW running back, Jarryd Hayne. Fabri started working with Hayne 2009 and took him to highest in the NRL (twice Dally M Player of the year in 2009 and 2014) and translated him into an NFL player. “When he gave me that journey (of the NFL) to go on, it was crazy, it was an experience of a lifetime”. Fabri is modest in admitting that he was only a small part in Hayne’s success. But that it was, still a part.
Fabri has come a long way from his unassuming days at the track. “Instead of working harder, I’m now working smarter”. Fabri is launching a $2.5 million Performance Centre in Alexandria next year, which is set to offer an indoor facility of sporting excellence. “When you see what I’m going to put together it’s going to be mindboggling”. The Performance Centre will take Fabri’s business to new heights, and his goal is to always be considered as ‘cutting-edge’. “To be honest, I never stop learning. I’m still very conscious of the fact that the human body evolves, coaching evolves, technology evolves, and you got to evolve with it”.
Roger putting Sonny Bill Williams through a speed drill.
BACK AT ES MARKS athletics track it’s now 6pm and a starkly different scene from the idle 3.30pm. I’ve watched Fabri lead his squad through the warm up, and in his prep talk he talks about ‘buying in’ and ‘work ethic’. He has the full attention of his diverse and copious squad. As his squad perform the first repetiton, under his breath he puffs, “that’s rubbish”. Later to the young female pocket rocket who happens to be the state champion, he says, “You’re moving the best I’ve ever seen”. The stadium is full of runners, young and old, and sprightly athletes skipping, jumping, drilling and throwing. It’s an animated scene of athletic movement, one that breeds some wonderful, influential characters. One of Fabri’s track athletes, Steven Blacker, said, “Rog gives everyone more purpose and belonging in life than what we can create as individuals. Most people in life want to part of something big, something special. We have it with every step of what we do under Roger.”
In Australia’s landscape where personalities are profuse, Fabri is setting benchmarks on many fronts. Today it’s no surprise that Fabri is a busy man. He’s made a name for himself, appears regularly in the news, and lives and breathes what he does. If you’re visiing Sydney, Fabri can be spotted energetically plying his trade with a selection of hurdles and cones at Coogee oval. Afterwards he might take a dip in the ocean followed by a café breakfast with one of his celebrity athletes. Don’t expect him to finish his meal though. He’ll be onto something new before that.
Whilst not everyone will take Fabri’s hard-hitting character well, there is no question that his devotion to his craft is unsurpassed. When I asked Fabri what drives him each day he said, “When you wake up each day and see your own athletes making headlines. I’m fortunate to have that. Every time I turn on the TV, I can relate to someone doing something somewhere and I’m a small piece of the jigsaw puzzle… that makes me inspired to keep going. It’s a great feeling”.