'Sky showed great respect when we offered the job to someone who had been there for a long time&# 39; Photo: Sky Sports
To Gigi Salmon's surprise, her preparation for Sky Sports' new tennis coverage included meeting with a movement coach. Salmon was ordered to stand every morning in the middle of a huge studio, spread her arms wide and shout: “This belongs to me!”
“I just thought, 'I can't do this,'” Salmon says, recoiling from the idea. “I understand what she meant, you need to have that confidence, but that’s not my character. I'm completely quiet. Can you imagine! In the gallery, someone was flipping through the screens, and I was waving my arms wildly and saying: “This belongs to me.” They'll think they've released some megalomaniac!»
As a familiar voice on BBC Radio 5 Live, Salmon is more used to climbing ladders into cramped commentary booths than «owning» the state of affairs. Art Studio. So the experience of realizing Sky Sports' long-term tennis vision has been a real eye-opener for us.
From the stylist who sent her a variety of bold and vibrant looks, to the luxurious show at the NoMad Hotel in Covent Garden. “It was a revelation, a whole new world,” she says. “Sky is a different animal. I feel completely spoiled.”
For the first five days of the tournament, Salmon and his team worked in a studio at Sky's home in west London. The studio is huge and stretches across at least a couple of tennis courts. This is usually the home of Monday Night Football, where Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher stroll around analyzing the biggest moments in the Premier League.
To give it a makeover, the team decorated it with colorful New York City graffiti and a huge LED screen on the floor depicting the blue and white design of the Flushing Meadows courts. They were followed by live coverage from all 16 courts, and Salmon's job was to lead a dynamic discussion of the action with experts Tim Henman and Martina Navratilova. There is no furniture on the set, which means there is nowhere to hide.
Day 5 ✅with Martina and Tim for @SkySportsTennis @usopen 🤗🎾 pic.twitter.com/lJbgzWmvSo
— Gigi Salmon (@gigi_salmon) September 1, 2023
«When Tim and I first came in together, we saw the studio and looked at each other and said, 'This is really big.' I remember when I came back a few weeks later, I sent Tim a message that said, “This is still very important.” I asked, “Can we have a table?” Chair? Skirting?» The answer was no, they wanted to showcase the space. Tim and I kept looking at each other and saying, “Oh my God.” The first thing I thought was, “I hope I can wear flat shoes.”
Salmon isn't one to play it cool. She admits she was scared: “Tennis is back on Sky and you want to justify it. The absolute pressure from the entrance to this space. On this first day, you don't want to “own it,” as wrong as that sounds, but to fill it. Bring that energy.”
Off-air, she describes getting lost in the maze of the studio with Henman and even accidentally wandering onto the Sky Sports News set while they were on air. “I told Tim, ‘You go first,’ and he left immediately,” she says, giggling.
Although Salmon describes the concert as a dream, the coverage of the New York major on London time was brutal. Reports began at 4 p.m. and ended past midnight, after which Salmon would rush home to Windsor and watch as much of the night's session as she could. Then she'd get up at 7 a.m. for a run, headphones in, and listen to her friend and former British tennis player Naomi Cavadey send long voice notes summarizing the previous night's events.
Salmon then returned to the office at 11 a.m. to begin preparations for the next day. This is where Telegraph Sport meets Salmon in between meetings with producers. Considering her schedule, she seems surprisingly clear-eyed. “I'm used to it, Grand Slams are always chaos,” she laughs, referring to her 5th live broadcast of the Australian Open in January, which she commentated from snowy Salford, having seen almost no daylight for two weeks.
A great way to start the seventh day of @usopen in the company of Marion Bartoli & Feliciano Lopez😊🎾@SkySportsTennis pic.twitter.com/1sFQBVwxGE
— Gigi Salmon (@gigi_salmon) September 3, 2023
The entire operation has now moved to Queens, New York for its second week. Salmon has been coming to Flushing Meadows for years, and her first Grand Slam tournament was at Wimbledon 25 years ago. Although she spent some time involved in other sports, including broadcasting Chelsea and reading the news on TalkSport, tennis was her main focus, mainly for 5 Live, and also provided television coverage of Roland Garros from Paris.
Heading up Sky's new era of tennis coverage is by far her most high-profile appointment and Salmon is well aware they could opt for an in-house choice. Her style doesn't resemble that of the shiny, over-polished anchor prototype, and she says she never really felt like she fit into the traditional mold of sports broadcasters. «I always thought that even for the BBC I was a bit of a fraud because I'm light-hearted and sometimes not that serious,» she says.Was she surprised that they followed her? «I was very happy. I think it was hugely respectful of Sky when we offered the job to someone who had been there for a long time. I don't know, for some people I wouldn't be their first choice for coverage. But hopefully I have experience and people I know — and hopefully some knowledge I've accumulated! – for me it was like, “Wow, they take this seriously and want people to look at the team as people who love and know their tennis.”
After many years of comments with some of biggest sports stars on 5 Live, the on-set chemistry with Henman and Navratilova seemed natural from day one, and she says Sky has embraced her sense of humour, which she admits is «a bit silly, a bit silly». «.
She's full of quirky anecdotes about players and loves unpredictable moments on air where she steers the conversation toward unexpected topics. On one of the first days of the tournament, she mentioned that British number four Jack Draper once dreamed of becoming a private detective. Expert Jordan Wyllie, a 12-time world champion in wheelchair tennis, casually replied that she would love to be a coroner. After a stunned pause, Henman asked Salmon with a grin, “Do you have a follow-up, Gigi?”
“That’s the only time I’ve ever been speechless on air,” Salmon laughs. “But you need that balance: you need things that are challenging and at the same time I want people to get to know the players. It's not just a forehand. I always tell my friends random facts — for example, Andrei Rublev was once in a One Direction tribute band. Stupid things to bring to life. You may never be able to please all the fans, but you have the ability to attract people and develop them.”
The US Open is shown exclusively live on Sky Sports and NOW.
Свежие комментарии