Wimbledon coverage featured awkward nose-picking moment

Sports broadcasts come with the challenge of filming live people who are not usually in the camera’s focus. This sometimes leads to awkward shots of athletes. But the awkwardness is perhaps even more apparent when it comes to figures like coaches who are not always on the court, and especially when those coaches are in the stands as they are in tennis; the coaches who are there are only shown in detail when the broadcast is about them. And this was most regrettably demonstrated for American tennis star Madison Keys and her coach/fiancé Bjorn Fratangelo during Sunday’s coverage of Wimbledon.

There, the match commentators praised Fratangelo’s work with Keys. (Fratangelo, himself a former top player, was already engaged to Keys in 2023, but she asked him to also take on the coaching role after her loss at the French Open that year.) And there were plenty of positive comments about how his coaching went.

Unfortunately, those comments were accompanied by footage of Fratangelo picking his nose. And it made for some funny comments, and an awkward moment in this coverage. Here’s what it looked like on ESPN (the clip below is Fratangelo’s second extended broadcast in about a minute during this discussion; the first one didn’t feature any nose-picking).

Wimbledon coverage chose a terrible time to zoom in on Madison Keys’ coach/fiancé Bjorn Fratangelo. “Get the camera away from him while he picks his nose!” Here’s what it looked like on ESPN. (H/T) @rclaus07.) pic.twitter.com/atLuJHq3a3

— Awful Announcement (@awfulannouncing) July 7, 2024

“There was a connection between the two of them. Plus, they’re renovating their house and they’re planning a wedding. So they’re a solid couple.” “I think when the news gets to her, she’s… I’m glad he didn’t do what we thought… move the camera away from him while he picked his nose! I think when the news gets to her, she doesn’t take it personally.”

Fratangelo is far from the first coach to pick his nose on television. Former German men’s national football team coach Joachim Löw was particularly well-known for this behavior, but others have done it as well. We’ve also seen this phenomenon among athletes and fans. But the timing was particularly unfortunate: the nose-picking happened just as Fratangelo was appearing on screen.

(Horrible announcement on (X/Twitter)