PARIS – Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and Felix Auger-Aliassime won the tennis mixed doubles bronze medal at the Paris Olympics on Friday with a 6-3, 7-6 (2) victory over Demi Schuurs and Wesley Koolhof of the Netherlands.
Ottawa’s Dabrowski and Montreal’s Auger-Aliassime won the last two points of the second-set tiebreaker on return, and clinched the medal when Dabrowski forced a Schuurs error on match point.
The Canadians appeared to be coasting to victory leading 4-2 in the second set, but the Dutch tandem held in the seventh game, then came down from a 40-15 deficit to score a lifesaving break to tie the set 4-4.
The Canadians recovered and took an early 3-0 lead in the second set tiebreaker. After Schuurs and Koolhof cut the lead to one with two points on serve, the Canadians answered with four straight points to reach the podium.
Canada’s only other Olympic tennis medal came in 2000, when Daniel Nestor beat the heavily-favoured Australian duo of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde in the men’s doubles final at the Sydney Games.
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Auger-Aliassime has a chance to add to that when he plays for men’s singles bronze on Saturday. The Canadian missed out on a chance to play for gold after losing 6-1, 6-1 to Spanish star Carlos Alcaraz in a semifinal earlier Friday.
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