Former U.S. Open doubles champion Gabriela Dabrowski shared her recent cancer diagnosis and treatment in a powerful New Year's Instagram post. She revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in April of 2024 and competed throughout the season while receiving treatment—including at Wimbledon and the Olympics.
"I know this will come as a shock to many, but I am okay and I will be okay," she wrote in Tuesday's multi-slide post. "Early detection saves lives. I can wholeheartedly agree with this."
As explained in the post, she noticed a lump on her left breast in the spring of 2023, which a doctor told her not to worry about. It was only a year later, when she felt the lump may have grown, that she received a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy to confirm her cancer diagnosis.
Dabrowski added that two surgeries at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville required her to take a break from tennis. With just two weeks until her return to the court in June of 2024, she still couldn't raise her arm high enough to serve the ball. Nonetheless, she and her partner, Erin Routliffe, won the women's doubles at the Rothesay Open Nottingham, her first game back.
She explained that she paused breast cancer treatment to compete in Wimbledon and the Paris Olympics, where she was runner-up and a bronze medalist, respectively. Afterward, she continued treatment and radiation therapy, began hormone therapy and ended the season "on the highest note possible" by winning the WTA Finals title alongside Routliffe.
"If you saw me smiling more on court in the past 6 months, it was genuine," Dabrowski shared. "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. Loving parents and friends, amazing coaches, a doubles partner who stuck by me, a real team, access to health care experts, and to play a game for a living."
