Gabriela Dabrowski has called on women to get “checked out”.

Gabriela Dabrowski has opened up on her diagnosis. (Image: Getty.)

Olympic bronze medallist and tennis professional Gabriela Dabrowski claimed she was told by a doctor that a lump on her breast “was nothing”, before she was later diagnosed with breast cancer. Dabrowski explained how she originally felt a lump during a self-exam in 2023, but was given reassurance that she had little to worry about.

Dabrowski won her medal while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, but had to live through mental anguish over the first prognosis of her illness, which “turned grim” following a trip to the doctors.

“A few months later, a doctor told me it was nothing and not to worry. So I didn’t,” she wrote on Instagram.

Fortunately for the doubles world No. 4, the WTA and medical technology company Hologic hold regular physical examinations for players. They advised her to check out the lump further.

Just a few weeks before noticing it, she and Erin Routliffe were runners-up at Wimbledon. But suddenly Dabrowski was unable to lift her arm up high enough to serve and needed her coach to throw balls up during practice sessions.

“It turned grim very quickly,” she told CNN. “I eventually got good news after good news after good news in terms of my staging, the size of the tumour, my Oncotype DX scoring which determines if you need chemo or not.

Gabriela Dabrowski won bronze at the Paris Olympics. (Image: Getty)

“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 32-year-old underwent two surgeries, radiation and endocrine therapy scheduled around her busy schedule. She and her doubles partner were set on competing at Wimbledon and the US Open.

Dabrowski did not disclose her diagnosis until after the Paris Olympics, where she and Felix Auger-Aliassime won bronze for Canada, but urged women to get checked.

“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, you can handle it,” she said. “Breast cancer has a 99 per cent chance of survival.

“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 per cent survivable.

“In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what my future would hold, not just in tennis, but my life in general. 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.”

And upon making her comeback to the sport, Dabrowski has found a new outlook on life. “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,” she continued.

“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.”