Paris Olympic bronze medalist and three-time Grand Slam champion Gabriela Dabrowski shared in an Instagram post that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in April and competed throughout the season while receiving treatment.
“I know this will come as a shock to many, but I am okay and I will be okay,” she wrote Tuesday. “Early detection saves lives. I can wholeheartedly agree with this.”
Dabrowski, 32, said she briefly took a break from tennis after undergoing two surgeries, but returned to the court in June, where she and her partner Erin Routliffe won the women’s doubles at the Rothesay Open Nottingham.
The tennis champ said she then briefly paused further treatment so she could compete at Wimbledon and at the Paris Olympic Games. She and Routliffe finished as runners-up at Wimbledon, and Dabrowski clinched a bronze medal in mixed doubles at the Paris Games.
“It all seems surreal,” she posted.
Dabrowski said her health battle began in the spring of 2023 when she felt a lump in her left breast during a self-exam, but a doctor told her it was nothing to worry about.
“So I didn’t. Time went on, and in spring of 2024, I thought the lump was a little bigger,” she wrote. “During our (Women’s Tennis Association) comprehensive physicals, a WTA doctor told me she wasn’t sure what it was, and to go and get it scanned.”
Dabrowski said she got a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy before she was diagnosed with 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,” she wrote.
Dabrowski said she feels “it is a privilege to be able to call myself a survivor,” noting that “over time, I began to recognize I was a part of something much bigger than myself.”
“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,” she said.
“There were so many unknowns and so much learning and research to be done,” she wrote. “Currently, I’m in a place where I have a better grasp on my treatment, side effects and how to manage them. Please know I am fully aware of how lucky I am as well, because many do not get the luxury of being able to tell their story at all.”
