Ted Kravitz made a point of apologising to Valtteri Bottas after making a "stupid and insensitive" comment about the Formula 1 racer's weight.
Bottas spoke with the Sky Sports pit lane reporter in Bahrain on Thursday, as part of his media day duties. Before they got into the crux of the interview, Kravitz had greeted the Finn and mentioned that he looked like he had lost some weight.
Apparently unbeknownst to Kravitz, Bottas recently revealed that he had suffered from an undiagnosed eating disorder earlier in his racing career. "I trained myself to pain, physically and mentally," he said when recalling that period in time.
"No eating disorder was officially diagnosed, but it was definitely there. It wasn't very healthy. I wanted to be the best, and I thought I had to do that. If the team says that I have to weigh 68 kilos and I naturally weigh 73 kilos, then they will do everything for that."
After working with a psychologist, he managed to overcome that challenge and has established himself as one of the big names on the F1 grid. Five years driving alongside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes saw him contribute to one of F1's great dynasties of success.
Now racing for Alfa Romeo, the 33-year-old seems to be enjoying his racing more than ever. Referring to Bottas in his Ted's Notebook show on Sky, Kravitz brought up the subject as he wanted to make a proper on-air apology to the Finn.
"I want to spend a little bit of time just to tell you about something stupid and insensitive I did, not knowingly, with Valtteri Bottas on Thursday," the broadcaster said. "He's lost a bit of weight around his jaw and I was quite surprised. I said, 'Oh, you know, wow, you look so slim and as my mum would say you should eat some more food.'
"He was like, 'No, no, no, I'm slim and I'm healthy'. I thought 'that was a strange thing to say' when he said healthy and I was later made aware of an interview he did earlier in this year, which I hadn't seen, where he was talking about when he had close to what he described as an eating disorder. He'd dieted so much that he was unhealthy and losing weight.
"I felt so terrible about joking about him slimming down that I have since talked to his team and when I see him I'll clear it up and say I had no idea that he was close to an eating disorder, and apologise for any offence that I had done.
"I thought it was really impressive to have the bravery to come out and talk about what in the past was an eating disorder and good for Valtteri for speaking out about it."
