Five Canadians Learn Their Draws at 2024 Paris Olympics

Photo : Jordan Leigh

The five Canadians competing in Paris at the 2024 Summer Olympics now know their paths to the podium. The official draw for the Olympic tennis event was made on Thursday morning, with Bianca Andreescu, Félix Auger-Aliassime, Gabriela Dabrowski, Leylah Annie Fernandez, and Milos Raonic entered across the five disciplines.

All players will be taking part in multiple events except for Andreescu, who will focus solely on singles. Auger-Aliassime will be the busiest, competing in singles as the No. 13 seed, playing men’s doubles with Raonic, and teaming up with Dabrowski in mixed doubles.

Both Raonic and Fernandez will take part in the singles and doubles events. Fernandez will join Dabrowski, who is playing in two doubles draws, to form the remaining doubles team.

For the most part, the singles draw was kind to the Canadians as they all managed to avoid one of the top title favourites until at least the third round.

Fernandez leads the Canadian women’s contingent as the 16^th seed in singles. She will begin her journey against Karolina Muchova of Czechia, the 2023 Roland-Garros runner-up, in the first round. If she advances, she could face the winner of Croatia’s Petra Martic and Cristina Bucsa of Spain in round two.

After the draw came out, Fernandez caught a break when her projected third-round opponent, world No. 4 Elena Rybakina, withdrew from the competition. The first higher-ranked opponent the Canadian could face is world No. 7 Qinwen Zheng in the quarter-finals. World No. 1 Iga Swiatek may be waiting in the semis.

Having reached the third round at this same venue during the 2024 French Open, Fernandez is known to play some of her best tennis on clay. She reached the quarter-finals at Roland-Garros in 2022. The Lavaloise made her Olympic debut in Tokyo in 2020, losing in the second round.

She will also compete in her first Olympic doubles event, teaming up with Dabrowski. The dominant Billie Jean King Cup pair, seeded fifth, will face French team Clara Burel and Varvara Gracheva in the first round. They are projected to face Czechia’s team in the quarter-finals, composed of Barbora Krejcikova, who won the 2024 Wimbledon singles title, and Katerina Siniakova, who won doubles at the All England Lawn Tennis Club this year. The Czechs have won seven major titles together.

As a team, Dabrowski and Fernandez have a 7-2 record on the WTA Tour and at the Billie Jean King Cup combined, including a perfect 4-0 record at the team competition.

Dabrowski, who reached the doubles final at Wimbledon this year, will compete in her third Olympics, making her the most experienced player on the Canadian tennis team at the Games. The Ottawan made her debut at Rio 2016, where she competed in women’s doubles with Eugenie Bouchard, reaching the second round. She competed in women’s doubles with Sharon Fichman and mixed doubles with Auger-Aliassime at Tokyo 2020.

Auger-Aliassime and Dabrowski are part of the 16-team mixed doubles draw. Having lost in round one at the previous Olympics, they will look for an improved performance in Paris as they face Heather Watson and Joe Salisbury in the opening round and, if victorious, they would have to face the third-seeded American team of Coco Gauff and Taylor Fritz in the quarter-finals.

2019 US Open champion Andreescu is competing in just her fourth tournament this season after a 10-month break.

Andreescu will be participating in her first Olympic event after having to withdraw from the 2020 Tokyo Games. Using her protected ranking to qualify for Paris, Andreescu will face Clara Tauson from Denmark in the opening round, with recent Wimbledon semifinalist Donna Vekic of Croatia potentially looming in round two. If she reaches the third round, she could potentially meet 2023 US Open champion and No. 2 seed Gauff of the United States.

The former world No. 4 has had encouraging results in recent weeks, reaching the third round at Roland-Garros and Wimbledon, as well as the final of a WTA 250 tournament in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, where she defeated former world No. 1 Naomi Osaka in the quarter-finals.

Auger-Aliassime, seeded 13^th at the Olympics this year, had a strong clay season, reaching the round of 16 at Roland-Garros in June, where he lost to eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz of Spain. He also reached the final of the ATP 1000 tournament in Madrid, Spain in May.

He will compete in his second Olympic Games after Tokyo 2020, where he lost in the first round of singles. The Montrealer will start his 2024 journey against Marcos Giron from the United States. In order to reach the finals, Auger-Aliassime would have to potentially go through Daniil Medvedev in the third round, two-time Roland-Garros runner-up Casper Ruud in the quarter-finals and Alcaraz in the semifinals.

Raonic, a Wimbledon finalist in 2016 and former world No. 3, will compete in his second Olympic Games, more than a decade after his participation in the London 2012 Olympics. He played one of the longest matches in Olympic tennis history against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, losing 6-3, 3-6, 25-23 after nearly four hours of play.

Raonic has only competed in a few tournaments since 2021 due to injuries, but he has shown impressive form in his matches with victories against Alexander Bublik, Cameron Norrie, and Roberto Bautista Agut this year. He also will benefit from his protected ranking to take part in this Olympics events, where he will face Dominik Koepfer of Germany in the first round and would potentially have to meet 14-time Roland Garros champion Rafael Nadal or top seed Novak Djokovic, who are projected to meet in round two, in the third round.

The two Canadian men will also compete together in the doubles event, marking each of their first participation in this discipline at the Olympics. The pair have teamed up on a few occasions on tour, notably during two ATP 1000 tournaments in the United States in 2020, where they defeated players such as Nicolas Mahut and Jan-Lennard Struff. They will start their run in Paris against third seeds Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul of the United States.

Canada only has one medal at the Olympic tennis event, that being a gold medal in men’s doubles in 2000, won by Sebastien Lareau and Daniel Nestor. Nestor was also the most recent Canadian to reach the medal rounds at an Olympics, coming fourth in men’s doubles with Vasek Pospisil at Rio 2016.

The Canadian men’s team will be supported by their respective national coach, Davis Cup captain Frank Dancevic, while the women’s team will have the support of Billie Jean King Cup captain Heidi El Tabakh.

Click here to see the draws.

Written By

Tennis Canada