HIGH ACHIEVERS: Tennis star Gabriela Dabrowski receives Key to the City of Ottawa

By Martin Cleary

Think back to the days when you were a 13-year-old, a Grade 8 student in elementary school.

If you were involved in sports, what did you play and where did your skills put you in the athletic mix?

For me, my house league baseball and hockey careers were in their final year. But tennis was on the horizon and as much as I worked at it, Wimbledon would remain something I’d watch on TV and would never grace the grassy green courts.

Gloucester’s Gabriela Dabrowski could answer that question in a remarkable way that has had tremendous after-shocks in her career for the past two decades.

Then a student at Sawmill Creek Elementary School, she was making headlines as an up-and-coming youth tennis player.

Tennis Canada selected Dabrowski to represent the country at Les Petits As tournament in Tarbes, France in February, 2006. She embraced the opportunity, never lost a set in all six matches and emerged as the trophy winner in the girls’ U14 championship. Dabrowski defeated Anna-Maria Marenco of Russia 6-3, 6-3 before 5,000 fans and a Eurosport TV audience.

One of her rewards came at the end of that day, when she rallied with men’s superstar Rafael Nadal, who won the first of his 14 French Open singles titles in 2005. Nadal also was a Les Petits As champion in 2000.

Les Petits As, which attracted many of the top European players, was one of the most prestigious U14 tournaments in the world and had an impressive list of past female champions, including Martina Hingis, Anna Kournikova, Kim Clijsters and Lindsay Davenport.

Little did Dabrowski know at the time, but her Les Petits As victory was not so petite at all and signalled the start of a 20-year international tennis career that has seen her touch all the bases in the sport and become one of the world’s best doubles players.

In her tennis journey over the past two decades, Dabrowski, 33, has won three Grand Slams, experienced three Summer Olympics which produced a bronze medal, shared a Billie Jean King world team title with her Canadian teammates, celebrated the first WTA Finals title for a Canadian player and has became a consistent top-10 world women’s doubles player, reaching No. 3 slightly more than one year ago.

Off the court, she has dedicated time to the Special Olympics movement, serves on the Women’s Tennis Association Players’ Council and has been a strong advocate for more TV exposure for the game of doubles.

She has even taken on cancer and emerged the winner with a variety of medical partners. Dabrowski played through her 2024 season, which included personal firsts as the Olympic mixed doubles bronze medallist and the WTA Finals women’s doubles champion, after being diagnosed with breast cancer 16 months ago.

“The Unseen of 2024: How can something so small cause such a big problem? This is the question I asked myself when I was diagnosed with breast cancer back in mid-April (2024),” Dabrowski wrote on her Instagram account.

“I know this will come as a shock to many, but I am OK and I will be OK. Early detection saves lives. I can wholeheartedly agree with this.

“It’s a privilege to be able to call myself a survivor.”

She used several ‘doubles partners’ for the win over cancer – two surgeries at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, radiation treatments and endocrine therapy. She delayed some treatment to compete at Wimbledon and her third Olympics.

Dabrowski, who lives in Florida and has travelled extensively during her 15-year professional career, came home Thursday night for a special celebration.

The City of Ottawa celebrated Dabrowski’s athletic excellence, persistent hard work and grace on and off the court by presenting her with the Key to the City in a ceremony in Andrew S. Haydon Hall.

The Key to the City, which is Ottawa’s highest honour to recognize its accomplished citizens, also has been awarded to Jeopardy! Host Alex Trebek, photographers Yousuf and Malak Karsh, hockey player Daniel Alfredsson, curling’s Team Homan, actress Sandra Oh and the Ottawa Citizen newspaper.

A humble Dabrowski wore a beaming smile all night as speakers praised their friend with funny, but meaningful behind-the-scenes stories, praising her integrity and passion and thanking her for inspiring youth athletes.

In return, Dabrowski topped their thank yous with bigger thank yous.

“It’s a strange feeling with everyone you now in your life here,” Dabrowski said, reading from her phone. “Each of you is important to me in one way or another. You are all friends forever.

“Being recognized means nothing unless all of you are recognized. Thank you to all of you for a shoulder to cry on, your support, opening up your homes, treating me like your daughter and believing in me.

“The city I grew up in has taught me inclusivity, giving back … and what to do in an ice storm.”

The event was attended by about 150 invited guests, which included her parents Yurek and Wanda, friends and past and present city leaders. Yurek, who once built a ball tossing machine so his daughter could practise hitting balls indoors, was her coach in the formative years of her career along with Ottawa professional Tony Milo.

“It’s a real thrill to have the opportunity to celebrate a Grand Slam champion, a champion for youth, a role model and a terrific person,” said Ottawa mayor Mark Sutcliffe.

“You’re passionate and an advocate for breast cancer screening. You have an impact on women. You inspire us all for what it means to represent your hometown and Canada.”

On the heels of a successful junior career, which included winning the 2009 Junior Orange Bowl singles title, reaching the 2010 Australian Open junior women’s doubles final and ranking No. 5 in the world while training at a tennis school in Florida, she turned professional in November, 2011.

Dabrowski’s early years on the pro circuit were filled with many memorable moments – reaching the 2013 Rogers Cup semifinals with Sharon Fichman in women’s doubles by upsetting the top seeds and winning the 2014 Washington Open for her first WTA doubles title with Shuko Aoyama.

By 2016, Dabrowski started to make noticeable impressions in the four Grand Slam events. She reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open in women’s doubles in 2016, 2017 and 2019 before winning the title in 2023 with New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe.

The 2017 season was a step up as she was the French Open mixed doubles champion with Rohan Bopanna, which happened two years ahead of being a women’s doubles quarterfinalist.

She also was a Wimbledon quarterfinalist in 2017, a result she also achieved in 2022 and 2021. Her best results during the fortnight at Wimbledon were in 2024 and 2019, when she played for the championship, but is recognized as a finalist.

The Australian Open is her favourite tournament and is played in her favourite city, Melbourne. That’s understandable as she won the mixed doubles championship with Mate Pavic in 2018 and was a semifinalist in 2025 and 2024.

She entered the Canadian tennis history books by being the first Canadian to win a season-ending WTA Finals championship. Dabrowski and Routliffe earned the women’s doubles title at the end of the 2024 season.

For the past 10 years, multi-sport Games entered her line of vision – three Summer Olympic Games (Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Tokyo in 2021 and Paris in 2024) and two Pan-American Games (2011 in Guadalajara and 2015 in Toronto).

In her combined five women’s and mixed doubles draws at the Olympics, she reached the medal round once, winning the bronze with Felix Auger-Aliassime for mixed doubles in Paris. They will renew their partnership for the 2025 U.S. Open.

At the Pan-American Games in Toronto, Dabrowski won gold in women’s doubles and bronze in mixed doubles. She played women’s singles and mixed doubles at the Guadalajara Games.

Dabrowski has represented Canada for 10 years in the Billie Jean King Cup (formerly Federation Cup) and worked with her national team peers to win the trophy for the first time in 2023.

An extended look at Dabrowski’s WTA bio puts the spotlight on some impressive numbers. She has 17 career women’s doubles titles and has been a finalist in another 20 tournaments. In mixed doubles, she has two championships and has been a runner-up twice, all in Grand Slam finals.

Her winning percentage is a few wins shy of .600 as she has won 474 matches against 318 losses with many different tennis partners over the years.

Dabrowski, who has career prize money earnings of more than $5.59 million, is ranked No. 8 in women’s doubles at the moment and has a 14-9 record for this season, which was interrupted for a few weeks by a rib injury.

Away from the courts, Dabrowski is a Global Ambassador for the Special Olympics athletes’ movement. In 2020, she started doing virtual webinars for Special Olympics Maryland, which led to the Special Olympics and WTA Performance Series.

It was a six-month series to provide interactive opportunities and tools to help Special Olympics athletes gain success in tennis and grow the sport for girls and women.

To help understand why Dabrowski has been so successful during the past two decades, let’s visit the 2002 Ontario U14 championships in Ottawa, when she was only 10 years old.

She was a late entry into the tournament with the purpose of gaining experience and facing older players. By the end of the tournament, she was in the final and dropped a hard-fought, three-set match.

“She was smaller and weaker, but she just grinded her way through,” Milo told the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Dan Plouffe. “It was almost hard to watch her fight so hard at that age. It was such a battle. Her technique wasn’t really that great back then. She just went out there and gutted it out.

“And that’s how she has been her whole career. Just like that. To find a way to stay in the matches. She never goes down easy.”

Today, Dabrowski continues to battle and stand proud after 20 years of court confrontations, embracing a special honour, the Key to the City of Ottawa.

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