CNN
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Gaby Dabrowski enjoyed some of the most memorable victories of her tennis career last year, and did it all while quietly navigating a personal health crisis.
It was only on New Year’s Eve that Dabrowski, one of the world’s top doubles players, revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in April. Suddenly, everything she had achieved throughout 2024 – an Olympic bronze medal in mixed doubles and her victory at the season-ending WTA Finals – was cast in a new light, instantly more remarkable than it first appeared.
At one point in her recovery, just two weeks before the start of the grass-court season, Dabrowski couldn’t even toss the ball into the air for a serve. Unable to lift her left arm high enough, she instead got her coach to throw it up for her during practice sessions.
But fast-forward a couple of months and the Canadian was in Paris with an Olympic bronze medal around her neck, finally celebrating a childhood dream fulfilled.
Arguably more impressive was that Dabrowski and partner Erin Routliffe had been runners-up in the mixed doubles at Wimbledon just a few weeks before, all while the 32-year-old had put further cancer treatment on hold to continue competing.
The success, Dabrowski thinks, came alongside a change in perspective brought about by her cancer diagnosis – a new and welcome appreciation for the life she was leading.
“I really felt like it was such a cool thing to be able to play tennis as my profession, and I felt very grateful for the opportunity to be able to do that,” she tells CNN Sports.
“What I noticed is the results that I had last year didn’t come because I wanted them, they came because I was enjoying what I was doing … really finding this joy in an achievement that came not from dreaming about it at night necessarily, but from sticking to my process of how I wanted to improve my tennis.”
This was especially true during the Paris Olympics, when Dabrowski endured a period of bad health on her way to winning bronze in the mixed doubles alongside Félix Auger-Aliassime.
That tournament was never centered around getting a medal; it was about simply getting through “a couple of really tough days,” Dabrowski says.
“Honestly, I went to sleep thinking about how I was going to survive the next day,” she adds. “What I was going to try to eat, hopefully I would sleep well, and if I didn’t, how I would manage that. I broke things down into very small, achievable wins … And then a good result came.”
Dabrowski’s cancer journey really began in the spring of 2023 when she noticed a lump in her left breast. A doctor around that time told her not to worry about it, so she didn’t.
However, during a physical provided by the WTA, the governing body of women’s tennis, the following year, another doctor encouraged Dabrowski to get the lump scanned. What came next felt like a whirlwind: a mammogram, an ultrasound, then a call from the radiologist urging her to get a biopsy immediately.
“It turned grim very quickly,” says Dabrowski. But it equally didn’t take long for things to become more positive.
“I eventually got good news after good news after good news in terms of my staging, the size of the tumor, my Oncotype DX scoring which determines if you need chemo or not,” she adds.
“I didn’t need chemo because my score was low enough and I didn’t have any spread through my lymph nodes. So I kind of was just in this mode of: ‘Okay, this was scary, but I’m also super grateful that I’m handling this quickly and I’m still at an early stage.’”
The WTA, backed by medical technology company Hologic, offers annual health screenings for players on the Tour, which this year took place at the ongoing Miami Open. They examine, among other things, body composition, bone density, pelvic health, mental health, and Ob-Gyn issues like fertility and postpartum recovery.
Players are also offered blood work, skin checks, cardiology tests and internal medicine with Mayo Clinic physicians.
“We have not a lot of time when we’re traveling – let alone being able to see our doctors, being able to get checkups,” world No. 4 Jessica Pegula told CNN en Español’s Elizabeth Pérez at the Miami Open. “Our schedule’s so all over the place so being able to come here and to do that before a tournament is great.”
Pegula also said that she had spoken to women’s health specialists through the WTA about the option to freeze her eggs. “I’m 31,” she explained, “so that’s something that interested me, knowing that I don’t really know what I’m going to do, but the window of having a kid gets smaller and smaller as you get older.”
As for Dabrowski, she feels grateful to have such resources at her disposal, ultimately leading to her early-stage diagnosis. Now, she wants to help spread awareness for breast cancer – a big reason for sharing her story when she did.
“I really wanted women to be able to know that, even though something like cancer is scary, if you get whatever you have checked out early, and you can handle it, breast cancer has a 99% chance of survival,” says Dabrowski.
“And that was the first messaging that I saw on the flyer when I walked into the office for my mammogram: breast cancer is 99% survivable.”
The past year in Dabrowski’s life also demonstrates how it is possible to thrive, and not just survive, during intense treatment for health issues. Cancer became curiously intertwined with her tennis career, providing added motivation to get back on the court with a new appreciation for the sport
“In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what my future would hold, not just in tennis, but my life in general,” she says. “I didn’t know if I was able to play again, when that would be, what my schedule might look like; would I have to play fewer tournaments? What would that mean for my ranking, my position financially?
“But then over time, I would say probably a month and a half after my diagnosis when I’d had a lot of answers to a lot of the questions I had about coming back to play, I really had this itch to want to return.”
The cancer diagnosis has forced Dabrowski to take care of her body with meticulous attention to detail. That means making incremental improvements to her diet – avoiding sugar, processed foods, and anything that might cause inflammation – her sleep, and her physiotherapy.
Dabrowski has always taken tennis seriously and always will for the duration of her career. But while dialing in on how she treats her body, she’s noticed a new, almost liberating, mindset appear – one that allows her to approach the game in a more positive and forgiving way.
Now, winning still feels good but the losses don’t hurt quite as much as they used to.
“Although tennis has been all-encompassing from a very young age for me, I don’t feel like it’s the number one thing about who I am as a person, and I no longer attach my identity to my performance,” Dabrowski says to CNN.
“I’m able to take this life a little bit lighter, I feel like that’s where good results come; and even if they don’t come, I’m okay with them.”
That’s a special position to be in, especially when you consider that Dabrowski, around about this time last year, thought that she might never be able to play tennis again. But she’s back on the court now, appreciating the life of a professional athlete more than ever before.
