Sports broadcasts come with the challenge of having live cameras on people who usually aren’t primarily focused on the cameras. That sometimes leads to awkward shots of athletes. But the awkwardness is maybe seen even more when it comes to figures like coaches who aren’t always in the shot, and especially when those coaches are in the stands the way they are in tennis; the coaches there are only shown in significant detail when the broadcast’s talking about them. And that showed up in an unfortunate way for American tennis star Madison Keys and her coach/fiancé Bjorn Fratangelo during Wimbledon coverage Sunday.
There, the match commentators offered significant praise for Fratangelo’s work with Keys. (Fratangelo, a former prominent player himself, was already engaged to Keys in 2023, but she asked him to take on the coaching role as well after her French Open loss that year.) And there were lots of positive comments about how his coaching her has gone.
Unfortunately, those comments were accompanied by footage of Fratangelo picking his nose. And that led to some entertaining commentary, and to an awkward moment on this coverage. Here’s how that looked on ESPN (the clip below is of the second prolonged broadcast shot of Fratangelo in around a minute during this discussion; the first one didn’t feature any nose-picking.)
“Something clicked with the two of them. Not to mention, they’re doing a house renovation and planning a wedding. So that is a solid couple.” “I think when the information comes in from him to her, he is…I’m glad he didn’t do what we thought…get the camera off him while he’s picking his nose! I think when the information comes from him, she doesn’t take it personally.”
Fratangelo is far from the first coach to be caught picking his nose on TV. Former German men’s national soccer team manager Joachim Löw was particularly infamous for this, but others have done it as well. And we’ve also seen this with athletes and fans. But it was particularly unfortunate timing that this specific nose-pick came during the moment when the broadcast was featuring Fratangelo on screen.
[Awful Announcing on X/Twitter]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.