Tennis Star Gabriela Dabrowski Reveals She Played 2024 Season While Undergoing Urgent Breast Cancer Treatment — 'Things Happen to Us We Have No Control Over'
Dabrowski shared her cancer battle.
Dec. 31 2024, Published 11:51 a.m. ET
Canadian tennis player Gaby Dabrowski has shared her harrowing secret battle with breast cancer.
The 2023 US Open doubles champion and Paris Olympic bronze medalist revealed on Tuesday she underwent breast cancer surgery earlier this year, RadarOnline.com can report.
The Canadian tennis pro won a bronze medal at the Paris Olympics.
Dabrowiski, 32, shared her story in a series of posts on her Instagram account, revealing she first felt a lump in her left breast during a self-exam in 2023. At first, doctors told her there was nothing to worry about, but a year later, she was convinced the mass was getting bigger.
So she had a checkup, where she received the news that would change her life: "The preliminary results came back that day: cancer.
"These are words you never expect to hear, and in an instant your life or the life of a loved one turns upside down."
Dabrowski underwent two surgeries in Florida, before exiting the WTA Tour for rehab and recovery. She took a break in her treatment to compete at Wimbledon, where she finished as runner-up alongside Erin Routliffe, and then at the Olympics, where she won bronze for Canada in the mixed doubles with Felix Auger-Aliassime.
She finished the year ranked third in the world. But none of that compares to her greatest victory this year, in which she wrote she "ended the season on the highest note possible."
The tennis pro continued that now was the right time to tell her story: "For a long time, I wasn’t ready to expose myself to the possible attention and questions I’d have gotten before. I wanted to figure everything out and handle things privately with only those closest to me in the loop. There were so many unknowns and so much learning and research to be done.
"Currently, I’m in a place where I have a better grasp of my treatment, side effects, and how to manage them."
Dabrowski wants to help inspire others.
Dabrowski continued that she hopes to be an inspiration for others.
"My intentions in sharing some of my experience are to emphasize the quality of life one can maintain when cancer is detected early, when you have access to doctors and other health care practitioners who are highly skilled and dedicated to their craft, when you take care of your mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing, and when you surround yourself with people who truly have your back (and your front)."
"Early on in my diagnosis, I was afraid of cancer becoming a part of my identity forever. I don't feel that way anymore. It is a privilege to be able to call myself a survivor."
Dabrowski and doubles partner Erin Routliffe.
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She further confessed that the devastating diagnosis also changed her outlook on life: "If you saw me smiling more on court in the past six months, it was genuine ... My cancer diagnosis was the catalyst for more sustained change.
"When the threat of losing everything I'd worked for my entire life became a real possibility, only then did I begin to authentically appreciate what I had."
And then she ended her message with the sentiment so many other survivors have expressed: "To cancer I say f--- you, but also, thank you."
