Robbie Grabarz was happy building staircases when he was asked to help coach the record-breaking high jumper Morgan Lake but the emergency arrangement could lead to major honours
Dropping his beloved skateboard by his feet as he flops down on to a sofa in the Loughborough Students’ Union, it is like Robbie Grabarz has never been away.
For much of his adult life – the decade that saw him win Olympic, world and European medals –the East Midlands university campus was Grabarz’s second home. But he thought those days were long behind him; he made a conscious effort to make it so, which is why his presence on a bitterly cold January morning requires some explanation.
As does that of Morgan Lake sat alongside him. Two of the finest high jumpers Britain has ever produced, united in the unlikeliest of partnerships.
“It happened out of necessity,” says Grabarz, with a laugh. “It’s a hobby that I didn’t really need.” Lake chips in, candidly admitting: “It wasn’t a choice, but it’s gone well.”
It all started with a frantic phone call in July 2021. At that point, Grabarz was as removed from athletics as possible, having “just disappeared out of the sport” upon retirement from his competitive high jump career in 2018.
So when Olympic-bound Emily Borthwick’s number flashed up on his phone while he was upside down installing a staircase on a building site, he thought it must be important.
Borthwick and Lake had a pressing issue. With the Tokyo Games just weeks away, they had just been told that their coach Fuzz Caan was suspended and would not be travelling to Japan. Detail was thin on the ground and time in short supply. They needed someone to oversee them, hence Borthwick’s SOS call to a man who Caan had previously guided to the top of the athletics pyramid.
Robbie Grabarz (Mark Shearman)
Back when he called time on his competitive career, Grabarz had been physically and mentally broken. He needed to get away from the sport that had consumed him. So, after a few months eating, drinking, pottering and tending to his garden, he began working with his brother-in-law manufacturing and installing luxury staircases.
Only after about 18 months did he even start to watch athletics again, mainly just keeping tabs on the friends and training partners he had made along the way. Lake was one of them.
When an understandably upset Borthwick asked if Grabarz was available to help out with some pre-Olympics coaching, he felt could not say no.
“I just thought I’d help for a few weeks and that would be that,” he says. Two-and-a-half years later, he is still here, sitting among the students and international sportspeople.
To describe the hastily-established Tokyo set-up as unsatisfactory would be an understatement. Sleeping downstairs at his Birmingham home on the other side of the world to the action, Grabarz would set an alarm for the middle of the night and watch a stream of Borthwick and Lake competing which was beamed to him live via another Team GB coach sat in the Tokyo stands. Grabarz would feed back his thoughts and suggestions, which were then relayed to the athletes. “It was actually crazy,” recalls Lake.
Morgan Lake (Getty)
Looking back on it now, Lake cannot believe how she managed to endure such a tough period of uncertainty that dragged on for more than 18 months until the confirmation of Caan’s three-year ban for misconduct having admitted mocking
para-athletes and using abusive language.
“There were days when I didn’t want to come to the track because, every single time I did, everyone would ask what was happening with Fuzz,” says Lake. “I trained in San Diego for a bit and felt a bit better just being out of the situation. It was quite a hostile environment in Loughborough with no one knowing what was happening and us not really having a proper set-up.
“But the 2022 season didn’t go to plan and I kind of reached a breaking point where I was wondering whether to even carry on. I was so unsettled. It was probably a heat of the moment thing, but there was a point where I thought: ‘I can’t really see past this.’”
The turning point arrived in Munich in late August 2022. Disappointed to only finish seventh at the European Championships, Lake sat down with Grabarz and the two of them asked each other the same question: ‘Shall we do this properly?’ A formal training set-up with structured training days, an organised group and a settled environment. No half-measures.
Morgan Lake (Mark Shearman)
They both decided to commit. With Borthwick opting to move to Australia, Lake was soon joined in Loughborough by Joel Clarke-Khan and Tom Gale: Britain’s No.1-ranked female high jumper training alongside the No.1 and No.2-ranked male high jumpers. It was Grabarz’s job to oversee them. Well, sort of his job.
You see, it has all happened in stages. The first was the helping out phase, supposed to last just a matter of weeks but which dragged into a second year until the Munich chat with Lake. The second stage followed, when he committed to coaching the group as much as his time would allow. And now, as of the start of 2024, we have stage three, where Grabarz, 36, would love nothing more than to do this full-time. But there remains the question of money.
Having hastily studied for his coaching licence, all of Grabarz’s initial work with Lake and Borthwick was entirely voluntary; a friend helping other friends. But everything had to fit in around his day job in staircase construction.
“It was like: ‘Ok I can fit you in for three hours on Thursday,’” he recalls. “It was chaos for everyone, but we didn’t have much choice. The only other choice was for me not to help at all.
“I had one job in Birmingham where I came to Loughborough to take training for two hours, drove to the site, did the staircase and then came back again. But I wasn’t sure how long I could keep it up. It takes over.
“It really wasn’t the plan at all. I made them aware that I didn’t really have time for it, but they kept making me stay through what I was seeing and what they were giving me.
“I’ve had to get my head around the fact that I’m enjoying it and it’s going well. It’s sucked me back in.”
At the start of this winter, Grabarz had another conversation with Lake that concluded with him deciding to give coaching his full focus. Small amounts of funding from Puma and UK Athletics mean he intends to pare back his day job to the bare minimum, and he now aspires to coach Lake – an athlete that he trained alongside for two years at the back end of his career – for the rest of her time in the sport.
Their hope is that she will follow his lead on to global podiums. At 26, Lake is one of British athletics’ youngest veterans, having competed at international senior championships since 2014. So far, her medal tally consists only of a Commonwealth silver, but after breaking the British record with a jump of 1.99m indoors last February, she narrowly missed a world medal in the summer, when she managed 1.97m to finish fourth.
“For me, that 1.99 jump was the moment I realised I could do it,” she says. “My confidence built from there. Going into the outdoor season I really wanted to be consistent. Getting my average up so that when I needed to bring out the big jumps I could.
Morgan Lake (Hustopečské skákání)
“Having buy-in from Robbie helped my confidence so much. Having the year before [2022] where I was floating around to then Robbie saying he believed in me was quite nice.
“My big aim for last year was to get a medal in Budapest. Not winning a medal was really hard, but when I stripped it back I saw how much I had achieved.”
Given all her big-stage experience, she is unequivocal about what motivates her to keep going: “I feel like I’ve been in the sport for a long time and always been very good at making myself fit for championships and making finals. But I want more than that now. I now want to get medals.
“Having that last year made me want more of it. The end part of that competition was so exciting. That’s my big goal for the next few years.”
The first opportunity came at Glasgow’s World Indoor Championships in March (she placed sixth) before the European Championships and Olympic Games this summer. That final event will be her third Olympic experience, although she insists she has only really done “one-and-a-half” after injury prevented her from taking her place in the Tokyo final, having qualified in 1.95m.
This time, Grabarz will be in Paris in person instead of watching grainy footage from his sofa. It was never what he intended, but he is relishing his new life back in the sport. The Olympic medalist and her accidental coach; it sounds good.
» This feature first appeared in the January issue of AW magazine. Subscribe here