Meet Fabio Morino, a Shuttle Time National Coordinator from Italy. Find out the excellent work he is involved with and how it all started.

I had a happy childhood, I lived in the countryside where it was possible to stay outdoors and play various sports and games without going to clubs.

Being born in a small town and spending a lot of time in the countryside allowed me to live freely and with many other children to learn to climb, jump, throw, run and swim. I believe this aspect is missing from today's children: to live as my generation lived. Free!

Today playing sports is delegated to clubs but often basic motor skills are not well trained by coaches. Children specialise too early and leave sport too early without the possibility of reinventing themselves in a new sport... this is because many of them do not develop basic motor skills. 

I was nine and at school. I saw a badminton exhibition between Chinese and Italian national teams. The Chinese national team was on tour in Europe.

I was immediately fascinated by that fast-travelling shuttle.

I still remember as if it were yesterday the passionate cheering of all the children in the sports hall. It was a unique event for those times, also because badminton in Italy was still practically unknown. It's amazing to think that badminton then became my job.

Speed, agility, strategy and fun. Badminton is an easy sport (if played poorly) but extremely complex at a high level.

The shots available are many, the variations infinite, the strategy is fundamental. Badminton is a sport that encompasses many sports: you have to be fast, explosive, agile and intelligent. These characteristics, and many others, make badminton an extremely rewarding sport.

Since I got to know badminton I never stopped playing or working with it. I never skipped a workout, and even trained during Christmas and Easter.

Badminton had become like a drug and I remember that at school I used to draw rackets and shuttlecocks in my notebook. 

I went around the world with the national team and I participated in the Olympics in London as FIBa Official Coach. The London Olympics were the most important event for me and it was fantastic to celebrate my birthday (July 27th) on the day of the inauguration ceremony at the Olympic stadium. A memory, which if I think about it again, makes me shiver!

It’s my passion, my job and my motivation to improve the level of my country.

I started playing in 1989 and since 2007 I continue to work for the Italian Federation. A lot of work has been done and Italian badminton has greatly improved in several aspects: practitioners, technical level, diffusion.

What makes it special is the speed, the variability of strokes, and the fact that it’s an individual sport but it is characterised by a team training.  The shuttlecock is a unique object that no other sport has.

Many Italian teachers discovered badminton thanks to Shuttle Time and its format. Our programme for the next four years is to spread badminton all over the country: for that reason we implemented the Shuttle Time project for Italy.

Shuttle Time is an incredible resource.

When the federation was launched, it immediately seized the opportunity and my wife and I translated all the resources into Italian... as well as the BWF 1 and 2 manuals.

Shuttle Time has enabled many Italian children, their parents, their teachers, to know badminton and make it an even more popular port in schools.

We do not want to stop here and as a federation we intend, until 2024, to strongly relaunch Shuttle Time by giving the opportunity not only to teachers to become Shuttle Time teachers but to support them (with federal coaches) throughout the school year.

I learnt that badminton is simple to be proposed at school and everybody can play badminton based on their own abilities. That you can play badminton anywhere.

That with little you can have fun. That even those who have never played can test themselves both as players and as a teacher.

Shuttle Time provides all the basics to be able to start correctly... and leaves no one behind: able-bodied or disabled and this is very important for the school world.

Shuttle Time: If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented!

For more information about Shuttle Time, click here.