By Jackson Starr
In the space of a month, Gaby Dabrowski played in the Wimbledon final in London, won the first Olympic medal of her career in Paris, and then rushed home to make it to another final at the National Bank Open in Toronto.
That would normally be cause for some rest, except when you also happen to be the reigning champion at the U.S. Open, which begins next week in New York City.
While the three standout feats in short succession stand as major achievements for a player who keeps on piling them up at age 32, Dabrowski told the Ottawa Sports Pages that all the action did take its toll once she took to the court in Toronto.
“I got pretty sick,” the doubles tennis star from Ottawa said about playing three tournaments in short order. “Just totally exhausted. I did the best I could to play as well as I could.
“Luckily, me and Erin made it to the finals. We had a really good result even though we definitely weren’t feeling anywhere near our best. Really proud of us for how we pushed through, because it was not an easy week.”
Dabrowski rejoined Erin Routliffe for the Canadian pro tour event after playing with her regular women’s doubles partner at Wimbledon. The pair found immediate success when they joined forces last season, culminating in their U.S. Open crown.
In between, Dabrowski competed alongside fellow Team Canada Olympians Leylah-Annie Fernandez in women’s doubles and Felix Auger-Aliassime in mixed doubles.
“Playing with Erin is obviously a little bit easier in the sense that we practice together,” Dabrowski noted. “We play lots of matches together, we have coaches that we work with and communicate with regularly who help us. There’s a lot of continuity with what we’re doing. It definitely is a little bit easier to play with someone like that, because you’re almost always on the same page.
“Then when you have these sorts of random pairings for these other events that don’t come along that often, you just try to make the best of it. It’s not gonna be as perfect as you want it to be, but I’m just happy that me and Felix did as well as we could together. Consider he doesn’t play mixed doubles at all. Rarely, if ever.”
Dabrowski made her third Olympic appearance in Paris, having won just one match in her two previous Games. She won one women’s doubles match with Fernandez before falling to the eventual silver medallists Diana Shnaider and Mirra Andreeva.
In mixed doubles, Dabrowski and Auger-Aliassime were masters of the tiebreak in Paris. They won their opening round match in a third-set tiebreak over Great Britain, downed USA by the minimum 10-8 score in their final-set tiebreak, and dominated a second-set tiebreak with the Netherlands in their bronze medal match.
“I knew my opponents pretty well,” Dabrowski said of her medal match. “They’re also predominantly doubles players, and so I’ve played against Demi Schuurs a lot. I played against Wesley Koolhof at mixed and I’ve watched him play men’s doubles a lot, and I got some good scouting reports from a few different people, a few of my own coaches.
“Me and Felix had a little bit of a chat on what to expect, and then it was just a matter of execution and trusting ourselves in the big moments.”
As the moments got bigger, Dabrowski was impressed with the duo’s play.
“We played a really strong tiebreaker, bringing some of the best of both of our skills together,” she said. “When we won, it was just pure elation, probably a little bit of relief, so we didn’t have to go to a super tiebreaker as well, and we closed it out in two sets and made it simpler.”
Dabrowski may have liked to have a little more time to savour her medal and take in the full Olympic experience.
Tennis Canada was concerned over the quality of air conditioning available in the athletes’ village, so all the Canadian athletes stayed at a hotel instead.
“I appreciate the sentiment of comfort, but at the same time, I feel like for a week or 10 days, you can make it work,” Dabrowski said. “I definitely didn’t have the same type of experience as I had in Tokyo and Rio.”
But an Olympic medal – just Canada’s second ever won in tennis – still shines pretty brightly, she added.
“I certainly feel like I missed out on the fully immersive Olympic experience, but at the same time, the result with the medal is the part that is the most memorable for me, and the part that I will never forget, and I’m the most proud of,” she underlined, “and to have shared that with Felix is pretty incredible.”
Along with Canada’s first-ever Billie Jean Cup women’s world team title last year, plus Olympic and professional success, Dabrowski noted that the success Canadians are currently experiencing in tennis has the potential to multiply in the future.
“There are opportunities for the game to keep growing and the grassroots level to keep improving. I think really the sky’s the limit,” she indicated. “Then you have, hopefully, the right people in place to help navigate a young person’s blossoming career and see what moves are right for them. Whether that’s training in Canada, (or) training abroad, seeing what best fits for them.
“I think it’s really important to take an individual approach with rising tennis stars and not try to box them into a certain kind of identity or force them to make certain decisions.”
In advance of the U.S. Open, Dabrowski is doing her best to both rest and train to be at her best for the season’s final major championship.
Looking even further ahead, Dabrowski is unsure whether she’ll get to chase another Olympic medal after finding her first.
“Four years is a long time,” she highlighted. “Now I’m 32, so I would be 36. I don’t know if it’s in the cards for me to play for that long, but if I’m healthy and if I’m still enjoying it, absolutely, the Olympics will be something that I aim to qualify for.”
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