Barbora Krejcikova has had a somewhat irregular season this year. But she finished 13th in the WTA rankings and, above all, won Wimbledon. She has been present at the WTA Finals and reached the semifinals. However, it was none of these aspects that were used by a specialist on the US channel Tennis Channel to comment on the tennis player: he joked about the size of Barbora’s forehead.
However, the comments reached the ears of the tennis player, who has used her social networks to denounce them, judging them unprofessional. “You may have heard about the comments that were made on Tennis Channel about the WTA Finals. They focused on my appearance rather than my performance. This type of unprofessional behavior has been disappointing.”
Barbora also stressed that such comments are not merely isolated cases: “This is not the first time this has happened and I have often chosen not to speak out, but I think it is time to address the need for respect and professionalism in sports media […] I love tennis deeply and want to see it represented in a way that honours the commitment we make to compete at this level.”
Normally this type of comment usually comes from people who take advantage of the anonymity of social networks to say things that they would not dare to say in person (it is assumed), but in this case the commentator has a name and surname: the popular tennis specialist Jon Wertheim, who has also made his apologies public through social networks.
In them, Wertheim explains that he had joined via Zoom a program. On the screen he was seeing a performance graph of the tennis player attached to an image that exaggerated the size of his forehead. Then “I was told to frame my zoom. I joked that the camera angle made my forehead look like the picture. Someone in the control room chimed in and I responded jokingly. And this private and out-of-context talk went on the air.”
However, Wertheim states that “I am not the victim here. My comment was neither professional nor considerate of the other person, nor does it reflect the person I strive to be. I am responsible for this and I am sorry.”
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