Bianca Andreescu was in severe pain during her second-round defeat at the 2024 Olympic Games and has now opened up on the nature and seriousness of the injury.
Andreescu was making her Olympic debut this month in a five-member Canadian squad that included 2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez, Gabriela Dabrowski, and ATP stars Milos Raonic and Felix Auger-Aliassime.
She won her first-round match against Clara Tauson of Denmark in straight sets. In the second round, the level of competition went up a notch as Andreescu met the in-form Donna Vekic, who was fresh from reaching her first Grand Slam semifinal at Wimbledon.
The Croatian feasted on Andreescu's poor serving performance to round off a 6-3, 6-4 victory in exactly two hours. But the 24-year-old's malfunctioning serve was caused by an injury to her thumb.
The 2019 US Open champion coughed six double faults during the match and dropped her serve seven times (four in the second set). The injury occurred when the racket's follow-through inadvertently hit her left thumb early in the second set.
She was pictured grimacing while sitting on the bench at the changeover and requested a medical timeout. Ultimately, she was able to continue for the remainder of the match.
Thereafter, Andreescu took to X (formerly Twitter) to update the fans of the "scary" injury. She explained that it won't hamper her participation in the upcoming Canadian Open in her home country. She also expressed her appreciation to all the wellwishers who showered her with positive messages.
"Bit of a scare today with my thumb during my match… bad news is that it happened when it happened:(… but good news is that it’s nothing too serious! Now getting ready for @NBOtoronto gotta move on and move forward! Thank you for all the nice messages. They mean a lot."
The Canadian Open will begin on August 6th. The women's tournament will be held in Toronto this year. Andreescu will be there after she was granted a main draw wild card.
She won the tournament during her breakout 2019 season and competed there in 2022, where she lost to Qinwen Zheng in the round of 16. Andreescu played during the event's staging in Montreal 12 months ago but exited in the first round at the hands of Camila Giorgi.
The former World No. 4 did not play for the rest of the 2023 season because of a back injury that became progressively worse, and she was forced to shut down her campaign.
Andreecu missed the first five months of the season because of the same injury. Although she mentioned that she had almost fully healed in March, she did not want to rush into her comeback at Indian Wells.
Instead, she opted to return at the 2024 French Open, where she impressed during her run to the third round (lost to eventual runner-up Jasmine Paolini).
Andreescu reached her first final since 2022 at the Libema Open during the grass-court swing but lost to Liudmila Samsonova. Her most recent grand slam appearance was at Wimbledon, where she advanced into the third-round stage only to lose to Paolini for a second time.
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