Early Years
Gabbett was born in Watlington, Oxfordshire. He was educated at the Royal Alexandra and Albert School, in Surrey, a residential school with a reputation for sporting endeavour, graduating in 1957. In October 2005 Gabbett was guest of honour and principal speaker at a ceremony at the school to celebrate its conversion to a specialist Sports College.
Gabbett joined the Royal Navy as a Naval Air Mechanic and although sport would have formed a significant part of his training there is no record of any athletic performance until May 1960 when he finished third in a high jump competition in Portsmouth, he has since said that Athletics was his main focus and passion. By 1963 he had added sprinting to his repertoire and finished second in the Royal Navy Championship at both 100m and 200m events. Less than a month later he went one better in winning both events at the Inter Services Championships, running 10.9s for the 100m into a headwind of -0.75 m/s.
The following year (1964) he confined himself to a limited program due to competing in the Field Gun competition at the Royal Tournament, but in 1966 he started to explore his potential as a multi-event athlete by taking medals in three events at the Royal Navy Championships in Plymouth. He was at this time just "one of many" 9.9s sprinters (for 100 yards) when he decided to switch to the decathlon, which Mel Watman described as a "shrewd move". His first recorded decathlon was at the AAA Championships at Welwyn Garden City in July 1966, where he finished 5th (11.0 6.71 10.61 1.78 49.2 16.3 30.96 2.90 46.33 4:33.7) scoring 6,435 points placing him 7th in the British rankings for the year. This brought him to the attention of Tom McNab, who was at that time one of Britain's most respected and senior athletics coaches.
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