Canadian tennis champion Gabriela Dabrowski has revealed that she won an Olympic medal and reached the Wimbledon doubles final this year, right in the middle of treatment for cancer. The three-time major champion says she was diagnosed with breast cancer in April. She underwent surgery and then took a three-month break from the sport. She put her treatment on hold in June, however, to play at Wimbledon and then the Paris Olympics, where she won a bronze medal. With that medal secured, she took another break for radiation therapy before returning for the U.S. Open at the end of August. “It all seems surreal,” Dabrowski wrote on Instagram. “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.” Dabrowski ended an extraordinary year by winning the WTA Finals title.
